Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Watching the news this week has been both stunning and humbling. A lot of my colleagues ask me about weather related phenomena and the hurricane was no exception. When it became clear that New Orleans was under the gun and then the storm's strength exploded out int he Gulf I told everyone that New Orleans woudl cease to be a city. Right now, that's happening. They can't stop the flooding nor will they be able to before the lake and the river heights reach some sort of equilibrium with the water in the city. No electricity, no water, no sewer, sporatic law enforcement and lots and lots of dead prople. This has happened before in our nation's history. The Galvaston hurricane did basically the same thing and now Galvaston is little more than a quaint tourist attraction. It'll take years to clean this up and I expect most of the displaced, with nothing left to tie them to the region, will find other places to live and work.

I also predicted gas would hit $3 per gallon this summer. I was right though not in the way expected. Some analysts are predicting $4 per gallon before the supply crunch eases. The hybrid purchase looks better all the time. So does riding my bike. I bet I could drive to Atlanta and sell my hybrid for $20K today if I wanted to. Maybe get a dealer to trade straight across for a tricked out Element. The AJC is reporting that Altanta could face gas shortages this weekend and beyond. The SUV is the Altanta area "state insect" as it were. They're everywhere down here and my guess is that there's not near enough gas to run them all. The thought of Atlanta and scarcity in anything makes me glad I live outside of the metro area and within 2 miles of my workplace.

Anyways, my prayers go out to those in the Big Wet: Louisianna, Mississippi and Alabama.

Thanks for Reading

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

Well, the first week has come and gone and I have to say that I am amazed at how slow some of my PHYS1111 students are in lab. My workshop group (lecture and lab combined) took nearly five hours to do what groups in years past have done in three to three and a half. They're way behind and they don't seem to realize that I'm serious about moving forward whether they're ready or not. Argh! My PHYS2211 students seem to be really on the ball thogh so it seems to balance. In PHSC1011-Physical Science I've done away with the textbook as an experiment. The book costs about $100 and seems to be pretty darn iffy in terms of what it teaches so I've decided to do a lot of web-based research type reading assignments. I'm not sure if the students will do the readings but I'm not sure they really did them out of the text last year. I'll be very interested to see how it goes.

I had a couple of really good rides over the weekend. I got together with the "On Your Left" group on Sunday to ride the Silver Comet Trial. It was pretty darn awesome, especially after the 15 mile mark. Beautiful scenery and not a whole lot of traffic, especially out near Rockmart. I highly recommend the trail and I'm looking forward to it being finished so a person could ride all the way from Atlanta to Birmingham; something I'd like to do when I get the chance. Maybe ride back the next day as well. This week will consist of more climbing work to try to get my legs ready for the hard stuff. The weather was supposed to break and give us a little relief but the day a cold front is going to move through keeps getting pushed back so now we're not likely to get any break from the oven that is Georgia until Friday night at the earliest. So I guess I'll continue doing rides that leave me soaked in sweat and wrung out for the two hours afterwards. It beats trying to ride in hurricane conditions however.

Thanks for Reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Friday, August 19, 2005

Wow. So the storm arrived last night at 6:50 pm. Huge amounts of rain, strong winds and, most of all, amazing amounts of lightning. We lost power within minutes of the main storm hitting as lightning hit a tree three houses down, blew it apart, knocked out the power and crushed a neighbor's truck. We did GCF in the dark with candles for most of the evening. The power crews got power back to our house at 10:15 pm or so which was good since the humidity inside the house was reaching nearly unbearable levels. Fortunately dinner was cooked by the time the power went out so we were able to eat. Also, fortunately, the pecan tree had already fallen and had been removed in our yard or it might have been the one hit.

Training took a major step forward this week as the average speeds for my rides jumped about 0.5 mph. I'm not back to pre-crash levels yet but I may be before too long. The big thing I need to do is continue to work on my climbing. I'm able to hold speed on the shallow 3-4% climbs right now but anything steeper than that saps my legs pretty quickly. I'll be missing the Augusta Georgia Cup race this weekend. I did well in the Omnium last year and so I'll pretty bummed about not being able to compete there this year. I'm not sure if I'll make it back to racing before the season ends but we'll see.

