The fourth class for the Computer Literacy Program was on the output of Class 3’s topic. Programming begets Software! To start, Ryan discussed operating systems. He covered the key functions of operating systems and then discussed the variety of the OSes that are out there, making sure to emphasize there are more options than just Windows and MacOS.

A Spoof of the Mac vs PC Commericials That Stars Linux

Before we purchased the 13 laptops for this program, the kids all had to share from a pool of extra laptops we had around the house. One of those laptops runs Ubuntu. So through their nightly visits to MySpace the past year, the kids already had been exposed to Windows and Linux systems. For class we wanted them to experience a new operating system. The easiest* way to do that was to have them all drop to DOS prompt and run some commands.

*If any of you Apple enthusiasts out there are disappointed, you can always donate your old laptops to us!

Everyone was able to follow along with the DOS prompt activity, but I’m not sure how well absorbed it was. It may have been a little like Cargo Cult Programming. The kids were running through their cd and dir commands, but I didn’t see anyone light up and visibly recognize that they were looking at the same files they were looking at in Windows. Ryan and I discussed it and we already have a slide idea for the future to help solidify the connection.

More effective was Ryan’s discussion on how software power increases with hardware power. He got help from Mario (of Nintendo fame). Over his 14 year career, Mario has appeared in over 200 video games…and was a great illustration of the changing technologies.

Mario!

Near the end of class, Ryan discussed software applications and licensing schemes. Then it was time for another hands on activity! They kids got to install a program, specifically GIMP, the GNU Image Manipulation Program. We walked through the install process together. Next up, lab time! The kids were tasked with learning and using their new program.

GIMP was a home run! All the kids had great fun modifying images and sharing their work with the others. A lot of laughter was had.

Laughing at Images

When class was officially over and everyone was free to peruse the internet, a number of the kids continued to work on their images.

The Larry Fitzgerald and Steve Smith debate served us well during the Programming Class. The debate lived on as the Larry Fitzgerald fan made some choice modifications to a picture of Steve Smith.

The Larry Fitzgerald Fan Shows Off His Work

Steve Smith by a Larry Fitzgerald Fan

All in all, another great class!

Last week I mentioned that Henry and Jimmie have been auditing the Computer Literacy classes. Henry is a bred pack animal, so he does fancy being in groups. Here are two shots he snuck into. One from our class on Software and one from our class on Maintenance. Enjoy!

Henry the Beagle Listens to a Lecture on Software

Henry the Beagle in the Middle of Computer Maintenance Lab

Life has been going well. It has been going really, really well. Surprisingly, this positive phase has been accompanied by a frustration. I am so full of love and happiness and gratitude that I struggle to articulate my feelings. No matter the word choice, it feels impotent. Sometimes I try to prefix my sentiment with words like “very” or “really” or “so” (see above). Other times, I try to reinforce the magnitude of a statement simply by saying it again and again in succession (see above). Those tactics fail and everything I say still seems to fall far short of the feelings inside.

Last night I was watching Part I of the Project Runway Season 6 Finale. Over the course of the season, the field of 16 designers had been whittled down to 3 finalists. The remaining contestants get to fulfill a dream. They get to display their work on fashion’s biggest stage– New York’s Bryant Park during Fashion Week. Early in the finale episode their mentor, Tim Gunn, addressed the three finalists:

Designers, I am more proud of you than I can adequately express.

And that’s it! That’s exactly how I feel!

Tim Gunn is known for his vocabulary and is sometimes described as a walking thesaurus. Yet here words even failed him! By simply admitting the emotion exceeded his (albeit formidable) communication skills, he conveyed more than intensifiers and relentless repetition ever could.

I will never design a fancy gown or even a sassy ensemble of separates. Nonetheless, I still found guidance from mentor Tim Gunn. Now I know what to say!

“I am more thankful than I can adequately express.”

“I am happier than I can adequately express.”

“I love you more than I can adequately express.”

