Happy New Year

In less than two hours, 2006 will be over. The year 2007 still seems impossibly far in the future, and yet it's almost upon us. Looking back, 2006 has been an ok year. There were some very positive highlights, but there were also some fairly major pieces of work that weren't that fun or satisfying. The result is that I didn't get to do some other things that I think I would have enjoyed more. But the good news is that many of the tedious and/or un-fun things should be drawing to a close in the next few months.

On Tuesday the 2nd our Winter Term begins. I'll be teaching a new class on Programming and Computer Science. It should be a lot of fun. It's been a long time since I've taught anything brand new. Once I stepped into administration I pretty much stopped developing new classes. I'd like to, but I just don't have the time. Also, teaching only four classes a year instead of five hasn't given me any teaching slots in which I can experiment with new topics. (The Computer Science class is technically an overload -- it's my fifth class this year when I'm supposed to be doing four.)

My winter break has been mostly good. I've slowly gotten some work done, had a good time visiting family in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and I also did a major re-organizing of my home
office. The weather has been warm-ish, however, so there has been little snow and no ice skating. Optimistically, I did get my skates sharpened, so I'll be ready as soon as the ice is.

I'm looking forward to the start of the term. It will be good to get back into a routine, and it will be nice to dive into the challenge of teaching programming. I hope also to get back in the rhythm of posting here more frequently.

Fall Term Closure

Just finished grades and narrative evaluations for my fall classes. As usual, the narrative evals took a long time. Nice to finally have them done.

Now I get to turn my attention to the soul-crushing reaccreditation document that I need to write and also a research paper that I need to edit and hopefully submit soon.

Spent a while tonight listening to Sigur Ros. I like them a lot. Haunting, in an Icelandic and austere way.

The Eagle Flies

This morning there was a bald eagle soaring and circling high above our backyard. I'll choose to take this as a good omen.

I've not posted here for a while. I've been fighting a low-level cold, working through lots of grading and usual end-of-term exhausting, and dealing with a number of large and small administrative things which are all less than joyous. Perhaps because I'm trying to do too much at once, I'm finding that I'm not getting that much of anything done. I'm making progress on work, but at an annoyingly slow rate.