Runestone Academy at SIGCSE 2023. If you are in Toronto for the Technical Symposium, please stop by and say hello!

I’m happy to say that we received good news from the IRS in the mail. Runestone Academy is officially approved as a public charity under section 501©(3) !

Watching Minnesota United on a snowy field in mostly white kit does not make for great TV viewing! ⚽️

Having additional insulation blown into the attic today… I can hear them walking over my head. I wonder how often they misstep and come through the ceiling.

Engineering 📷

Lots of cool engineering in my life, but not always so photogenic. I really enjoyed this visit to the Vicksburg National Military park to see the USS Cairo. One of seven shallow-draft City Class river ironclads. So many interesting engineering problems to solve!

Tile 📷

Our bathroom remodel is finished. The new tile looks great. Much better than the giant unused bathtub that used to take up this space.

Zip 📷

A lovely night for some sous vide steaks. A ziploc works almost as good as a vacu-seal bag. Seemed like a good entry for the micro.blog march photo challenge.

Solitude 📷

When it is cold and the dead of winter and you are at your lake cabin and nobody else is around…

Weather 📷 This is taken from my patio in Indio CA. The mountains in the background are usually tan not covered in snow. In fact we are looking directly at Joshua Tree National Park which closed due to bad weather. About an hour before I took this picture we could not even see the mountains.

Secure 📷

Another big day of home improvement DIY… New ceiling fan in the bedroom and new LED lights for the guest bathroom. 100% LED compliant now.

We were so tired of waiting for hot water to get to our shower. Running a recirculating line would be very expensive. But then we found this: Pressure Differential Recirc Pump. It took me a half hour to install and now we have instant hot water.

Some of the coolest clouds ever in the desert.

Landing in Palm Springs. we dodged a late winter storm due to hit Minnesota tomorrow. Great to see friends and family for a few days.

Very excited today, we just booked an Antarctic expedition cruise for December.

Got to see the Loons (MNUFC) in preseason action against the New York Red Bulls this afternoon here in the Coachella Valley.

Today the mens club event was very fun. The obstacles on the course were a great mid season reminder that I just play for fun.

The first hole there was a tractor parked right next to what we locally refer to as Gilligan’s Island. The tractor was right where I like to hit it, so of course I started out with a bang!

Number 11 we had to tee off in the trees and shoot over another tree to get on the green.

Number 15 the tractor was parked in front of the green. Its hard enough to chip onto that hole without the obstacle.

On the first hole we had to putt with a hockey stick! Happy Gilmore!!It was hilarious nobody knew how hard to hit it with a stick.

Some of the other holes had hose or rakes or other obstructions laid out in front of the green. Not to mention that the pin placements were diabolical! Right on the edge of the green by the water, right on top of a hill. A couple of the tee boxes were moved into the waste bunker areas near the tees.

My partner and I ended up tied for 2nd, so we even won a couple of bucks in pro shop cash.

Making ribs for our friends tonight. Two more hours until they are done. But what else are you going to do on a Sunday night in an over 55 community of active adults? 🤷🏼‍♂️

Today’s NYT Sunday crossword theme was so fun. Favorite clue: “You there, holding the Quattro razor! Scram!” - Schick hog go! And thats only one layer of the fun.

I think ChatGPT is my new goto search engine… Me: “explain the difference between propane and natural gas” ChatGPT: - A very good answer Me: “explain …. as though I am a highly educated person” ChatGPT: a more nuanced and better and better answer than before

I do try to have empathy for all of you all southerners, but as a northerner, a little freezing weather is just life. I came back to Minnesota (from southern CA) for Christmas and a hottub pump gasket had a leak… almost no water in the hot tub and what was there was frozen solid

Also, the mountains were just stunningly beautiful with new snow added overnight. Nothing beats playing golf in shorts and seeing snow on the mountains just miles away.

I think this is as close as I’ve ever come to a hole in one! The ball is on the opposite side of the cup from where I teed off so I don’t know how it did not go in the hole!!

And yes, I made the putt for a two.

I just realized how inconsistent I am… During the board of regents meeting I strongly advocated for faculty. But with my developer hat on, I have a different reaction when they ask for some feature to save them time because they are too busy to do it the way I designed it. Maybe an area of personal growth.

Lets say you are a teacher, and you know that when you are teaching there are 1000 other classes across the world learning the same material. How could you capitalize on that? Would you want your students to interact? If so, what would that look like to you and your students?