Category: Just Rambling

My Week Ending 2020-10-18


My apologies for this post going out at 5am this morning. It was all operator error.

Here’s a summary of some of the things I learned and published this week.

Readings 

You can follow my daily readings as they happen here.  Below are a selected few, with commentary, from the past week.

Sunday

  • Could Microsoft be one of the companies that’s leading the way with its plan to let people work at home permanently?
  • I think that everyone should be monitoring global maps of the Corona Virus outbreaks. No one country can solve the problem by itself.

Monday

  • I’ve just given up and don’t look at the processes running in Chromium browsers any more. I’m a coward.
  • This is great news for teachers that are using Google Meet to have online classes with students.

Tuesday

  • Apple fanboys will get excited to sell last year’s iPhone and buy this year’s. Me? Pass.
  • An interesting and timely message about the difference between how the United States and Canada select judges for the Supreme Court. Maybe if we had more drama, we’d be more interested.

Wednesday

  • OK, more Apple stuff and how one authored explained the huge price and rationalized why it’s a good idea for the HomePod Mini.
  • I guess this is one thing that we don’t have to worry about here – paying for delivery of takeout. We just go and get it.

Thursday

  • This would really have been interesting. I watched the video and Alex Trebek did indeed look lonely.
  • You’d like to think that safety would be something that would need to be done before it’s available for sale. It’s done for cars; why not for tech?

Friday

  • Of course, nothing is ever resolved in the days of COVID. Now, there’s a change in change dates in the TDSB.
  • To quote my former secretary “Someone needs to be fired.”

Saturday

  • Sadly, I don’t see a conversation with my Microsoft friends in the new future. This would be part of the discussion.
  • I’ll probably test this and write a blog post about it. I can hum a tune with the best of them.

Blog Posts on
doug … off the record

My daily contributions to this blog are linked below. If you’re looking for a week in review for doug–off the record, you came to the right place.

#FollowFriday – October 16, 2020

https://wke.lt/w/s/5Tv6GY

voicEd Radio

On this week’s show, Stephen Hurley and I chatted about back to educational cages, portable classrooms-not, room design, changing, and awesome Grade 7 students.

The show is available here: https://voiced.ca/podcast_episode_post/flexible-agile-and-positive/

  • Paul McGuire – @mcguirp
  • Jen Aston – @mme_aston
  • Larissa Aradj – @MrsGeekChic
  • Kelly.McLaughlin
  • Diana Maliszewski – @MzMollyTL

Intro Song:

Dedicated to the month of October

All of the podcasts are archived here. The show is broadcast LIVE every Wednesday morning at 9:15 on voicEd Radio.

Technology Troubleshooting

I’m looking forward to tomorrow.

For my birthday, my wife gave me a set of Jabra in-ear headphones. They’re perfect for dog walking and extremely well reviewed. They’re even higher rate than Apple Airpods whose claim to fame is active noise reduction. The Jabra features passive noise reduction and the reviewers rate it higher than the Apple product.

Apparently, Jabra is going to upgrade us all to active noise reduction over the air for no price. I’m excited to see if it actually makes the listening experience even better.

Fingers crossed.

Video of the Week

Recently, we lost one of the good ones.

Photo of the Week

Sometimes, you’re just in the right place at the right time.


Thanks for reading.

Please join me daily for something new and, hopefully, interesting for you. I honestly and truthfully appreciate your few moments reading my thoughts. Time willing, this summary appears every Sunday afternoon.

Be safe.

dp

This blog post was originally posted at:

https://dougpete.wordpress.com/

If you find it anywhere else, it’s not original.

Whatever happened to …


The PoP Shoppe?

Ramona Meharg of “I Wish I Knew EDU” fame sent me this picture Friday…

There was two things of note here.

First, her Hallowe’en fingernails.

Secondly, Lime Ricky from the PoP Shoppe. I hadn’t seen this is years!

Lime Ricky was actually my favourite flavour (it’s like drinking a legal margarita in public) from this place which was a business franchise in itself. You can tell that this is Canadian – our friends from the south might call it SodA Shoppe or those from way south the CokE Shoppe. I’m doubtful that Eddie Shack would have been involved that far south.

