Apparently, she was given a password to an online area where she could sign up for classes for the following school year, and the students were supposed to finish their selections by Friday.

I asked her what she had already.  She laid it out:

• 1 credit (two semesters) pre-AP Calculus
• 1 credit (two semesters) Environmental Science (What the…???  In high school?!?)
• Orchestra (double blocked for both semesters for 1 credit)
• 1 credit AP English
• 1 credit pre-AP US History

She was still trying to figure out how to add in the rest of these in the last two years of high school:

• Latin III and IV (She thinks that she might want to be a linguist so she wants to take all four years of Latin.  Plus she needs three Latin credits to earn the “Distinguished Achievement” diploma.)
• Phys Ed (she has to have 1.5 credit hours to graduate)
• Health (she has to have .5 credit hours to graduate, and the Nutrition class that she took for some reason doesn’t count as a Health course even though they measured her body fat and required her to keep a food diary for an entire semester.)
• Technology (1 credit hour to graduate)

Basically, the only way to do it is if she bows out of things that she loves in her Senior year (like Latin IV) and/or only have Orchestra every other day and/or goes to summer school.  Or she can can help prove the theory that “Distinguished Achievement” really means “Neener! Neener!  I have a time-turner and you don’t!”

She’s not amused.  She’s freaking.  And I’m totally helpless.

Well, maybe not totally helpless.  I can do two things:

1.  Send a message to her counselor asking for help figuring it out.

2.  Vent.

I’ve done the first.  Now I’m going to do the second.

This morning, I had a talk with one of my co-workers while I was fixing her computer.  The topic was state standardized testing and how ALL students are expected to be competent in the same things in order to graduate or move on in school.

I know I work in a school, and it’s pretty un-PC to say, but WHY do legislators think that ALL students have to be capable of doing the same things at the same time?  What ever happened to appreciating people for who they are?    Why is it so bad that little Jimmy or Jenny is not a great book learner but a brilliant artist, muscian, or athlete?     In my daughter’s case, why does she have to give up things that she loves and will likely use in her future (orchestra, art, and Latin) so that she can take classes that don’t interest her and will likely be forgotten and never used again after she finishes with the classes?

Why are kids who are already proficient in an area forced to sit through the same things because it says on a list of requirements somewhere that they HAVE to take the class?  My daughter can handle technology better than most adults that I know, and she has been able to do so for years.  The lack of a technology class isn’t going to turn her into a mental midget when it comes to computers, but neither will taking an additional course necessarily make her better.  So instead of taking things that will interest her and help her grow intellectually, she has to sit through a course that will in all likelihood make her resent the subject more.

It’s just stupid!  We’re churning out cookie cutter kids reduced to the lowest common denominator and calling it “success”!

–  Deep breath –

I’ve vented enough. Nothing has changed.  I’m just disgusted, and I can’t help but sympathize with my daughter when she says, “No!  High school does NOT prepare you for real life!  In real life, you have a choice whether to stay in a situation that stinks!”

I’ve sent a message off to her counselor.  Hopefully she’ll have some advice.

I have a feeling that nothing she says will make my daughter happy.  Requirements are what they are, even if they do stink!

My friend Annie is an AWESOME teacher!  She’s kind, considerate, intelligent, creative, and believes that teaching should include more than the things that can be learned from a book.  She challenges her students to be “knights”… respectful, brave, honest, kind,  The fact that she brings me Starbucks once a week is just icing on the cake!

So when I drew her name from the Secret Valentine Pal basket, I was thrilled.  I knew exactly what I wanted to make for her.  And, with an unexpected snow day and a school holiday, I had enough time to finish it.

The pattern is from Alan Dart’s “Tales of Yore” series that appeared in Simply Knitting magazine.  I’d been wanting to make this little guy since I first saw the picture in the magazine.  I knew he’d be perfect for Annie, and I was right.

He’s made completely from scraps from my stash.  I used mainly Paton’s Classic Merino, which is heavier than the recommended yarn, but worked well anyway.

I knitted the pattern pretty much as written.  There were three exceptions:

1.  I embroidered the “K” on the tunic instead of using duplicate stitch.  (Annie’s last name starts with ‘K’.)  I tried duplicate stitch, but it looked like crap.

2.  The pattern said to glue on the nose piece for the helmet.  I don’t glue things on my stuffies unless there’s no way to sew it.  In this case, it was easy to sew.

