The Open Author

Dad: “Come on Spencer, get out.”

Spencer: “In a second!”

Dad: “You’ve been in there for 45 minutes, Steven has to go.”

“Spencer: “I’m trying!”

Dad: “New motto for our house, If IT’s not coming out, then you come out.”

Spencer: “DAD!”

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I’m thinking that motto would look pretty good on a cross stitch, hanging over the toilet.

It is an older person’s right to be cranky. They’ve lived their life, they put up with crap, and now they get to kick back on a porch somewhere, wave their gnarled cane, and mutter. It’s a circle of life kind of thing. I fully support old people being cranky.

However, here in Logan we have a whole mess of ‘snow birds’ living in USU Housing. These snow birds are far more cranky than they need to be, and right now I’m thinking they should all pack their bags and just go home. Let me tell you two stories, both of them true, both happened to me and my wife.

We used to live in the trailer park on USU’s campus. My oldest son Spencer was 8 months old at the time. We’d gone over to do a bit of research in the computer lab. The married student computer lab. Where married students go, often with their small children. There were a bunch of these snow birds in the room, and my son Spencer was making gurgling noises. He wasn’t crying, he wasn’t yelling, he was making baby noises. An old woman suddenly got up, walked over to my wife, and said, “I’m sorry, all of us here in this room have already raised our children, and we don’t really want to have to listen to yours”.

No, I kid you not, that is exactly what she said. I wanted to smack her, but refrained.

Fast forward to yesterday. My wife is on the bus with our kids, and is holding our 18 month old son. He’s on the bus, he’s seeing new things out the window so he is pointing and ‘talking’ to my wife. He is not crying, he is not screaming, but he is also not talking in a hushed whisper.

Well, at one stop, an oranged-hair snowbird gets up to get off the bus. She walks over to my wife and puts her face right into my son’s face. My wife thought she was going to make cute goo goo noises at him.

Instead she screams right into his face. That’s right, she screams at him. No words, just a cranky, brainless bellow. Then she throws my wife a dirty look, and gets off the bus.

I tell you what, in my youth I was able to refrain. But I think now I’m old enough, and cranky enough, to start slapping.

So, if you’re a snowbird, living in Logan, watch out. Some of us locals are cranky too.

I am in a small writers group here in Logan, Utah. It’s made up primarily of published authors, but a few that have not been published, but their work is very good.

The other day, as it turned out, the only people to show up for the group was me and Amber Smith, who has not yet been published. She is a great writer, and has 4-5 books finished. She is diligently looking for somebody to publish her books. She seemed a bit discouraged, and I thought, “You know, if this was a movie, this would be the part where she has reached the end of her rope, she gives up, and then she gets a letter from some publisher wanting to sign her up.

But that only happens in the movies, right? Well, the next day I get an e-mail from Amber. She had just received a letter from Cedar Fort who will be publishing her book, The Priestess Prophecy. She has announced it on her blog.

So, a huge congratulations goes out to Amber, and good luck!

The other day I woke up to this lovely exchange.

Sue: “Are you listening to me?”

Jared: “Yes.”

Sue: “We do not point our naked bums at our brothers, do you understand?”

Great discussion going on over at the Chronicle of Higher Education over the LMS vs. Web 2.0 debate. The comments are what makes it interesting. A few highlights:

“Why should we, #4, “adapt to the learning styles of all the students”? Some “learning styles” are not very conducive nor adaptive to learning some kinds of things, concepts, skills, and ideas. Medical and Law Schools do not “adapt to the learning styles” of all the students. And the Courts those law students will have to practice in will certainly not so adapt.

Of course, if the job of most undergraduate colleges, especially Liberal Arts, and the like, is to warehouse late teens and young adults for four to six years, then we have to make them happy so as to promote “retention”. But some how, I dont think Wal-Mart or MacDonalds are going to “adapt to their learning styles” any more than the Courts are.”

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“Students will abandon monolithic LMSs? Yes, in spirit they will, but as long as institutions are granting the credits and degrees, students [as always] will have to go with the flow.”

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“I agree with John Thompson — it is not LMS vs Web2.0 that is the central issue. Unlike Matt (#4) who apparently sees the value of an LMS as something that “puts it all together”, I think the days of the cookie-cutter, monolithic LMS are limited. Why should we rely on, or wait for, a company like Blackboard to decide what functionality or tools to build in to their “product”.”

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Comparing traditional higher education and web 2.0 is like comparing apples and red.

Good news on the diamond front. Maybe finally the cartel will fall.

“Diamonds are a con, pure and simple. The topic is vast, so we won’t discuss worker exploitation or for that matter “blood diamonds” used to finance African wars. Instead I’ll focus on whether diamonds are worth the exorbitant sums charged for them. Answer: Of course not. Prices are kept high by a cynical cartel that preys on vanity and stupidity.” –The Straight Dope

Good riddance.

Today a couple of us were crammed into a truck on the way to lunch. Several of us have kids, and we ended up talking about how incredibly popular WebKinz is. Somebody said it was simply a training ground for games like World of Warcraft. As we were talking, I suddenly realized why World of Warcraft and WebKinz are so popular.

Humans love to quantify things. It makes things so much easier. We’re constantly trying to make the abstract have more meaning. We might say we want to ‘get in shape’, but when we get right down to it, we say things like, “I’m going to lose 10 pounds”, or “I want to run 15 miles”. Be honest, have you ever clicked on one of those ads for a free IQ test? You want to be able to quantify how smart you are. It’s in our nature.

World of Warcraft lets you do just this. It’s one thing to play a game, it’s another to be able to say, “I’m a level 70 Shaman, my blacksmithing is at 297, my mining is at 282, and I have tier 5 armor. The higher numbers not only allow you to do new and nifty things in the game, but it’s an easy way to tell/show your friends just how good at the game you are.

The game allows you to progress, but it gives you a quantifiable way to show that progression. Webkins is the same way. You run around and do things, and earn KinzCash. The Kinzcash is an easy way to quantify that. The more Kinzcash you have, the more of the game you can explore/purchase.

I have some more thoughts on this, and it actually ties into this post. But I’d like to think a bit more about it, so…stay tuned.

John: “You know what I want on Christmas day?”

Dad: “What?”

John: “A bad dream.”

Dad: “What? Why would you want that?”

John: “So I can wake up early! I hope it is one where Santa comes down the chimney with a shotgun.”

On a PC I could move anywhere in a document by using the home, end, shift home, shift arrow, and many other buttons or combination of buttons. With a Mac, they have the lovely feature of making it different in every application. So I always feel like I have to use my mouse to do anything moving around.

There is a great fix for Firefox that I’ve used in the past, but wasn’t working for the new FF3. However, the internet at large has found, tackled, and fixed the problem. If you’re on a Mac, and you want your home and end keys to take you to the beginning and end of any sentence, then go here, click, and rejoice.