The third Computer Literacy class was on a topic near and dear to my heart– programming! Since we are doing the Computer Literacy Program out of our home, both dogs have been auditing the classes. But this is the first time a dog has helped with a lecture. Our first stab at explaining Logic Gates produced some pretty confused looks, so we elaborated using examples of people in the room. When the kids got a hang of the concept, we used Henry, who managed to squish himself between the students on the couch, as a quiz.

In case you want to administer a self-test in the privacy of your own home, here’s a reminder of what Henry looks like:

Henry

“HENRY IS A DOG AND HENRY IS ORANGE” I said.
“FALSE!” All the kids yelled.
“HENRY IS A DOG OR HENRY IS ORANGE”
“TRUE!”

I was quite proud. Henry, on the other hand, was confused. He couldn’t figure out why I was yelling his name.

To help demonstrate if statements, loops, variables and algorithms, Ryan had five kids each pick from a deck of cards. With a sixth kid acting as an index variable and another as a boolean flag, we walked through a live-action bubble sort in the living room. In the end all five card-carrying kids were lined up in order.

Neither of those activities were my favorite part of the class though! Each child copied a directory of sample HTM pages containing JavaScript onto their computers. We used those examples to explain some key concepts. However, we also wanted to give the kids the opportunity to tweak code for themselves. Lately, two of the boys have been arguing about which NFL star is better– Larry Fitzgerald or Steve Smith. Their banter inspired a very simple JavaScript example:

Having seen Larry Fitzgerald play when he was at Pitt, I set the page up to use JavaScript popups to compliment a selection of Larry Fitzgerald (‘BOOYAH! You are smart!’) and berate a selection of Steve Smith (‘WRONG! Larry Fitzgerald RULES!!!!’).

As soon as we started working through the examples in the directory, the kids noticed there was a file named “02SteveSmithVsLarryFitzgerald.htm”, so it built up a bit of a buzz with the boys. Before long, we got to that example. The kids opened it up in their web browser and started selecting.

The boy who liked Larry Fitzgerald was one of the first to click. A popup box declared that he was smart. He got a smug smile on his face, sat back on the couch and waited for his nemesis to react. The boy who favored Steve Smith clicked and was not pleased when a popup announced that he was wrong.

Instantly he looked up at me, “Did you do this?!?”

I nodded and he was even more appalled.

“Did you even LOOK at the stats?!?!”

In a heated tone, he started to detail why Steve Smith was superior to Larry Fitzgerald.

The moment could not have been scripted better! Right then, Ryan swooped in and said, “Well, if you don’t like it– let’s change it!”

Everyone opened the source code into WordPad and [with some hints] found the code that was responsible for the taunts. Then each child typed in what he/she wanted to see (One girl who didn’t like football at all changed both of her prompts to read “Who Cares?!?”). They saved their changes, reopened up the page in Internet Explorer and [with some minor debugging here and there thanks to single quotes or inadvertently erased semi-colons....] each child got to see popups that matched his/her views.

Now the boy who liked Steve Smith was much happier.

AAAAAAYYYYYY YOU’RE A TRUE NFL FAN!!!!!

ORIGINAL CODE

<SCRIPT Language="JavaScript">
<!--
function respondToAnswer(answer)
{
if (answer=='Smith')
alert('WRONG!  Larry Fitzgerald RULES!!!!');
else
alert('BOOYAH!  You are smart!');
}
-->
</SCRIPT>

CODE REVISED BY A STEVE SMITH FAN

<SCRIPT Language="JavaScript">
<!--
function respondToAnswer(answer)
{
if (answer=='Smith')
alert('AAAAAAYYYYYY YOU\'RE A TRUE NFL FAN!!!!!');
else
alert('BOOYAH, YOU ARE OFFICIALLY A DUMBASS!');
}
 -->
 </SCRIPT>

When I was in college and first dabbling in HTML, I remember how exciting it was to refresh a page in Netscape and see a change that I had made. Even if it was something simple like a background color, it was thrilling. I told the browser to do that. That was my doing!

Being able to watch the kids refresh their pages and see their handiwork come to life…

That was my favorite moment of the night.

The first class on The Bit was so busy and hectic, I didn’t get to take any pictures. During this second class on Hardware, I was able to snag some shots.