3.  This is the big one… The pattern says to stuff the body with the bumpy side out, and the head and arms are supposed to be knit so that the upper arm and back of the head are bumpy.  I somehow missed the difference in the knitting of the arms and head until I sewed the body up with the smooth side out.  As I was contemplating re-knitting the body (when I hide my seaming, I hide it well!), I noticed that I hadn’t done the arms and head correctly.  So I said, “Whatever!” and finished it off with the pieces that I had already knit.  The end result is that my knight doesn’t look like he’s wearing chain mail.

Annie says it doesn’t matter!  She loves him!  She says that she will have to fight her daughters to keep them from stealing him.

I’m pleased with him too, even though the assembly took me the better part of a day to finish.  Each of the pieces is knit flat and then seamed, so it’s a bit fiddly.  Still, the results are SO worth it!  Mr. Grump now wants me to knit the whole set!

Little Grump and I talked about it for something like two minutes and then said, “Oh yeah!  You can count on us!”   So we signed up to go to the facility on Sunday mornings to work a four hour shift.

Unlike the local shelter, this facility is about a half hour away.  So we woke up early and left our house at about 7:15.  (We had to allow for a quick zoom through the Starbucks drivethrough!)

When we got there, the attendant asked if we were afraid of any particular animals.  He said some people hated insects and arachnids.  I knew that we didn’t.  (Neither one of us squash spiders or crickets.  No… We carefully pick them up and set them outside.)  He asked about snakes or slimy things.  Nope… not that either.  (Little Bear has been the resident gecko rangler since we moved to Texas.  Those little guys are quick, but Little Grump is quicker!)  Since we didn’t seem to be afraid of anything, he put us to work with the reptiles.

Now, we’ve handled some reptiles before, but we’ve never seen such an array as we did today… Lizards, water dragons, turtles in all shapes and sizes, and more.  We even saw a large slug, which had just had babies.  (Did you know slugs were asexual?  I didn’t!)

Our first job was to go through and change water, feed animals, and “check for deads.”  We had to go through the reptiles and find any ones that might have perished.

In one cage, I was sure I found one that was dead.  It’s legs were all splayed out and it looked flatter than a pancake.  It wasn’t until Little Grump reached for it and it took off like a shot that we realized that… whoops!  It was still alive.

Which is just proof of the what we learned today… It’s not always easy to see if a reptile is alive or just comfy!

We also found a toad that chirped like a cricket instead of croaked.  We saw that turtles actually use their claws to arrange their food while they eat.  And we saw a long tailed lizard that looked like a tiny snake with four feet.

It was a very cool experience, and we plan on going back next week.  Little Grump hopes to be able to help with the small mammals next week because she wants to learn about more animals.  (Besides, she though she saw a lemur!)

I’d be happy with the reptiles and amphibians again.  They’re actually rather cute and calming!

Let’s forget for a second that some of their features were lifted right off Mac OS X features. Let’s forget that Windows 7 is still slow.

Instead, let’s talk about which yo-yo was responsible for the massively intelligent decision to make it so changing one’s desktop background is not a feature for the Windows 7 Starter Edition.

I kid you not!

My friend Kitty stopped by for a visit this weekend with her new HP Mini. Kitty is a genius in many things but she’s at the point in her life where she’d rather have a geek that enjoys playing with new toys deal with the issues associated with a brand new computer. So Kitty handed me the Mini and gave me a short list of the things that she wanted.

Windows 7 is similar enough to Windows XP that I had no problems with accessing the Internet, changing her home page, changing her default search engine and browser, etc.

Then I tried to change the desktop background. I went to IE, found an image that she loved, and selected “Change Desktop Background”. I minimized the windows to look at the background.

Instead of seeing her pretty picture, I saw the same boring Microsoft logo that was there before.

I did it again. Same thing.

I right-clicked on the desktop to get to the Desktop Properties. Alas, Microsoft has spirited those away and replaced them with “Gadgets”.

I searched the help in Windows 7. There wasn’t even a mention of changing backgrounds.

So I went to Google and quickly found the answer to the problem.

The Windows 7 Starter Edition does not allow the user to change the desktop background. In order to get that, you either have to upgrade to a higher version of Windows 7 or install an extra program. Not only that, Microsoft doesn’t even provide any alternatives to the boring logo. It won’t even allow selection of the pretty HP wallpaper that HP puts on the Mini.

So I want to know… Who made that particular feature? Who thought it was a great idea to nickel and dime people for a feature as simple as making one’s desktop pretty?

All I know is that I’m more happy than ever that I bought a Mac!