This throws me back to when purchasing fizzy drinks was an art. You didn’t just go into their store and pick up a cardboard case of one flavour. They had these neat red and white plastic carrying cases and you could pick and choose the ones that you wanted. I always got lime and I remember my dad always going for Cream Soda. You’d throw in some Cherry and then assorted others.

Then, all of a sudden, the product seemed to have gone away. But, Ramona found some for sale in Talbotville at Picard’s Peanuts (a favourite stop in itself when we’re in the London area) and was kind enough to share the picture. The Lime Ricky and peanut lead to a nice chat with Ramona.

According to their website, they are available for sale “everywhere”. Maybe I’m just going to have to look a little harder; these days we look for what’s on sale locally and pick up a case of cans. Would today’s kids even know how to get into a bottle drink with a cap on top?

How about you, dear reader, for a Sunday? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

  • Do you remember the PoP Shoppe?
  • Can you buy PoP Shoppe products where you live?
  • Do you have a favourite flavour?
  • At their website, they indicate the challenges for their company appeared during the “Cola Wars”. Of course, the two biggies in this war are Pepsi and Coke. Do you have a preference?
  • I suppose that one of the big advantages of moving to cans is that those that throw garbage out onto the road don’t break glass bottles. If you look carefully at Ramona’s picture, you’ll see that the top holds a twist cap. Before that, you had to have a device to pop the cap. Do you still have one? In the days before twist tops, beer bottles had to be popped open with this device that had a nickname. Do you remember the nickname?

Thanks, Ramona for sharing this picture and the link to the PoP Shoppe website. I was blown away when they indicated that they had 26 different flavours at one time.

This post appeared on:

https://dougpete.wordpress.com

If you read it anywhere else, it’s not the original.

Things I haven’t heard


yet!

Photo by airfocus on Unsplash
  • Finally! Damn the pedagogy; the IWB is mine, all mine.
    • Get your hands off my board, kids….
  • My mask is frozen to my face
    • I remember a scarf wrapped around my nose and mouth and how wet it got just from breathing
  • There’s frost on my face shield
    • It used to be that you had to own a snowmobile to actually experience this winter phenomenum
  • I missed the bus because I didn’t know that I had to go to school this Wednesday
    • Oh, the realities of a modified secondary school timetable when you go to a school building Monday, Tuesday, and every other Wednesday
  • Let’s skip last class and go to the football game
    • School sports are just another casualty of COVID reality
  • I can’t put my mask on
    • Keep working at it; it’s going to be tough to do when you’re wearing mittens
  • People who wear masks scare me
    • But not now. Maybe we’re raising a whole generation of kids who won’t be scared at Hallowe’en events
  • Who’s up for a beer after work on Friday at the Michigan?
    • The Michigan was the place just down the street from my old school where we’d meet to share work stories after work on Fridays. Trick point since the actual building has been torn down but a “meeting” with 30 or 40 colleagues is out of the question anyway

Yeah, it’s a different year.

Happy Thanksgiving


A sincere thank you to those who drop by this blog regularly or irregularly to read my thoughts and even comment on them. I thank you profusely.

Thanksgiving is always one of those marker days. For teachers, it’s the first chance to really take a second breath and relax after a hectic September or, in the case of 2020, a bizarre, hectic September.

There are years around here where Thanksgiving is the weekend to close the pool in the back yard. Not so this year; we had some very cool days in September so that job is already done.

Normally, this would be a weekend to go back to my hometown and enjoy the colours. That’s not in the cards this year but things are changing colour nicely around here so a staycation leaf viewing thing will have to be done locally.

In a regular year, there would be a family gathering to celebrate the day. It’s going to be smaller this year. I hope that everyone has at least the chance to connect with friends or some subset of your family.

