Four Things

My Fall Schedule

I put my schedule into Google Calendar last week.  It is the time of year to be mapping syllabi against the current calendar and getting weekly details into our family calendar so that me and Mrs. TANBI can head off as many SNAFUs as possible.  For years now all of my classes have been in the afternoon.  That's left over from when I built my schedule in anticipation of Gib5on being born.  The new COVID schedule doesn't change that, although the end of my class day is later than it has been historically.  I have my usual Fall semester: Technical Direction 1, Technical Direction 3, and PTM Professional Practice.  When I set it up, I elected for PPP to be full remote and for TD1 and TD3 to be hybrid.  In the last couple of days I have been second guessing that decision.  Part of me thinks TD1 should be full remote as well, and maybe TD3 should meet on my porch - I'll have to look at the enrollment, the class might actually be too big for that this year.  The semester is only 12 weeks this Fall.  The university decided that we would not come back for the two weeks after Thanksgiving and the school decided that all things being equal that time might be better put to use by expanding (the now fully remote) Playground to two weeks.  I guess my next step is to look at the 15 week syllabi and cut them to 12.  PPP and TD1 should accommodate that easily.  TD3 will be more of a challenge mostly because it will shorten all the project timelines.

Biking Angst

If you have been following you know I've been trying to get some physical activity by doing some riding.  I don't know why I would think this would be different, but the biking has found me some new things to be angsty about.  Mostly here I blame Facebook.  To try to stay informed I joined a Facebook group for owners of the brand of eBike I bought.  I thought it would be a good way to find out about the bike since I bought it on kind of a lark without knowing much about it.  The COVID crisis has apparently caused eBike sales to spike.  Probably one third of the posts in the group are people doing unboxing videos when they receive their bike.  Another third of the posts are people complaining about how long they have been waiting for their bike - keep in mind every one of these orders was a back order.  I guess it is possible that RAD is letting the order deliveries slip, but people had to know what they were getting into.  The remaining third of the posts are probably split evenly between people having a great time with their bike and people that have had some kind of unfixable mechanical problem.  It's that last bit that is my problem.  In high school I was a pretty competent bike mechanic, but the eBike is an order of magnitude more complicated with electronics and sensors and bike components way more complicated than I remember.  This has caused me a fair bit of pessimistic thinking around breaking down on the road or having something on the bike fail.  There's probably no reason for this, and knock wood everything is fine, but I am now and pretty much always have been angsty.

Back to Public School

PPS has decided to take a 9 week time out.  They were going to be back in person for those that had elected that option as soon as three weeks from now.  Then the teachers started to push a little and the board voted on going full remote for everyone for a little while so they can better be ready when they do come back.  The schools are basically on a trimester and everyone is now staying home through the first grading period.  That has people coming back to the building right around Thanksgiving.  I wouldn't be surprised to see them come to the same conclusion CMU did and decide to stay home from Thanksgiving to New Years, at which point coming in for two or three weeks in November will seem less reasonable.  The second grading period goes basically from Thanksgiving to Valentines Day.  So part of me wonders if really we're looking at a return to in person school well into the Spring.  That is quite a bit of extrapolation though.  I'm probably wrong.  I am glad they have decided to take the time out.  There was a news report on last night where they were showing some of the preparations that local schools are making and they just seem to be way, way too little.  In one part they were saying one district was limiting bus capacity to 12 and another district was holding to 60%.  The internet says 48 adults fit on a school bus.  60% of 48 is 28.8 so say 28.  The reporter didn't even question how 12 and 28 could both be safe.  I think that's pretty indicative of the whole issue.  Every district is on their own.  Today on the news I saw coverage of Marching Band practice at an area high school.  The director was on saying "We're doing everything we can to keep the kids safe."  No you're not.  They don't have to be there.

The Latest Binge

I just finished watching The Girlfriend Experience on Starz.  We paid for Starz so we could watch the latest season of Outlander and since we finished that I have been looking for things to justify the subscription.  (Side note: did you know there's a straight line from DS9 to BSG to Outlander?)  So I was combing through the available series and fell on The Girlfriend Experience.  I should start off with that it is a little more porny than I was probably looking for.  It makes sense based on the content, but some of what they chose to depict was a little surprising.  Season three even starts to carry a new opening placard.  The show is shot really beautifully.  I could not help but notice that the locations they chose and the way they decided to shoot them were really impressive.  Another quirky element is that the three seasons are three different stories.  In and of itself that isn't too odd, but the first story and the third story don't really come to a conclusion.  They just sort of end with all kinds of unresolved plot lines.  I guess there's something to be said for less conventional story telling and maybe I don't need to have everything tied up in a bow but for me, at least, it was disappointing.  Also, the first season was really about the ins and outs of the business.  Season two made those details much more of a sideline, and season three shifted the narrative to political intrigue centering around one of the customers.  In some ways it really comes off as three different shows.