Friday 12 June 2009 at 3:57 pm
In case you haven't been following my Fiance's blog you may of noticed that he got Lasik eye surgery done. The procedure itself doesn't take too long, but there is a lot of waiting before hand. The clinic he went to is located at a very California style outdoor mall. It tries to be very chic and outdoorsy complete with valet parking. The developers did not take into account that Portland is very overcast and rainy for three quarters of the year. We noticed yellow umbrellas in bins free for customer use.
Back to topic. I dragged my laptop to the nearby coffee shop in the Borders bookstore to do a little programming on the game I am working on and maybe a little web surfing. Most of the independent coffee shops in Portland have free wifi. I know Starbucks doesn't so that was out. I figured if it was a dollar or two I would pay for it and hop on. Six bucks for an hour. Seriously?
Wednesday 10 June 2009 at 11:14 am
About a month ago I was hired on at Mad Science as an after school instructor. Mad Science is a company which provides science based after school classes, in classroom workshops, and birthday parties to elementary students. The objective is more focused on getting and keeping kids interested in science as well as teaching them some content.
Being a Mad Scientist I needed to create an alter ego, my Mad Scientist name. Pulling on a geology pun I coined myself Professor Gneiss (pronounced "nice"). The joke is a little bit above most the students, but the kindergartners just adore my name.
My first season with after school classes has finished. It was trying at times with one of my classess. Everyone seemed to be friends, so if students were getting too chatty or disruptive relocation wouldn't resolve anything. Being after school class I do expect things to be a bit more chaotic.
Apparently I was impressive enough to be asked to conduct birthday parties over the summer. I did my first in class workshop with a class of 30 kindergartners at a charter school. Anecdotal reports from my coworkers is that the worst students seem to come from private and charter schools, and I was told that this school was "a tough one." Being kindergarten also had me worry; I've never delt with that many form that age group before. to top it off the teacher was also going to be in the classroom. I will be judged!
They were very well behaved, better behaved than either of my after school classes. I was also very impressed with how well they remembered the key concepts I was teaching: white light is made up of all the color lights, things that glow is called fluorescence, and the colors we see are the color light that thing doesn't like.
Saturday 30 May 2009 at 01:11 am
Been in a slump, despite having a bit to talk about. I am a Mad Scientist now after all and working on a couple of programming project. I just need to sit down and start talking about stuff!