Out of all of the episodes, one of my favorites is “Blink”.  In this episode, a young woman named Sally Sparrow goes into an old house to just explore and, after peeling back some old wallpaper, finds a note warning her not to blink.   It’s spine-tingling and has that wonderful twisting of time that makes me think of paradoxes and other, as the Doctor calls it, “wibbly wobbly time-y whimey stuff.”

At one point, Sally explains to a friend why she likes to explore old houses.

Kathy Nightingale: What did you come here for anyway?

Sally Sparrow: I love old things. They make me feel sad.

Kathy Nightingale: What’s good about sad?

Sally Sparrow: It’s happy for deep people.

I can really understand what Sally means.  It’s sad to see once beautiful buildings fallen into ruins.  However, with the passing of one thing, there’s always the birth of something else.  All of houses that have been abandoned have a history, and it’s kind of fun sometimes to think about days gone by and think about the things that happened there.  And sometimes, it’s good to feel sad about things that aren’t so personal.  (It’s been a really emotionally trying time lately for quite a few of my friends, so it’s good to find something a bit more distant as a target for the sadness.)

When I saw the site The Ruins of Detroit, I couldn’t help but think about Sally Sparrow.  The site is a collection of sad yet beautiful pictures of scenes in modern day Detroit.  The pictures are heart-breaking in some respects, but they’re awesome too.  Check it out!

So I did some research and discovered that my problem might not be that hard to fix.  I gave it a try, and… Zoooooom!  My Firefox browser was running faster than it ever had before.  I kind of tucked the info in the back of my brain but didn’t really talk about it to anyone.   After all, I’d never heard of anyone complain of this issue before, so why would I go around and tell anyone about the solution?

This week has been something of a bear (and not the soft, cuddly kind).  On Monday, the first day back from winter break, the network was going nuts and people were reporting weird problems.  As I was about to leave, I ran into one of our sixth grade teachers who is actually one of the most experienced Mac users in the building.  He proceeded to describe a problem on the Mac on his room.  Apparently, it was doing exactly what my MacBook had been doing.

The light bulb went on in my brain.  I think I rather surprised him when I said, “Oh!  I know that problem!  And I know how to fix it!  I’ll stop by tomorrow!”

Tuesday was more of the same.  More network problems.  More weird problems.  Printers were reporting errors no one in the building had ever seen before.  And more frustration for me.  By 3:00, I was ready to fix something, because the whole day had been just a series of chasing bugs with no real resolution.  (I was beginning to doubt my techno-geek mojo!)

So I went and applied the fix.  When I left, the teacher’s Firefox browser was running faster than it ever had. He was truly impressed.

I ran into him tonight at a restaurant that was having a fundraiser for our school.  I was there with a friend.  He was there, just talking to anyone he saw.  When he stopped by our table, he again raved at my genius.  My friend (who already knows my geeky tendencies) was curious and thought that I should post the details of the fix here.  The teacher whole-heartedly agreed, because he wanted to do the fix on his home computer.

So, without further ado, here’s the fix!

Some people don’t realize it but Firefox has a Profile Manager as part of its installation.  The Profile Manager makes it possible for multiple people to use the same account on the computer but still have totally independent browser history, cookies, etc.  By default, it’s turned off (because most people who share computers have their own accounts on the computer).  So most people will never have a need to use it.

This fix makes use of the Profile Manager to create a completely new profile and with it, brand new storage areas for cache, cookies, etc.

Here we go!

1. Backup your Bookmarks from Firefox. In Firefox 3.5.7 that I run on my Mac OS 10.6.2 machine, you go up to the Bookmarks menu from Firefox and select “Organize Bookmarks.”  Then you click on the Star button and select Backup from the menu that pops up.  Then save the file when prompted to do so.
2. Make notes about what Add-ons that you have installed. Click on the Add-Ons option under the Tools menu, and look at what’s installed there.  If you like those things, you will need to know them later on.
3. Quit Firefox.
4. Now open the /Applications/Utilities/Terminal program, and enter the following:

         /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox -profilemanager

   (You may need to add “.app” after Firefox depending on your OS version.)

5. Now open up Firefox. Now when Firefox starts, it will give you the option of creating a new profile.  Select “Create Profile” and start Firefox.
6. Now you’re in Firefox with a whole new profile.  In both cases where I’ve tried this, the speed was significantly faster than it was before!  If it’s not, I can’t help you more than to suggest the general maintenance tasks (disk cleanup, rebooting, etc.).
7. If it IS faster (and I suspect it will be), restore your Bookmarks. Return to the “Organize Bookmarks” option under the “Bookmarks” menu and click on the Star again to get to the “Restore” option.  Find the Bookmarks file that you saved before, and continue.
8. After that, you can reinstall the Add-ons that you want out of the list that you wrote down earlier.