Anyways, I hope you have a great weekend. Thanks for Reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Saturday, August 13, 2005

Well, this is the weekend before classes start. Last week is what I call "faculty back" week where we meet as a faculty to take care of some business and to register the students who waited until the very, very last minute to get their classes. The faculty stuff was interesting as I'm in a position of faculty leadership. During our Executive Committee meeting, of which I'm a part as Faculty Senate parlimentarian, our College President announced his resignation, effective Sept 16. Nice. Here we are in the middle of getting ready for our reaccreditation visit and in the middle of applying to become a two year college with four year programs and he up and leaves at about the worst time imaginable. He said that there were family issues involved and you've gotta take care of those things but I can't imagine that the timing could be worse. So, on Thursday I find out I'm being nominated to serve on the search committee. I'm not sure that I'll be selected but we'll see. Quite frankly I'm hoping that the Chancellor chooses someone else from the faculty but if not I'll do my best to make a valuable contribution.

I did see a few DOA students but nothing too memorable except one. I was giving a presentation of how to get prepared for college and how to study and about halfway through my 20 minute presentation I look over and this young man is asleep on the desk. Now there are about 8 students in the room and I'm trying to be pretty interactive so this guy really has to think that he's immune to what I'm saying about faculty failing students at college if the students don't come to class, pay attention and do their work. I just smiled and remembered how good a teacher expereince can be. Most mornings last week I spent the student orientation time with the parents trying to clue them in how just exactly how different college is from high school. I gave them a pretty unvarnished version of things. There were a lot of worried moms and grim dads at times but that's understandable. Most parents aren't used to having someone talk to them about the possibility of their child failing. By the end of the presentation they seemed to understand that they have to have realistic expectations about the college experience.

Today I rode a metric century at 21 mph. I'm still not climbing really well but next week I'm going to start targeting that aspect of my training. I did my first loop up Hog Mt. and absolutely died on the climb. It was after about 30 miles of rollers so I didn't expect to have a lot of pep in the legs but they wilted like two day old lettuce under the heat lamps at McDonald's as soon as I hit the second part of the mile long climb. Lots of work to do before Six Gap.

Thanks for Reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Friday, August 05, 2005

DOA

A warning to all who read this (which I think is about eight people with nothing better to do): this is going to say uncomplimentary things about a group of people. So if you don't want to read about my amusement and bemusement about this group, please clicky to the left to go to a blog that's much more uplifting.

So yesterday is our last "summer" preregistration period at the college. We have had three out of four of these things to let high school students come in and get their classes so that the week prior to school starting is a lot less hectic for both them and us. The problem, of course, is that we've already registered about 3100 students so everyone who is involved in putting this on knows this is going to be a pretty tough day. ("No, you can't have four classes from 9-1 on MWF, those filled two months ago but we do have a class at 9 pm to midnight in our hole in the wall off-campus site in the middle of nowhere Georgia...")

New for this year is an set of orientation sessions to help the students and their parents get a sense of what college is going to be like before they register in hopes of getting the families to take things a bit more seriously. My role in this? I'm supposed to speak to the parents about how college is different than high school and how they can support their child and help them do better. We do similar session for the students but what 18-year old ever listened to someone who told them to think about something.

So, I'm down at the Fine Arts auditorium a bit early so that I can hear what is said before we divide the students from their parents for a good part of the rest of the day. As we're dividing the students up the two girls behind me keep talking while the Director of Enrollment Services is telling everyone about who needs to go where. Twice they miss their announcement to go and I have to spur them along. Then, as we are wrapping up, this blonde girl gets up out of her seat, walks almost to the front of the auditorium and says, "I have a pink dot on my folder. You didn't call those did you?" Actually, they had been the second group called and she had missed it. It was everything I could do to keep from laughing at loud. Not just what she said but the way she said it. Just absolutely clueless. If ever a stereotype was met, these three girls where doing everyhtin they could to make sure they reinforced theirs.

