Summa semestah is ova.

I am now officially 60% of the way through my Master's program. I've taken classes on instructional design, educational psychology, educational use of the internet and how to rip apart research study reports. Summer sememter was all using computer programs; Flash, Fireworks, Dreamweaver and Photoshop. It was a lot of fun, and a lot of frustration, and I learned a lot of things. Both of the classes had final projects that were a combination of creativity and use of the programs. In the class we learned to use Macromedia Flash I made a Flash introduction for my personal web page. If you got to this page through http://www.srossi.net/, then you've already seen it. If you came straight to laduanta.blogspot.com, then it'll be new for you;

The midterm for the same class was to do an advertisement for anything we wanted to, and I built on a joke website I did years ago - and advertisement for our property up in Duchesne;

My final project for the other class was to develop a curricular based web site. Here is the picture from the front page of the site, just click on it to see the whole site.

Overall, I'm kind of proud of these things I produced. I've been amazed at how much I learned over the last year, and how relatively easy it was; I expected it to be a lot harder. What I am afraid of is that the first year is all the easy(er) stuff, and that it's going to get really hard for the last 2 semesters. Wish me luck, I hope I survive. But at least I get the next 3 weeks off - no college, no school. Yippee!

Fire trucks and sauna baths.

I don't know about all fire trucks, but the one I pulled up next to today had it's exhaust in a really inconvenient place. Lined up perfectly with the driver's door in Old Blue, just below the window line. If Old Blue had air conditioning it would have been different. But since the air doesn't work I was driving with the windows down. The fire truck was in the left turn lane and when the light turned green for it, I was left there at the light sucking his exhaust as he took off. Now, I've driven in my friend Adele's 1974 MGB with the bad exhaust where even with the top down you're tempted to breathe through a Camel Filterless just to get some clean air. It wasn't the toxic fumes that got me, it was the 1000 F air slamming into my arm and up to my face that nearly killed me. Not like it's not hot enough out there as it is, that extra blast just turned my car into a sauna bath for 10 minutes. At least the skin grafts on my arm haven't been too painful....

Qwest and the one day rule.

Fun hour here folks. I tried to call the company making the welcome mats for the high school and found out my cell phone (and only phone) had been shut off. I was automatically forwarded to their collection department. Now, a few months ago I had renewed with a 2 year contract and was given $150 credit. This month was the first time in a few months that I actually owed something, on the 12th I was notified that I owed $20. I get paid once a month, so I was just going to pay it at the end of the month, like I always have. Not so much this time. Seems that over the months that I've had the credit Qwest found out that since cell phones are luxuries, they are allowed to shut off your service for being one (1) {uno} [a single] day late. And even if it's for a mere $20. I explained all this to the service rep, trying to remain calm since it really wasn't his fault. He was sympathetic, to the point of transferring me to the accounts department so I could have my due date changed to after the 1st. After being on hold for about 5 or 6 minutes I lost the connection and was basically hung up on. So I called back. Got another guy and told him my whole story again, adding in the fact that I've had the same phone number for 15 years and been paying on it faithfully for that long and that I thought it was absurd they would shut off my phone for being one day late. He was sympathetic too, got my phone back on without having to pay the $20 right now (I told him I wouldn't have the money until I got paid at the end of the month). The only problem is that now I have to go down to the Qwest store tomorrow and get them to change my due date to the 3rd, because if I don't I will have to either go through this every month or start paying my bill 26 days in advance. I tell ya, I love big corporations.

Stop the insanity

I'm at the store yesterday, drove the Battlecruiser there. As I was putting my stuff in the car some guy started talking to me about the car. Turns out he has a 1970 Mercury Grand Marquis 2 door that he's selling. $1,500 bucks. No, I didn't buy it. Not that I wouldn't have if I had $1,500 in the bank, but since I had to borrow the last $500 to get the Battlecruiser, there is no way I could have (or even should have) scraped up the money for this one. So I just politely said no thanks and backed away slowly, got into my car and left. I may be an addict, but I'm not going to hock everything for a car fix.

Goin' ta Boston

I didn't think I was going to make it back to Boston for the family reunion this year, but it looks like I am. I haven't been east of Denver in more than 15 years, but this year is a bit special. My great-aunt is turning 100 this year. My little brother and his wife have been planning on going all along, but my older brother and I were not quite sure. We talked about it a little bit over the weekend, found out from our little bro' that it wasn't going to be too expensive so we were debating on going or not. I'll have to use all of my personal days from school, and I hate having a substitute, it's usually more work that it's worth, which is why I still have 88% of my sick days left. But big bro' called dad, told him we were thinking of going and he was quite excited about it, said it would mean a lot to our great-aunt, and fun for him. So we decided damn the torpedos and full speed ahead, we're going. It's not for a while, and as usual you'll have to wait until I'm back to know I've gone, but I'll bring some good pictures, and hopefully a few good stories.