What does it say about me that on this particular day, I've notice amusing numerical patterns? Nothing that isn't already well-known. I don't know what I'm doing for dinner, but I got a couple (cooked) crabs from Costco. That seems like a good start.
The last couple weeks of work have been mostly good. Classes are starting to wind down, and I'm starting to shift my attention towards the summer. But it's not summer, yet. My online 3D printing class has been okay, but the next time I teach this class it will be done in person. I think there's just too much technical trouble-shooting involved in the programming process (especially for non-programmers), and I'd rather be in the room with the student who is stuck than trying to resolve the issue over email. Some of the students are doing great work, but there are also some students that are just being left behind.
The proof-writing class has also gone pretty well. I used a few more online components this time around, which has also been a good learning experience for me. There are some components that I think have worked well, such as having students watch videos and respond to questions, but I really haven't gotten them to the point of enough writing experience. I'm thinking of replacing the daily individual quiz with daily board work. I'm thinking of giving the students 2-3 problems in advance as part of the homework, and having the students write up their work on the board at the start of class, which will be followed by a period of questioning. Of course, there will be some system of points associated with this, but I'm not 100% sure how I'd want to do that part. Mostly, I believe I need to push students further out of their comfort zone in this class to help them understand things at a deeper level than I'm currently getting them to.
As Department Chair, I have the responsibility to work through certain personnel-related things that bring negative quantities of pleasure to myself and the faculty involved. Because these are personnel-related things, I can't say much about them without being among the dumbest administrative persons ever, and I hope not to be in the category of people. It's not something in the bad/evil/illegal realm, just something that I've been working through over the last month that has just been hard and will continue to be hard for a while. But I suppose it could be worse. I know an administrative person that had to deal with an employee being arrested for not only possession of child pornography, but also the production of such media and transportation of minors. Yeah... I'm glad I'm not dealing with anything like that.
I've also been reflecting a lot on the relationship between NSC and CCSD, and trying to think about the culture of CCSD that makes some of our work more difficult. I hear stories about what happens at some schools. I know of high schools where the policy is basically that students don't fail their classes. There are policies that say that students cannot earn zero points on an assignment. There are policies where students can fail to meet a deadline but there is no corresponding consequence because the student can make it up all the way until grades are submitted. Then those students go to NSC, as our primary mission is to be an access institution. What are we supposed to do with students who have become acclimated to the idea that those things are what an education is about? How do we undo that culture of mediocrity? I don't really know, but this is one of the ongoing conversations I've been having with some folks not just at NSC but elsewhere. Nobody really has the answer, and even if we knew what the answer was, it would still take a long time for us to start seeing results. But that's the world we live in here in Vegas, and we're working on finding solutions.
I've made some minor progress on the horse racing project, though I haven't really done any AI stuff yet. And the direction things are going, I'm not sure if this will really end up being an AI project as much as it is just a computer modeling project. Up to this point, I haven't really bumped into problems that require the fine adjustment of parameters or that sort of thing, which the computer learning algorithms are supposed to accomplish. I've mostly spent my time thinking through calculations that make speed estimates and a little bit of work learning how to write a program to help visualize data.
The search for a church has begun. Last weekend, I went to South Hills Church, which is only about 5 miles away from home. There are a lot of positives about the church. They have a nice facility, they appear to have good organizational practices, the people seem warm and friendly, but I did not really connect with the sermon. It was the second week of a series called "Running on Empty" and the passage was Psalm 61. (After being in a more proof-text-like sermon environment for so long, it's kind of nice to be able to point to an actual passage to associate with a sermon.) The pastor made some good points, but he just didn't dwell on the more interesting parts of the passage and left things as vague platitudes. The driving question was "How do we move from empty to full?" The three points were "David cried out to God", "David ran to God for cover", and "David praised God." It's not like I disagree with this, but there's a lot that could have been fleshed out that simply wasn't. For example, he left the impression that if you pray, things will just get better. But that's not really how it works. He talked about the role of community, but then also suggested that your community may not be there for you when you need them. (And I think that would make it a not particularly Christian community.) But because there were several other things to commend it, I might go back one or two more times. I'm not in a hurry to find a new church home and I'm not in a hurry to cross things off the list. But I do know that I won't be content with a church that presents a Jesus-God-Prayer type of faith. I want more.