For this class, Ryan started off with the history of computers and how the word “computer” used to refer to humans instead of machines. Ryan also talked about other types of computers– the abacus, the slide rule, the scientific calculator. And by no coincidence, Ryan had an example of each to pass around the class.

Girls with Abacus

Ryan Talks about the Scientific Calculator

The lecture then covered computer history from the ENIAC to the UNIVAC to today’s Kraken. To drill home just how far computers had come, Ryan pointed out how powerful today’s tiny cellphones are compared to the giant computers that used to take up entire floors.

The lecture ended with a dissection! Ryan took apart an old computer, opened it up, explained the various parts.

Computer Dissection

Some parts of the computer were passed around and sometimes things don’t change. Despite explicit instructions, the hard drive was still returned covered in small, greasy fingerprints. I’ve had similar issues with my camera lens.

Looking at Harddrive

A wireless router made the rounds as well.

Wireless Router

We finished up the evening session our hands on lab. We did some “Keyboard Karate”. It was a bumpy lab (we had technical difficulties demonstrating on the projector), but the kids got to learn and practice keyboard shortcuts including Alt-Tab, Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V and the very important Ctrl-Z (which I’ve already used a number of times authoring this post!!!)

Kids Ready for Lab

At least twice during lab time, I heard a “Vicky Look!” from across the room. I would turn around to see a child grin as they switched from Notepad to Internet Explorer using Alt-Tab.

They were so, so proud.

And me– even more!

More pictures of the Computer Literacy Class are on my Flickr site.

For some time now the neighborhood kids have been coming over in the evenings to use some extra laptops to get on the Internet. My fiancé, Ryan, decided to start an official and structured computer literacy program. After roughly a year of planning and research, Ryan developed a curriculum of twelve classes and we have started a pilot run with twelve kids (Ages 9 -18) from our street.

The first class was last week. Ryan lectured on the bit and binary code. He also discussed the byte, the kilobyte, the megabyte, the gigabyte and so on. As hands on exercises, the kids explored the file system and looked at the sizes of various files and the free space of their brand new hard drives. At this point, I became jealous– their laptops have considerably more space than mine!

Since this was the first class, I wasn’t sure what to expect about the kids’ engagement level, but Ryan did an excellent job keeping them involved. Ryan routinely asked questions and the kids would shout out their guesses.

After talking about bit and 1 being on and 0 being off, Ryan asked the kids to look over at their new laptops and find the bit on the computer. This activity reminded me of a Dan Brown novel! My whole programming career, I have encountered this button and never noticed the symbol right in front of my face.

The Power Switch – A Bit! 1 and 0! (Photo by Fox Fotography)

Any doubts I had about the kids’ interest was fully squelched when Ryan, aided by a HowToons cartoon (see below), taught them how to count in binary using their hands.

Count Like a Computer!

The kids got a kick out of this! The number four seemed to be particularly popular. My favorite part involved a quiet kid in the back. Because of his silence, I had been trying to gauge his interest level. Then suddenly I spied him, with his hands very low near the keyboard, configuring his fingers to count to ten.

When I walked the kids back home that night after class, I couldn’t help but feel excited about the eleven more sessions to come!

P.S. Counting in binary has proven to have some staying power. On Saturday, four days after our first class, I took three girls up to Virginia Beach for an outing. And on the grassy hillside of Mount Trashmore, one started practicing her binary counting. The practice continued in the car and I coached the best I could through the rear view mirror. When we returned to Hunter Street, she proudly showed Ryan what she had rehearsed.

In October, Ryan and I traveled up to New York City for a long weekend. During our visit, we stopped by the American Museum of Natural History.

This was my first visit to the city and thus the museum, but Ryan had been there numerous times before. He suggested the “New York State Environment” exhibit as a starting point. That man knew exactly what he was doing!

As I took my time moving from diorama to diorama reading about soil types and fauna and farming techniques, Ryan patiently waited, knowing a surprise was lurking ahead in the “North American Forests” exhibit.

