There's always time for planks.

A surprise update to the last post (UW-Whitewater's Plan-It Purple vent):  I received a very unexpected phone call from UWW's catering services department yesterday.  The director was very apologetic that the grilled veggies were never added to the salad as intended.  He was very professional and seemed sincere, and I hope he didn't get in trouble!

I was really taken off guard by the call, because I hadn't yet sent (or even) finished the letter I was working on, and we did not fill out any surveys. I fully intended to communicate my disappointment to them but was having a hard time phrasing it the way I wanted to without coming across as "my 'feewings' were hurt and my special snowflake child was sad."  I forget about convenient tools like Google Alerts, which is how I assume they discovered my disappointment about the day. I appreciate that the individuals involved with the event cared enough to set up alerts to check for feedback and that they cared enough to call and apologize. I still believe it's a poorly conceived event that should be strictly optional, but I respect their professional integrity in trying to do the best job they can.

I feel somewhat better about it and am hoping that Dej will be able to open her mind up a bit and will fall in love with UWW, so she can fully enjoy her time there.  I will take her back before classes start to give her a tour, help her find all of her classes, figure out the parking, get her textbooks, etc., so we will have one more shot at a magical day together on campus.

 L finished her week at dance camp, and I'm absolutely heartbroken that I didn't get a video of her performance. They learned a very cool new dance, and my camera battery died about five seconds into it, and my uncooperative arthritic fingers just didn't move fast enough to change batteries and catch the performance. I can't believe I did that.

I did get some nice video of her singing the carnatic songs that they learned and performed, but I'm pretty sure she would kill me for posting that. I also have a cute picture of her sleeping in the back of the car on the way home from camp, but was already told that had to be removed. She is quite stingy about what I am allowed to post or say about her these days.  The joy of teens!

As you can see in the picture below, I was exhausted and looked/felt like hell that day. We went to our friends' annual garden party after her dance camp performance, and I'm horrified that I appeared at a party like that! A makeup touch up would have gone a long way.

I've been spending most of my time prepping for my fall classes, which are starting all too soon.  It's always good to get back to the students and the teaching, but I do not look forward to the return of grading!  A major part of my prep time is spent loading all of my course materials and setting up all of the necessary folders and due dates on D2L (Desire to Learn), which I use for all of my classes. It's very convenient to have everything online and available to the students, and since I run paperless classes, it supports that very well.  All of the students' homework is submitted through D2L and grades are returned that way.  It drives me CRAZY that we are still using so much paper in college classes when the technology available makes it very easy to be environmentally friendly and cut costs by eliminating paper and toner/printing expenses!

I've decided after several frustrating years of using D2L, which is much slower and clunkier than it should be, that I want to get a job there during my summer months.  It's a good example of software that is a great idea and is almost right, but it's not designed in a way that makes it efficient or friendly to use when loading course data.  This is really quite common with large IT projects where analysts and developers design the software based on lots of meetings with users, and logically it seems like it meets the needs. However, the reality of the situation is that there are countless little things--things that would be very simple to change from a coding perspective--that take much longer than they should, and they really slow down the process.  I find myself getting so frustrated every semester, with every class that I load, because I count all of the extra clicks and steps that I have to go through and resent the clunkiness of the process. It's a really good mental reminder for me as a developer, that what really matters in software design is that makes the user's job easier and more efficient, and determining exactly what that takes is incredibly challenging, may change on a dime and with each user, and requires frequent revisiting and refining. Often, it's the littlest things that make the most difference to users in the end and determines whether the users see the software as a valuable tool or a necessary evil.

It's very hard to be user of software when I don't have the ability to go in and change the code to work the way I want it to work. In many cases, I've written my own applications rather than use/purchase perfectly functional software, because I really like the ability to change and redesign as needed.  I want source code for everything!  I may be a control freak.