This can also be done with Windows’ versions of Firefox, though you must enter “firefox.exe – P” in the Run box of Windows instead of using the Terminal program.  Everything else is pretty much the same!

Beginning to end, the whole process takes about 5 minutes, if that.  What it saves in lags will be returned to you 100-fold if your Firefox currently drags like mine did!

If you like what having the brand new profile does for you and you’re anal about clean-up, you can return to the Terminal to turn on the Profile Manager, and then go back into Firefox to delete the profile.

I remember back to the time after 9/11 when both Mr. Grump and I were laid off within about a month of each other.  We never saw it coming!  No amount of planning could have helped.  One day, we were a couple making a combined salary well into the six figures, and then… Poof!  Three weeks later, our only income is whatever unpaid overtime we were owed.  Then a year went by as we pounded on one door after another while trying to find new employment.  And then one day, he got a job offer from a company to which he’d never sent his resume in a state neither one of us had ever considered as a potential home.

Life is funny.  Today was another example of God’s rather odd sense of humor.

This has been a rough week at work.  Ever since break, work has kicked my butt!

Recently, the district decided that it wanted to try out a new system for the teachers to request my help.  It’s a pain in the teachers’ necks, but I see it as a way of guaranteeing my job security.  (Heh… If the district sees half of what someone in my job position does in one day, they’d be hard-pressed to say that the school doesn’t need my services!)

Then we returned from break.  I’d asked the teachers and staff to unplug all computer equipment over break to save money and wear and tear on the equipment.  When we came back and started plugging things in, almost nothing worked the way that it did before.  Network printers started giving odd errors or not working at all.  Computers were able to connect to the network one minute but not the next and won’t reconnect until everything is powered off and then on again.  Even the phones stopped working like normal!  Teachers and students were not amused, to say the least.

So for the past two days, I’ve been running myself dizzy as I went from one corner of the school to the other to attempt to fix issues.  (The district’s new facility for reporting issues got quite the work-out!)  By the time the day was over, I was exhausted!  I finally left about 5:30 (after work, after Computer Club, and after touching base with a couple of the teachers about printing issues).  I was tired, and the only thing I wanted to do was eat a large dinner and then pass out on the couch.  To say that I felt battered and humbled would only begin to explain my mood.

But life is funny sometimes.

Little Grump and I got home.  She went in to take a shower.  I checked the voice mail before I surrendered to the big comfy couch.  And this is the message I received.

“Hello, this is [xxx's office].  We just wanted to call to ask you to come by.   We have a  check for you here.  It’s really large.  We want to see you to hand it over because we don’t trust the mail with it.  Give us a call or come by.”

Little Grump's Reading Mitts

For a bit, I wasn’t sure I was going to finish them in time.

I flew through the first Mitt and a half.  Then the first needle broke.  Then the second.

I knitted on with one Zephyr and one Options needle until I got to what was supposed to be the end of the thumb.  Then I noticed that the thumb section on Mitt #2 was about a half inch off Mitt #1.

Oops.

I frogged back to right before the thumb area and tried again.  This time, the two thumb areas came out even.

I proceeded at a good clip until I got to the last turn section on Mitt #2.  Then I realized that I’d lost a stitch somewhere.

@#@#$@#$@!!!!!

More frogging.  I found the location of the missed stitch in the lace section, fortunately only a half dozen or so rows down.

I finally finished.

Little Grump tried them on and declared them “perfect”.

This is a project I would do again in a heartbeat.  The knitting was simple (even though I managed to screw it up), and the mitts look really classy.

I’d also use the Cascade Lana d’Oro again.  My friend Rebecca was absolutely correct when she said that it’s an awesome yarn.  It’s a mixture of Alpaca and Wool.  I frequently found myself sneaking a touch at the inside of the mitts to feel the softness.  The yarn bled a bit when I blocked it, but not so much that it didn’t stop.  Since intense colors tend to bleed in even the best yarn, I can be forgiving this time!  Because… oh!  I can’t explain the softness!  You have to feel!

I don’t think you’re going to get a chance to try these gloves though.  Little Grump adores them, and it’s supposed to be a COLD week in Texas!

A few months back, KnitPicks announced the new KnitPicks Zephyr tips for their interchangable needle set. KnitPicks bills these as “lightweight and slightly flexible.”  Since I suffer from a bit of carpal tunnel from time to time, I thought that this would be really great.  So I ordered the tips in two sizes.   I was surprised when they arrived because they were clear and looked like they would snap if you breathed on them a little too hard.  So I tucked them away until I had a project that needed the size that I purchased.

When I looked at the pattern for Susie’s Reading Mitts, I was delighted to see that I could use the Zephyr tips.  Besides, I thought, it would pretty much guarantee that I’d loosen up the killer death grip with which I normally hold my needles.

For a while, everything seemed to be going well.  I liked the feel of the needles, and I did hold them loosely.  But then today… Snap!  Crap!  One of the tips broke in the middle of the needle.  Some of my stitches dropped off the broken bits.  I cursed a little to myself and dug out another needle to rescue the lost stitches.

I then got out one of the KnitPicks Harmony Wood needle tips that I’d purchased as a test a few years back.  As luck would have it, or maybe because I plan things subconsciously, I’d bought the same size needle tips to test for the Zephyrs as I did for the Harmony needles.  I’d tried the Harmony Wood tips but didn’t use them for a full project because I’d heard and seen that the wood tips pulled out of the metal join for the cable connection far too easily.  However, I thought it would be a good idea to use them to replace the Zephyr tip because I’d still have to be delicate with it.

Two rows later, I realized that I’d somehow missed one.  So I used my handy-dandy crochet hook to catch the wayward stitch and bring it back with the rest.

About three rows later, the Harmony Wood tip fell apart.  Just as I’d seen happen with a couple ladies in my knitting groups, the tip pulled out leaving almost 20 stitches orphaned without a needle or cable.

More cursing ensued, this time not as quietly as before.  Fortunately, Little Grump was out of the room.  Mr. Grump was not!

So I had to rescue even more stitches.  Again, I missed one.

This time, I’ve replaced the broken needle with one of the original Options needles.  Mr. Grump was boggled that I have so many needles!  It’s a good thing though.  Otherwise, I’d have to wait for reinforcements to arrive!

Broken needles galore

I still might finish the mitts before vacation ends, but I doubt it.  I fear that my needle issues are just beginning!

This year saw lots of changes at work.  The principal was replaced with an interim principal, and then a new principal was hired over the summer.  So I had three bosses in one year, and they were all very different from each other.  Fortunately, I worked well with each of them.  I have developed a good relationship with my new boss (i.e. she thinks I can do anything!), so life is good at work.

Mr. Grump’s work continued to be busy enough to require him to do some overtime.  He seems to be content, even when it means he has to go in to work on Sunday.  Unfortunately, work interfered with our holiday travel, but he didn’t have to work long hours over the holiday.  So life is good there.

Little Grump turned 16 this year.  While most kids would be chomping at the bit to start driving, she took driving lessons over the summer and then declared that she wasn’t ready for the responsibility of driving.  I’m not sure but the lesson where someone was driving in the wrong direction on the highway and heading towards her might have something to do with it.  Still, I have to respect her when she admits that she isn’t ready.  Most teens are so cocky that they can’t even conceive that anything can go wrong.  She knows better.   She’s not dating anyone right now.  Again, she sees things much more realistically than most teens.  She doesn’t feel like she has the time to devote to a real relationship.   She also doesn’t feel like she needs a boy to make her important.  We’re very proud that she is so independent!

So overall, life is good!  Yeah, we’ve had some bumps, but nothing that got us down for long.  We’re blessed by good friends, and while our family is far away, our hearts are always with them.

At the end of the year, I like to look back over photos that I’ve taken through the year.  Thanks to my new digital SLR, there are thousands.  Most of them are from school.  Many are of Little Grump.  Quite a few are of my knitting.

As I look at my completed projects for the year, I have to admit some amount of pride.  I’ve done some pretty big projects this year.  Equal Parts took me months to complete!  Several were pretty complicated and required concentration.  Many of my projects were baby gifts, and everyone who received those baby gifts were pleased with them.

Knitting Projects 2009

My favorite project of the year are the cabled ones… the Gretel hat and the baby Trellis sweater.  There was a time when I wouldn’t even have tried projects like them.  Now, I not only do them but like them enough to have others see them!

I’ve already got a list of projects a mile long lined up for 2010.  I also have four projects from this year to finish.  It will be interesting to see how many of them I actually do!