Soon enough I went around a corner to find a 300 foot cross section of a 1300 year old giant Sequoia tree! It made me happy and giddy and at thirty-four years of age, I got to experience the same sense of marvel and discovery eleven year Jacal had the other week at Fun Junktion.

HUGE surprise!

There was another surprise in the exhibit that Ryan did not anticipate. I spent a lot of time at the dioramas looking for familiar vegetation and reading the legends of what tree is what. I came to one display and as I was reading the literature, I saw there was an American Chestnut listed.

“What?!? Where?!?”

I looked back up at the diorama, but still didn’t see it.

Do you see the American Chestnut?

I consulted the legend again and found the tree. It’s in the background.

It’s the dead one.

American Chestnut in the Diorama

And later there was another display that explained why the tree was dead.

Sac Fungi Display

Although they weren’t the happiest depictions, I’m glad the American Chestnut was not forgotten and still included in the museum. And I’m sure one day, the curators will have to revise their exhibit to accommodate a very different appearance from the tree.

My cousin’s wife writes a blog called The Daily Krier. Regularly she will detail stories of customer service failures and successes. I happen to have a positive experience to contribute, so I’m going to follow her lead.  Unfortunately, I have to highlight a negative customer experience to get to the good stuff– so bear with me!

Customer Service Failure – Delta Airlines

In late September Ryan and I traveled down to Naples, Florida for a wedding. Our trip was brief, we arrived in Naples 2 AM Saturday morning and we flew out early Sunday afternoon around 3 PM. On our flight there, Delta Airlines lost our luggage. Didn’t seem like a big deal at the time–it’s happened to me before and I get the luggage the next morning. Only this time, even though our luggage was supposedly only 2 hours behind us, it did not arrive until 5:30 PM on Saturday. This posed a problem as the wedding started at 3 PM and our warddrobe was limited. Case in point, all I had on me was a pair of dirty jeans, a dirty shirt and a complimentary T-shirt Delta gave me.

My Wedding Warddrobe?

So instead of visiting with family, including all three of my grandmother’s living siblings, or seeing the beautiful beaches along the Gulf of Mexico, Ryan and I had to frantically run to a mall and buy clothes and toiletries.

Delta felt very little concern for our situation, upon hearing about it, the baggage service staff defensively pointed out that we have to give Delta 24 hours to return our luggage. (Ideally, I would have liked to have been alerted to that on Friday night when we were given a choice between waiting for the luggage for two hours or having it delivered. Also ideally, you probably shouldn’t advertise that you deliver to hotels 24 hours a day and instruct us to alert the front desk about the coming baggage as that gives the very false expectation that you intend to deliver overnight).

Anyway, what is done is done. Delta Airlines went out of their way to demonstrate how little they value our money. Luckily for Delta, they don’t need to worry about being taxed with our business ever again.

But on to the good story!!! We had completely different experiences with the vendors of Coastland Center Mall. Upon hearing about our predicament, two vendors helped us out.

Customer Service Success – Rack Room Shoes
Coastland Center Mall
1886 Tamiami Trl N
Naples, FL 34102
(239) 403-0441

The manager of the store, overheard Ryan and I talking about our situation, so he came up to the register and gave us half off one of our pairs of shoes. Our shoes did not qualify for a current sale in the store but, unsolicited, he gave us the discount anyway.

Customer Service Success – Pearle Vision
Coastland Center Mall
1894 N. Tamiami Trail
Naples, FL 34102
(239) 262-4881

I walked into the store and stated, “This is a long shot but….” I explained the lost luggage, showed them my prescription and asked if I could get a pair of contacts. Lo and behold, the staff emerged with a box for each eye (10 contacts total). I handed them my credit card and they wouldn’t take it. They refused. They were considering it free samples.

Thanks in part to both of these vendors, Ryan and I were significantly more presentable at the wedding.

Final Wedding Warddrobe

Now here’s what’s absolutely amazing. Both of these organizations knew I wasn’t living in Naples. They knew I was traveling and that in all likelihood they would never ever see me again. There was no opportunity for repeat business. They had nothing to gain for their generosities, but they extended the courtesies anyway. They took better care of Delta customers than Delta!