This year, in addition to the tradition things of family, health, and friends, I think we have so much to be thankful for

  • living in a country that was doing well controlling the COVID virus and will handle this second wave
  • a media that is mostly objective in its coverage of events
  • good friends and neighbours all pulling for each other
  • leaders that are addressing the issues with sincerity and not for political gain

From the show WKRP in Cincinnati, the Turkey Drop. It’s an annual part of my Thanksgiving post but I still think is one of the funniest bits in television. This includes other funny bits as Johnny Fever would say – more news and Les Nessman.

Have a wonderful day.

My Week Ending 2020-10-11


Here’s a summary of some of the things I learned and published this week.

Readings 

You can follow my daily readings as they happen here.  Below are a selected few, with commentary, from the past week.

Sunday

  • This was fascinating. I love music and was quite interested to find the source for these sound effects.
  • One month into the school year and 2 000 elementary school students in Toronto still don’t have a teacher.

Monday

  • A funny and enjoyable look at teaching via the genius humour of Schitt’s Creek.
  • I’ll admit; I hadn’t thought about this but certainly learned more about how mirrors work.

Tuesday

  • There’s a name change to a rest spot at Point Pelee National Park to honour the Caldwell First Nations.
  • A timely reminder to teachers and administrators that there is much going on in the background with respect to student privacy online with those apps you’re using.

Wednesday

  • This is a bit of wise advice about telling fact from fiction online.
  • Doug Ford turned off the US Presidential debate. Maybe all politicians have lessons to learn from that bad example.

Thursday

  • This should not come as a surprise to anyone who looks at restaurants around secondary schools.
  • I’m not a fan of the term “New Math“; but that’s the message here. Math is Math; it’s the understanding of mathematics that is of importance and yet is missing when articles like this are written.

Friday

  • I would make the same comparison between Ford and Trump. Maybe our premier should learn from this.
  • Ford’s unbelievable response to the attempt on Governor Whitmer should be a wakeup call for every votes. Just because he does his job doesn’t mean that he’s doing a person a favour.

Saturday

  • I’m curious to see what the inside of an opened Casino looks like. But, not curious enough to risk my health
  • As David Garlick responded, “the kids are alright”. I’m impressed that these boys take on a dress code by wearing skirts to school.

Blog Posts on
doug … off the record

My daily contributions to this blog are linked below. If you’re looking for a week in review for doug–off the record, you came to the right place.

#FollowFriday – October 9, 2020

https://wke.lt/w/s/h8cSZT

voicEd Radio

On this week’s show, Stephen Hurley and I chatted about back to school, masks, Jamboard, control, and apple streudel.

The show is available here: https://voiced.ca/podcast_episode_post/jammin-joy-and-apple-streudel/

  • Will Gourley – @WillGourley
  • Sheila Stewart – @SheilaSpeaking
  • EduGals – @EduGals
  • Amanda Potts – @Ahpotts
  • Debbie Donsky – @DebbieDonsky

Intro Song:

Dedicated to the month of October

All of the podcasts are archived here. The show is broadcast LIVE every Wednesday morning at 9:15 on voicEd Radio.

Technology Troubleshooting

I’m about to give up on this one.

I have an old Dell Mini netbooks that I used to dual boot two versions of Linux on. Granted, it’s over 10 years old but I hate to throw anything away if it still suits a purpose.

The purpose is really hindered right now. The computer won’t recognize the battery – proprietary Dell – and so won’t boot with the battery in place. It will boot and actually work without the battery in place but the design clearly was made with the battery working and balancing the machine.

So, I don’t really know. I’ve done a lot of searching and the best solution is to buy a new battery. It’s hard to justify for a machine of this age.

Video of the Week

A bit of a fascinating science lesson.

Photo of the Week

Part of the renovation around here meant getting rid of the green blinds so out onto the patio they went. But, Jaimie was a little hesitant to let them go.


Thanks for reading.

Please join me daily for something new and, hopefully, interesting for you. I honestly and truthfully appreciate your few moments reading my thoughts. Time willing, this summary appears every Sunday afternoon.

Be safe.

dp

This blog post was originally posted at:

https://dougpete.wordpress.com/

If you find it anywhere else, it’s not original.