Is that even a word? Even if it isn't, you know what it means.
Everything on campus is going pretty well. The new buildings are mostly functional. The whiteboards got installed, although some of them are in places that aren't fully functional. In some rooms, the whiteboards are behind the projector screens, so that you have maybe a foot or two of writing space when the screen is down. We also had some issues with the A&P labs. It turns out that many of the things we thought about that room ended up being quite different from the reality of that room. As with most things, I suspect it came down to miscommunication somewhere along the line. There's no real delicate way of putting it, but the idea was basically to use the lids of the cadaver chambers as table tops. Yes, you would literally be taking notes 12 inches above a dead body. I can't believe that nobody thought about that and felt that it would be just a little bit weird. But the break down of communication led to that being the arrangement that was established. Fortunately for everyone, we've got a temporary solution and we're on our way to a permanent solution.
My classes are going well. The flipped classroom for my Number Theory course seems to be running well so far. The content hasn't gotten too complex yet, so I don't think any students are lost yet. So far, students seem able to do the problems that are put in front of them. We'll see if that keeps up. The 3D printing class has more non-students in it than actual students, but that's fine. There are several people from the library taking the class because the library is interested in getting some 3D printers. The NSC library is one of the most technologically forward-thinking library in the state, with 1.4 million e-books in the stacks and not many physical books. Of course, you can still get physical books through inter-library loans. And having 3D printers up there just adds to that.
The Putnam course seems to be going well. Because of Labor Day, my notes stretch out for one week more than they really do. Fortunately, it's only a once a week class and so the total amount of work I need to generate isn't as large. And it's a low-key seminar style class.
The Math 095M course seems to be running well. The scores on the pretests were significantly lower than what I was expecting, which is a bit worrisome. But the instructors all commented that the pretets were long. So we already made some adjustments. I also need to try to re-hire the student I was working with over the summer in order to have her create some practice exams. So there's work to be done there, but not too bad. The coordinator thinks is going pretty well on her end, which is important.
Church stuff is moving forward. The new carpet in the new sanctuary is in. We're still scheduled to open on September 13, which is only about a week away. I know there's a lot of stress at a lot of levels with that. It would have been nice to have a soft launch, but we didn't really plan things that way. So we went full speed ahead to try to make absolutely everything happen on the 13th, so that's what's going to happen whether we're ready or not.
Missions stuff is moving less quickly right now. I've got the basic framework set up, and I'm hoping to put the proposal forward to the Elders to do the kiosk idea. I found out that you can get decent-sized touch screen monitors for computers relatively cheaply. So I don't think cost will be a hurdle.
The phrasing that I'm going to be holding on to for a while with regards to church is that I hope that we learn to "communicate values" in a much more effective manner. It's something that I've been watching for a while, and we just don't do it that well. We have a food pantry, but we don't talk about the value of caring for the poor. Our "Life Group Wall" has pictures of about 30 different small group leaders, but it doesn't communicate why we care about people participating in groups. And our "Basek Cafe" doesn't effectively communicate the value of missions. It's just a coffee and a muffin in the morning. But without communicating value, we don't help people move forward in their discipleship because we don't give anyone signposts of the things they should be focusing on.
This weekend has been a construction weekend. At least, so far. My key got stuck in the door from the garage to the house, and after playing around with it for a while I decided it would be easier to just buy a new doorknob. The key hole is upside down, but I don't want to have to deal with popping out the cylinder and flipping it over. Apparently, you have to order a special tool to do that, and that's a step I just don't want to do. So I'm just going to deal with an upside down key hole.
Also, I built a wort chiller. A wort chiller is a home brewing device that can be used to cool down your pre-beer concoction. IT's basically just 20 feet of 3/8" copper tubing coiled up into a spring-like shape, a 5-gallon bucket with a nozzle attachment to connect to some tubing. Mine is set up to be gravity-fed, and it was surprisingly easy to build. I'm looking forward to testing it out tomorrow when we have another brewing session.
So that's two random construction projects done today. I'm thinking that I might dismantle my dinosaur robot and try to rebuild it into something else on Monday. I don't know what yet that would be, yet. But I'll think about it, and maybe I'll build something and maybe I won't. We'll see.
