Thursday, November 04, 2010

Thematic Photographic: Electric

Ok, here are a couple of picture that I thought of after I read what the theme was for this week.  I took these at Sugarhouse Park, just a couple block from my house.  Here you can not only see the lighting, but you can see the rain coming down over Olympus Cove.  It wasn’t raining at all where I was.

The next two are pictures of my livingroom, taken with nothing but the light from the streetlamp right at my driveway.  The first one was when they had an incandescent lamp on the pole, I took the second one tonight.  A couple weeks ago I noticed the difference in the light that was coming through my front window.  Seems the replaced the old lamp out there with a new one.  I’m pretty sureI now have fluorescent ones up there now.  The second one appears to be daylight, but I assure you they were taken just minutes ago, sometime around 7:15 pm, well after sunset (6:21).  I’d been planning on posting about the light change, and lo and behold, Carmi gives me the in for it.

Check out Carmi’s Thematic Photographic series, if you haven’t already.

One more awesome characteristic about the building I teach in.

It never occurred to me before, but there is more than one power line coming into my school building.  I guess that’s understandable, considering the power upgrades it’s needed since it’s construction in 1975.  And maybe, since the subdivision had grown a lot since then too, it’s understandable that the power would be coming from two different grids.

But seriously, I’d expect different sections of the building to be on the different grids.  Or maybe the areas that needed the new wiring, like the computer labs and other technological additions.

Nope.  The two power sources seem to be interwoven throughout the building, as we found out when half the power went out this afternoon.

I didn’t even know about it, even though it happened in the middle of 3rd period.  I was using the projector and when I was done I went to turn on the 2 banks of lights that were off.  One went on, the other didn’t.  I just figured they were on the fritz, and was annoyed that I would have to put in a work order to get them fixed.  I figured it out when the office staff came around to tell us that the bells were out, and to just let our classes go when the time for lunch came.

When I went to lunch right after 3rd period, I discovered that we had had a power outage.  Well, half of one.  The lights were out in the cafeteria, but not in the hall that goes right by it.  One side of the faculty lunchroom was dark, the other side nice and bright.  All the lights in the faculty workroom were on, but the soda machines and one of the copiers were dead.  A third of the teachers had no computer, another third had no projector, the rest either had both or neither.

Total hit and miss.  But at least every room had some light, so we could all continue teaching, granted with a little adaptation to our lesson for some of us.

Until the power went completely out about 5 minutes before lunch was over.  Yup, deja vu all over again.  Fortunately this time it only lasted for about 15 minutes, just long enough to shorten 4th period a bit.

Well, I may not understand the why’s and whererfore’s of the electrical work in my building, but it sure made for an interesting day.

P.S. – This just became my post for Carmi’s Thematic Photographic, which you should be aware of by now.  And if not, you should go check it out here, which is where you’ll have to go if you want to understand why this belatedly became my entry for this week.

NOT a reason I keep on teaching.

No wonder she’s been absent for the last 2 weeks.

Wednesday, November 03, 2010

I know what I’m doing this weekend.

Putting new break pads on the Subaru.  That’s what.

Click here to see my corral of Fords (and one Subaru).

Tuesday, November 02, 2010

Sarcasm, cubed.

And I voted against the Ethics Amendment, because I truly believe that our Utah Legislators are the most honest, upstanding and uncorrupted politicians in the country, nay, in the WORLD.  (If I was 100% sure there was life on other planets, I would argue; in the universe.)

(P.S. – I really did vote, haven’t missed one since 1978.  It’s the rest that should be read dripping with sarcasm.)