Slightly Off Kilter

What to do on a Saturday afternoon when the parents and sister are visiting? We went to the zoo.

San Francisco has a nice little zoo. It's not as big as the National Zoo in Washington DC or the San Diego Zoo but... right now, they have baby tigers! This makes it a pretty wonderful zoo. :)

The weather was pleasant - warm with a light breeze. Well, "light" for where we live. :)

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I started a new notebook at Work. Apparently, I do not attend very many meetings where I take notes anymore. My first six notebooks each covered as much as a Quarter: six notebooks for June 2006 - Sept 2007. My seventh notebook covers 11 months.

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Cool. One of the groups I do work for gave me an Amazon certificate as a thank you. Nice!

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Did you notice that Wednesday was a special date, at least in Europe? It was 20/08/2008.

The weather was lovely. Warm but not hot. Light wind, clear skies.

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Raven's dental appt was last week. They did one extraction. Canines treated, not pulled! Now we have to learn to brush and apply "anti-plaque gel."

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Lots of TWiki work with Rich. We're pushing the envelope with FOREACH, SEARCH, IFDEFINED and CALC. Some very interesting results, balanced by some very frustrating problems. Think of it as a Learning Experience.

Meg Fowler started a Twitter meme today, #thewaywewere. I posted two:

When I was 5, I liked wearing empty glasses frames. We knew I'd eventually need glasses. Didn't get lenses till third grade.

My elementary school cafeteraia had good food. Peanut butter & honey sandwiches. Chocolate drop cookies. Great meat loaf.

Thinking back...

The San Francisco Chronicle is researching a story on Algebra class.

Remember that algebra course you probably had to take in high school? Chances are you either loved it — or it led to a hatred of math. Now [California] is going to be requiring eighth graders to solve for that elusive "x." For a story she is working on that will run later this month, education reporter Jill Tucker wants to talk with people about their memories of algebra class and whether the knowledge ever comes in handy in real life.

I grew up in central Pennsylvania. In my school system, we had "Math I" in 7th grade. If you did well in that, you went on to

• 8th grade Algebra I
• 9th grade Geometry
• 10th grade Algebra II
• 11th grade Trigonometry
• 12th grade Calculus

If you didn't do so well in "Math I" you took Math II in 8th grade, then proceeded through the series, ending with Trigonometry in 12th grade. That was me. While most of my friends were taking Algebra I, I was taking Math II.

These are my Twitter entries for July 2008.

• I love Twitter but that didn't stop me from buying a FailWhale t-shirt. Available in standard white or classy black, at http://failwhale.com 10:32 AM July 02,2008

• Spent much of the day working out a Javascript program to sort lists (including TOC) in TWiki. Eventually, success! Blog entry coming soon. 10:16 PM July 03,2008

• @Ihnatko 1776 is my favorite play and one of my favorite movies. I saw the play on Broadway in 1972! I have many lines and songs in memory. 11:28 PM July 04,2008

• @dlpasco Cider T. Cat is most handsome. Bebop sends headbutts and says "we do not care for the poppopfizzleboom noises. Pls make them stop." 11:31 PM July 04,2008

• I'm trying a new way to feed TWiki friends to Twitter. This one uses pyTwerp. If it works (:-) this tweet will appear in @twikifriends rsn. 02:08 AM July 05,2008

The weather was pleasant, neither hot nor cold. WIndy, of course, but that's to be expected.

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I'm doing more TWiki support help at the Job. I enjoy that immensely.

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I've also been doing a lot of TWIki work at home to help Rich with a project. I'm learning new things. I can even mention them on my status report for Work as "Professional Development". :)