Category: Illinois

RIP, SCWF

March 13th, 2008 · · Illinois, Jaycees, Mount Vernon No comments - Tags: , , , , , , ,

The Sweetcorn and Watermelon Festival is no more. I am kind of sad to see it go since it has been around since I was a young child, but it is past time for a change.

The mere name conjures hokey inbreds having a hootenanny. Don’t get me wrong, we are a rural community. I appreciate a hootenanny as much as the next guy, but such an event doesn’t convey the best image for a community trying to grow and attract business/residents.

I’m not sure how well a Scarecrow Festival will change that perception, but at least our community members are making change.

I do see opportunity with the new version of the city’s fall festival. There are plans in the works for something in addition to what will already be going on. I won’t reveal it just yet, but it should be fun.

Are schools bribing kids to do the ISAT?

March 5th, 2008 · · Illinois, Legislation, Mount Vernon, School 6 comments - Tags: , , , , , ,

Recently I was made privy to the fact that at least JL Buford school is trying to raise money to buy “prizes” for a “raffle”. The trick in all of this is that the kids will be given “tickets” for the “raffle” based upon their participation in the ISAT.

I heard that Casey Jr. High is doing the same thing, but I didn’t see any letter from them.

So basically, funding is on the line thanks to “No Child Left Behind”, and the schools have resorted to bribing our children. This is truly a sad state of affairs for our school system.

How did we get here? I’m sure some will blame the NCLB act (teachers), and others will blame the educators (politicians). Personally, I would say it is a combination of those factors and us as parents.

We elected the politicians, we employ the teachers (indirectly), and we are the ultimate responsibility when it comes to the well-being and education of our kids. If little Jimmy isn’t keeping up with the rest of the class, help him. Talk to his teacher(s). Arrange tutoring. Whatever it takes!

Our children are our future. They will one day lead this country.

While I don’t approve of the outright bribery that local schools have resorted to, I do understand the pressure they are under to produce results or else. There are already no sports for our kids to play, what happens when more funding is cut?

District 80 is a business?

February 28th, 2008 · · Illinois, Jaycees, Mount Vernon, School One comment - Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

The Jaycees are having a Guitar Hero tournament March 1st for primarily kids. We have been planning and arranging this for a few weeks, and it has come together nicely.

We approached the school district about giving them a flier to send home with the kids so they and their parents are aware. This way the kids have something positive to do over the weekend instead of playing in the mud.

District 80 asked us this morning what the district was going to get from this distribution. Quite frankly, nothing. We are just trying to present something fun to do late on a Saturday. (Disclaimer: there is a $10 entry fee)

Upon learning that the district would not financially gain from this distribution, they declined to allow the distribution of our information.

I could understand if we were for-profit or stood to gain greatly from this venture, but we don’t. It’s not like we were asking for an endorsement nor advertisement in their newsletter. Just send this sheet, printed at our cost, home with the kids in their folder.

Every week there are several sheets sent home with my kids wanting money for something. Also, the school holds several funding projects every year that we are, of course, obliged to give money to and harass our friends and family.

Please bear the money-grubbing ways of District 80 in mind if you ever think about doing something positive for the kids to participate in and need to let them know about it.

US Senate Votes to Cloak Illegal Spying

February 12th, 2008 · · Illinois, Legislation, Technology 9 comments - Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Senate voted today to amend the FISA statutes and cover up the illegal wiretapping done by the GWB administration (clarification: this was not started by GWB, just expanded). The bill effectively grants immunity to the telecommunications companies who helped the government illegally spy on regular citizens’ internet traffic and phone calls. Surprisingly, our Illinois Senators voted no.
Yes, Dave, I know you’ll ask if I think spying on people who might be terrorists is needed. Yes, I do. I don’t think that watching everything that everyone does is legal nor right.

For anyone who happens across this article and doesn’t think that it is possible to monitor major traffic in real time, have a look at Narus’ products.

K/Ubuntu use by a college student

January 30th, 2008 · · Illinois, School, Technology One comment - Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

I’ve posted before about my conversion to a 100% Linux lifestyle. There were growing pains, but kernel and distribution updates have pretty much eliminated the issues I previously encountered.

This Fall (’07) I enrolled in the IT Specialist program at Rend Lake College. Yes, I know it’s only two years and whatever other jokes you want to make about it. Moving on, my two operating system classes (OS and WinXP Pro) have been 99.9% Win-centric (yes, I know that’s to be expected from the WinXP class, duh). Unfortunately, Introduction to Computers (don’t laugh, it’s required for the degree) was also Win-centric.

I understand the need for the Win OS to be covered, as it controls 90 – 98% of the desktop market (depending on where you get your information, and who you believe). What I don’t get is how Linux can be such a hindrance to all of these classes.

VMware offers free licenses. Microsoft’s VirtualMachine requires WinOS. The college only uses VirtualMachine to load XP so we can learn on it. This means that I can either load Win, or have to go into a computer lab to use a WinPC with VirtualMachine after hours to complete any homework that needs done on my “learning” virtual machine. I’ve spoken to a few instructors, and hopefully they will look at loading VMware so that the “learning” XP virtual machines can be more universal for people who use other operating systems.

The next complication is related to the CDs included in most of the books for my classes. They are designed to be run on Win-machines. That’s fine for 90% of students, but what about me or my family? Or the other 10% of people who don’t use Win? Shouldn’t we get to use these tools/aids as well? Maybe the publishers will offer a choice or the ability to use web-based resources for us some day.

Unfortunately, the world doesn’t subscribe to standards. RLC has a great site where you can login anytime and get an unofficial copy of your transcript. This is especially helpful when planning what classes to take. The site does not work at all with anything other than Internet Explorer though. Firefox on Win, Linux, BSD, or Mac cannot login to the site. Way to go. To be fair, BlackBoard does work fine though, and Cisco did not support Linux access to its site until early this winter, so RLC isn’t the only one lagging behind supporting more than one OS/browser.

Also, I cannot email reports, assignments, or anything from OpenOffice to my instructors without saving it in an Office Word/Excel/etc. format that usually distorts the project. ODF documents are saved in an open format standard that anyone can support them. Sadly, Office does not support them out of the box, and hence most instructors do not know how to or cannot open them. Thankfully OOo does export to PDF, and most instructors do have the ability to open a PDF.

Overall, I’ve run into some issues using Linux as my only OS in college, but most have been overcome with a little bit of workarounds. Thankfully I will be taking 2 Linux classes next year (Fall/Spring). There should be a lot less pain with them, especially if VMware is instituted for virtualization.

Please understand that the issues I have had were not the fault of my instructors, and are mostly beyond their control. As a matter of fact, they have all been helpful and understanding with the issues. Maybe I’ve gotten lucky, but every single instructor so far has been great.

I do wonder how on earth I will be able to get through Visual Basic/.Net next spring though…