More of This and This

I came across a web page that's dedicated to one of those 'home makeovers', and I am impressed. I usually don't see much of an improvement in these things -- yes, its different, but a third of the time, I think the old one looked better than the new one. This time, though.... very nice. Wish I understood colors and decorating better.

Has anyone ever written fan fiction which is as good as the original? I'm betting not.

We were talking this morning about communications and schools. I told my wife that it continually irritates me that I can't fix the problem of communications -- I can't just make it better. How inept am I on this? This inept -- I can't even envision in my mind (where all problems are small and easily addressed) what problem I am trying to solve, and what a solution might look like. But parts of it, yeah -- for example: I want to be able to get a high level picture of what my child is studying at any given time, what the expectations are of the instructor, and how she's doing. (Pause for smirk as I contemplate how well the school does with that expectation). And I want the ability to talk to other parents, who likely have roughly the same expectations and desires about their children. I'm not looking for something magical. (Well, maybe I am.) What I want (insert hand wave here) is some structured way of reaching out to get information, to get reassurance that my kids doing okay, to get resources and support -- not necessarily from the school itself, but somewhere other than the people who make the textbooks, or a 1973 study at the University of Wisconsin about pre-school learning styles (I kid you not, thats the kind of thing half the teachers link to as their 'resources' for their web pages).

Yeah, I guess I AM looking for magic.

Its easy to mock the California legislative enviroment, and I certainly do, but every so often they come up with a law that you'd never think was even necessary, where it not for slime like Cheney and Chertoff. In this case, its 'no implantable RFID chips without your consent'. Course, this assumes that scurvy duo and their reprehensible minions would actually obey the law, which is damned unlikely. Tell me again why the Department of Justice doesn't work for the Judicial branch?