As I was telling my wife the story last night I came up with a term for the blonde, the two students who I had to help and a couple of students we saw later on: DOA. Now you might think that means "Dead on Arrival" which is probably true but actually I've decided that it means, "Dumb on Arrival". Now I know that it's probably very mean to say that but come on. The day is young and the first important instruction is being given and you can't follow it? How's college going to go for these students? Seriously, the two girls behind me only seemed to be able to think about getting the easiest classes they could and how "they" didn't want to do this or that or whatever (usually referring to taking required courses they might not like). No sense of impending opportunity or challenge to met or anything like that. Short of a couple of finger snaps and head tosses they communicated in every way possible that this whole scene was way too lame for them to take an interest in.

I had a couple of DOAs later in the day at registration who coun't read their academic summaries and came into my registration room for non-learning support students when they were clearly marked learning support. From what I could tell, the couple had done just about everything possible to circumvent the system that had put into place to help them succeed so that they didn't have to sit in separate rooms. When I asked twice if they were math/science students with no learning support requirements they answered in the affirmative both times. DOA.

The terrible thing is that for most students I'll do everything I can to help them be successful but for students like this it's like a switch gets flipped inside of me and I want to just walk away. The biggest thing I think is that I just don't believe they can be successful in a college environment. Honestly, I give the five students I'm talking about one semester here at Gordon; two if they're especially stubborn or clueless. A professor is going to say they need to read 20 pages in their text and they're either not going to hear the assignment or they're going to say, "Whatever." Then, when they're expected to know something about what they read they'll be clueless and then not know what to do (and probably blame the professor form being "mean") and fail the assessment instrument. You may say, "Who cares, they're only hurting themselves." The problem is that we're full up. They're taking up seats non-DOA students could have an opportunity to get. Secondly, they're wasting our taxpayer dollars and probably HOPE scholarship dollars. It's pathetic. I'm all for giving every person the opportunity to better themselves through education but the person actually has to think of it as an opportunity. GOSH!

Anyways, I have a day and a weekend to recover and chuckle over it before we start back. Some cycling, some cleaning, some yardwork, some reading, some R&R and some prep in the office. All to come on this action-filled weekend.

Thanks for reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

Exhausted

Did a 50 mile on the road ride today and just about didn't make it. I think my body is pretty close to wiped out. I've got one more 50 mile day which I'll do on the rollers tomorrow and then I'll do a couple of lower milage, easy spin rest days. With any luck, my body will bounce back nicely in time for the Covington Century. I don't think I'm going to do 100 miles but 75 is certainly within the realm of possibility. Each day during this stretch I've been burning at least 1500 Calories on my ride so I'll end up totaling about 16000 total Calories burned for the whole ten day period just in terms of cycling. That's 4 pounds of body weight so hopefully I've kept my mouth/stomach in check and managed to lose about half of that.

I found out that the Six Gap Century will actually be a month earlier than I had thought so I have about 7 weeks to find some climbing legs. I know that I had a pair around here somewhere but I can quite remember where I stashed them. Maybe they'll be found on one of the hilltops around here somewhere. It wouldn't hurt to drop another 5-8 pounds either so we'll see if I can put those in place of my climbing legs when I find them. Also, I got some good news about my TT bike today. The frame isn't in too good of shape but All3Sports has a frame just like mine they've been trying to get rid of and they may well be willing to make me a deal. That would sure be nice since they think theey could do a lot better than Cedrvelo's crash replacement price. We'll see how it goes. Given my experience with them so far, I'd have to rate them the second or third best bike shop I've dealt with to date. Nate, who owns Bike Tech in Macon, still takes the cake by far but these guys certainly dealt with my buddy Joseph in a really good way and have treated me with a lot of respect and helpfulness so far. So I would give them the big thumbs up/GoodBikeKeeping Seal of Approval.

Well, it's nap time and I'm hoping to get a good, solid one in so I'll sign off now...

Thanks for Reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |