Coffee heat rising

w00t! Over the Blackboard Wall and Free at Last with WordPress!

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Wow! This is too good to be true! With the English 101 students out the door, I thought I’d take a few hours to at least get a start on preparing my wildcat WordPress website for the fall semester. This would mean discarding the summer session’s blog comments and replies (hundreds and hundreds of them!), updating or rewriting out-of-date posts, and uploading all new course materials.

I sat down one evening earlier this week to start what I expected to be the usual long and tedious process. Within an hour or two, I was done with everything except posting the fall syllabus, calendar, and assignments and rebuilding the grade sheet.

Whoa! That defies belief.

In Blackboard, you can expect to spend hours—many hours!—on converting a previous semester’s course for the new semester. Some of these eye-glazing chores are incredibly time-consuming. I would normally figure two to four days to convert each course.

But thanks to the vastly simpler and cleaner software that is WordPress, the do-it-yourself CMS sites I built convert quickly and easily.

Unload the blog comments (in which students deposited their essay drafts and then wrote comments on each others’ drafts):

Manage Comments > Select All > Move to Trash

Remove the posted 5-week modules:

Posts > Categories > Five-week Modules > Filter
Select Post > Quickedit > “Unpublish” x 5

The modules for the 16-week course were already scheduled, so I didn’t have to fool with setting the dates for those to go live.

Reset the dates for Group Assignments:

Posts > Categories > Group Assignments > Filter
Quick edit > Date > Update x 12

Beside myself with joy! No sitting there staring at the damn system grinding away, no tooth-clenching frustration, no crashes, no error messages…Wordpress just works! It works fast and efficiently, unlike the detestable Blackboard.

Speaking of the which, this charming little message came in today from the school’s Blackboard administrator:

FYI

If you are copying a previous course into your new course shell, copy the course first and then modify it. If you delete all content buttons from the new course shell you will lose the entry point to the course and will be unable to access it. Another alternative is to modify the new course shell, but DO NOT delete the “Announcement Button”. Leave the Announcement Button as your Entry Point. Please let me know if you have any questions.

You know…I want to teach; I don’t want to do an IT tech’s work. That notice up there: that is just the first in a flurry of similarly inscrutable and frustrating warnings and announcements that will come peppering down on us over the next two or three weeks.

WordPress doesn’t try to turn writers or teachers into something they’re not. WordPress lets you teach. Or write, as most of us prefer. Just teach. Just write.

This evening I finished off the conversion for Fall 2011. Started around 5:30 or so. By 7:00 p.m. I was done. DONE! That’s COMPLETELY FINISHED! With zero, nought, NO MORE fiddling around to have to do. The course is up and ready to go for the fall students.

This is so amazing.

Even more pleasing, one of the summer students remarked in passing that she really liked having the course materials and projects online through WordPress—that it was a lot easier than trying to work in Blackboard.

I should hire myself out to faculty who’d like to break free from Blackboard. I wonder what people would pay to get out from underneath that thing?

Could I persuade you to hire me to build something like this for you?

Life before Lemon Laws

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Sooo… After extracting some success from Adsense by lacing a post with a high-ranking keyword, I thought I’d try again, this time with the term “lemon law.” That, apparently, is hot just now.

As I was wondering how to decoct a few not-too-eyeglazing words on the subject, it occurred to me that I actually have a real lemon-law story, one that casts some light on why legislators came up with lemon rules in the first place.

Back in the Dark Ages, something over four decades ago, my then young husband and I were wedded by gaslight. We took up residence in an apartment that we furnished with the bribe my father gave the groom for eloping with me, thereby cutting short my mother’s grand plans for an elaborate wedding ceremony and reception. We each brought various items to the marriage, and one of them was a 1967 Ford Fairlane. It had been my parents’ graduation gift to me.

It was a very pretty car, with a custom two-tone paint job—a white top and turquoise body—and a swell tan fake leather interior. This being the first car I’d ever owned, and brand-new, I was very proud of it.

Well.

It was a good thing my husband found the apartment that he did: directly behind a Ford dealership. Why? Because this fine vehicle soon proved the old adage that FORD stands for “Fix or Repair Daily.”

That was almost literally true. The damn thing spent more time in Ford’s repair shop than it did in our carport. Fortunately, I could walk back and forth from our apartment to the dealership, because I made that trek about every second or third day for the year and a half we lived there.

Whatever could go wrong with that piece of junk did go wrong. I eventually came to suspect the mechanics were deliberately breaking things—jimmying parts so they would crap out within a day or so after I drove the car home from its latest repair. “Piece of junk” is far too kind a word to describe the clunk.