So, my deep gratitude to both Rack Room Shoes and Pearle Vision. If you are ever in the Naples area, pay them a visit and reward their kindness.

Though, I wouldn’t recommend using Delta to get there. : )

Last week, I had to drop the dogs off at the vet for boarding. As knowing Jimmie trembled and clueless Henry wagged his tail, a female vet assistant emerged to take the dogs back.

It turned out an older lady in the waiting room knew the vet assistant.

“Are you still getting divorced?” she asked.

“Yeah,” the vet assistant replied and bent over to leash my poor dogs.

Having been through divorce, I felt empathy for the vet assistant. (I don’t believe my dogs felt the same way as at this point even Henry realized his destination.)

I put my hand on the vet assistant’s shoulder. Armed with the perspective of time, I was able to declare to the entire waiting room with complete confidence, “That was the BEST thing I’ve ever done!”

There was an awkward silence and the vet assistant looked perplexed.

“Buying a horse?” she asked.

And it was at this point, I realized I misheard the original question altogether.

I could have tried to cover up my misunderstanding, but I came clean to the waiting room. Luckily, all the ladies agreed. A horse can be great, but a divorce can be even better. : )

P.S. I bet Kristina can comment in the spirit and cadence of the Mr. Ed Theme Song!

Last week, eleven year old Jacal came over to the house and asked a question he asks pretty regularly.

“Vicky, when are we going again?”

“Going where?” I asked.

There were any number of adventures Jacal could be referring to. Was he talking about jet skiing? Perhaps geocaching? Rollerskating? Maybe he is talking about the time we took the injured opossum to the wildlife rehabilitation center?

Possible Adventures Jacal was Referring To

“To the place where we took the trash,” Jacal said.

Jacal wasn’t talking about an adventure– he was talking about a chore! He was asking about a recent trip to the recycling center!

You see, our household doesn’t have a recycling bin. Just because we are too lazy to go to town hall get a replacement bin does not mean we are too lazy to recycle! Binless or not, we still diligently set aside the recyclables. When our pile becomes overbearing…or… and this is more likely the case, we are expecting guests, we load everything up in the car and take it down to Fun Junktion.

Such was the case early this month when my mother and sister were visiting. I got our formidable inventory ready to go:

Recycling!

Just as I was about to depart, Jacal showed up. Right place, right time. He hopped in the car and we were off. En route, we had to pull over and marvel at a house. It’s entire front yard was covered in noisy blackbirds. And yet every other yard on the street was an uninterrupted (and quiet) green.

Together we hurled recyclables into the appropriate dumpsters and felt fulfillment with each clang of aluminum or crack of brown and green glass. Afterwards, we went on a 1.25 mile walk around the nearby pond. At one point, Jacal stopped dead in his tracks and grabbed my arm.

“OH… MY…. GAWD…. Vicky…Do you see what I see?”

I looked to where he was pointing and saw Great Blue Heron in the pond. It stood still and silent and looked regal and prehistoric. It was a new species for Jacal.

Later on our walk, Jacal kicked an ant hill. Two larger insects were standing nearby at the time. Wrong place, wrong time. As the ants rushed around trying to make sense out of the sudden chaos, those two bystanders were anointed instant scapegoats. The ants swarmed and despite their large size, the loiterers were quickly overpowered and devoured. I found it interesting and my companion was absolutely enthralled.

A hoard of discriminating blackbirds, a solitary heron and unforgiving ants. These are humble, ordinary creatures and yet they demonstrate just how much discovery and adventure nature still provides, especially to young eyes. In Jacal’s mind it was worthy of the same inquiry as our other outings. On the caliber of jet skiing even!

By coming out all the way to Fun Junktion, I was reminded exactly why I do recycle.

“So when are we going again?” Jacal repeated his question.

“Uh…” Already there was a small pile of cardboard and plastic gathering in the kitchen. But on the other hand, I had no visitors scheduled.

“When the pile gets big again.” I said.

Knowing Jacal, he’ll do whatever he can to make that pile get bigger, faster. : )