The car was only a year or so old—we were married in December 1967—but by the time we moved out of the apartment, the paint was chalking and wearing away. One day when I waxed it with a mild liquid polish, it actually rubbed the paint off down to the metal!

Once we no longer lived within walking distance of the auto lot, we traded the junk in on a cute little Toyota Corona, which ran and ran and ran. The Toyota never gave us a moment’s trouble; never needed any care beyond the routine maintenance. And that, my friend, is the specific reason I haven’t bought an American car in years. Even though we’re told Ford and Chevrolet have cleaned up their acts, I still don’t trust them, almost half a century later: that’s how badly we were burned by Ford’s unsafe-at-any-speed lemon.

There were no lemon laws in those days. If you got a piece of junk…well, you just had a piece of junk. The car manufacturer and its dealer had your money, and they were under no obligation to do anything to fix or replace the junk. It wasn’t until 1975 that the U.S. Congress enacted the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, whose purpose was to force auto manufacturers to abide by their warranties and to explain warranty terms in plain English.

Over time, states enacted their own lemon laws. These vary from state to state. The Wisconsin lemon law, for example, doesn’t cover mopeds, semitrailers, or trailers designed for use in combination with a truck or truck tractor, nor does it cover previously owned vehicles. The Michigan lemon law and the Colorado lemon law do not cover motor homes, although Colorado apparently does cover leased vehicles. But California’s lemon law covers new motor vehicles including such items as the chassis cab of a motor home, or a demonstrator, a dealer-owned vehicle, or other rolling stock sold with a warranty, including some vehicles bought primarily for business purposes.

Georgia’s lemon law, like most, excludes used cars. However, laws in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico and New York do provide statutory used-car warranties.

The Better Business Bureau has a page listing all the state lemon laws, with links to detailed summaries of each, plus a link that allows you to file a complaint with the BBB about your junker. Edmunds describes the recourse you have (in some states) if you buy a defective used car.

Wish we’d had a lemon law when we owned that shiny new Fairlane—I’m sure we could have collected.

Images:

1967 Ford Fairlane. Bill Wrigley. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license.

Toyota Corona. Mytho88. GNU Free Documentation License.

The Markets of 2011: 2008 déjà vu?

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A few words from one of my financial managers…

The events of the past few weeks have unfolded in a most unflattering way for the financial markets.  Outside of gold and U.S. Treasuries, investments have lost a significant amount of value recently, giving back some of the gains garnered during the rebound of the last few years.  While today’s global stock market reaction today came on the heels of a downgrade to the United States credit rating from AAA to AA+ (negative outlook), the continuation of the market slide is more likely related to expectations about global economic growth, the impact of government belt-tightening, and lack of leadership from the world’s largest economy, than it is from a rating agency’s downgrade of the credit worthiness for the world’s reserve currency.

Investments typically have two components: income and appreciation.  For the last few years, the risk-free rate of return (typically defined as the three month U.S. Treasury) has been incredibly low, forcing investors to take some level of risk to obtain a reasonable level of income.  Currently, U.S. Treasury yields out to 10 years in maturity are producing a negative real rate (after inflation) of return, with no expectation of appreciation, since bonds mature at a predetermined value.  A situation like that is well outside the norm and cannot continue indefinitely.

The last few years have been some of the most challenging times I’ve experienced as an investment manager, and I know that it is troubling to many investors that are not immersed in the investment business on a day-to-day basis.  Over the years we have made considerable efforts to measure the investment needs of our clientele, and have deployed client assets in a manner consistent with our understanding of those goals and objectives.  With objectives ranging from the extremes of low-risk to high-return, each objective requires periodic portfolio adjustments specific to each objective to maintain the appropriate longer-term risk/reward profile.

To that point, while we believe that 2011 will not go the way of 2008, there may be continued market turbulence to contend with in the short run.  We focus on a three- to five-year investment horizon, because the portfolios we manage have objectives based on income, growth, or a combination of the two, but not liquidation based on short-term developments.  We have, and will continue to make adjustments to improve the long-term position of the portfolios we manage with respect to our client’s specific longer-term investment objectives.

Steve Taddie
Managing Member
Stellar Capital Management
Phoenix, Arizona
August 8, 2011

Published by permission.

 

Songs of the Times

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So I’m driving home from campus, a-listenin’ to the radio. Got a fistful of errands to run before I can come to light back at the Funny Farm, so I need the radio to keep me company for a while. Seemed like half the day that NPR had been moaning on while Rome burned (again!).

Enough, already, of the stürm und drang! How much of this can any one human being listen to without losing its mind? A click of the button sent the radio dial surfing across the airwaves to the cowboys. The Cistern (that’s “City Western”) station tuned in just in time for the start of this:

And you thought cowboys have no sense of humor?

Y’all come over for some of that home-made wine, y’hear? We’ll be needing it…

Saturday Night Wipe-out

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OproverbialMG am i whipped.

Didn’t do much today but am just about wiped out with exhaustion. Compiled the Best of Money Carnival and scheduled it, but it was halfway done before this. Went with M’hijito to return the redundant dog crate to Walmart (His Maleness to haul the damn thing), there to collect a $90 refund. Ran over to Ace to pick up some new Danish oil with which to repair the puppy scratches on the kitchen cabinetry; got it home before I realized it was “walnut” stained; drove back through the heat-crazed traffic to get the “golden oak” flavor. Did the laundry, including the sheets. Fooled with the pool some more. Did battle with a difficult student who deserves a C-minus, is getting a B, and believes she should have an A.

Never did get around to cleaning house: too hot to function. Decided to put the puppy crate in a cooler part of the house, since the area where I’d like to locate Doggy Central is significantly warmer than any other rooms. Put the Navajo rug back on the wall where Pup tried to pull it down. Watered plants.

Finished off the day responding to a student who got a zero on the last paper (for not having done the assignment in spite having been warned at the draft stage) and threatened to go to the chair. Forthwith this development was topped off with the discovery that the washer overflowed and flooded the garage. Just spent a half-hour sweeping a lake down the driveway.

More gawdawful pretend news on the idiot box now, at 10:00 p.m.

Am I the only human in the country who’s bored stupid with the “what does the S&P credit downgrade mean for YOU?” pretend-news stories?

The answer:

Nothing.

There’s not a damn thing any of us can do about it.

• Are we going to lose our shirts? Not likely: our shirts are already lost. You can’t lose a shirt you don’t have anymore.

• Are we going to be unemployed? Probably; earlier this year a third of Americans were under- or unemployed. More recent data report that fewer than half of adult African-American men are employed, and that by 2018, less than half of adult white men will be employed; 22 million to 23 million people are under-employed or unemployed. Can we get any more unemployed than we are? Does anyone care?

• So our credit-card interest is going to go up? This matters to people who can’t afford to charge anything on credit cards in the first place?

• Our variable-rate mortgages are going up? How many more houses will go into foreclosure? Does this change things one way or the other? Real estate is already so profoundly trashed that a few more hundred thousand foreclosures will mean nothing.

• Our student loan interest is going up? Will this make any difference to those of us who are going back to school because we can’t get work? Will it change the plans of college kids who couldn’t get jobs if they tried?

Speaking of going back to school to retool for new work that represents underemployment, I heard from a client who’s a medical doctor in response to my questions to him about medical transcription as a possible new income generator.

He said that indeed a medical transcriptionist can make a decent wage. And while it’s true some of the work is being offshored, most jobs are still here in the U.S. But, says he, “The job is tedious and low intellectual in my opinion. You and Tina are way overqualified for the job. I hope you can find a better option to use your talents.”

So true. However, there seem to be no better options. Tina’s already waiting tables two or three evenings a week, after she gets off her full-time editing job. I’m a little old for that kind of strenuous work, though I suppose I could clean house, another trade that pays more than I’m earning at adjunct teaching. Exactly how “intellectual” it really is to teach people who think Arizona is a “Great Plans” state, Wisconsin is a Rocky Mountain state, and World War I happened in the 19th century remains to be seen. And as for tedious: dealing with people who don’t pay attention in class, refuse to address the assignment, and then threaten to complain to your boss when you flunk them…that defines tedious.

If I can earn the same or more transcribing doctors’ case notes, actually get paid for all the hours I work, engineer an income all 12 months of the year, and not have to put up with a lot of bullshit, I’ll take a new form of unintellectual tedium.

Looks like we may have found JackDaniels’s real name: as he was clambering around the backyard yesterday it struck me that his name is Charley.

Asked M’hijito about that idea. He seemed to like it; said he wasn’t crazy about “Jack” because it’s too close to “Jake,” the name of his childhood pet.

So Charley he is. For the time being.

Hounds of the Baskervilles

 

Signs of the Times…

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Walking the dog this morning, I passed a neighbor’s driveway where a car displayed a political bumper sticker. The driver’s candidate for public office?

NO ONE

Yup.