RickScheibner.net

• Today is my dad’s 73rd birthday.  We had all 5 kids at home yesterday to celebrate.  It’s been a long time since all five of us were in the same place at the same time.  Happy Birthday dad!
• We took a family portrait with all 5 of us kids, and I’m working on editing it in the GIMP right now.  Good way to put those skills to use. 
• Got my Praxis for school administration out of the way yesterday.  I either bombed it or passed it easily, I’m not sure which yet.  I find out in a short 4 weeks.
• I’ve taken like 3 Airebornes today. Experiencing some weird, flu-like symptoms that come and go.  Didn’t make it to church this morning because of it. 
• Starting to make summer plans.  So far, we’ve got a sturgeon fishing trip on the docket, another trip to the coast, and a trip to Leavenworth, Washington.  And–are you sitting down for this?  Susan and I might actually get to go on a honeymoon at some point!
• Hometown native and former Oregon State University offensive guard Roy Schuening was selected in the fifth round by the St. Louis Rams this weekend, in the NFL draft.  Quite a bit lower than expected, but I have no doubt he’ll make a name for himself.  He started 50 consecutive games at OSU, a school record.  Durable with a capital “D”.  He’ll be blocking for another Oregon State guy, Steven Jackson. 
• That’s about it for now; I’m thinking about an early bed time tonight.

Just some random thoughts going through my head!

• I’m not really doing much for Earth Day; it just looked a little better in the title than just putting today’s date.
• My oldest son is turning 16 next week. 16. What the heck happened?
• I’m REALLY liking this current version of ScribeFire. Having multiple posts going is great. I can save them and come back, finish them, and publish them when I’m ready. Or not, however I’m thinking at the time.
• I put out a survey to our district counselors today using Google Docs. Took me under 5 minutes to set up and got me the information I needed in a hurry.
• Unseasonably cold here. I’d like to get on my bike again on a regular basis, but man…brrrr…Maybe I just need to man up and get out there.
• I take my Praxis for school administrators this weekend. Apparently, studying for it isn’t much of a help; you either know it or you don’t. Still, I’m going over my notes from my classes for the next few evenings. Hit me up if you want to talk a little case law over a locally made, amber-colored, fermented beverage.

• My wife will be home in just a few hours.
• In our staff meeting this morning, we had a presentation of a great local science program for fourth- and fifth-graders in our area. As good as the program is, I thought the presentation itself wasn’t. I saw a lot of Dan’s PowerPoint rules being broken. Among them: Reading the text that’s already on the screen.
• My new favorite blog: Stuff Christians Like. You don’t have to be a Christian or go to church to appreciate these, but it helps.
• I think I’ll put on The Joshua Tree while I’m making dinner tonight.
• Too much caffeine today; I’m a little wired tonight.
• I NEED to ride my bike this weekend. Saturday’s supposed to be really cold, though (cold, not cool…unseasonably cold weather into the area by this weekend).
• Even though the regular season is over, and the Blazers finished at .500 and won’t be in the playoffs, you’d think they were in the conference finals around here. Plenty of reason to be optimistic, though.

That’s about it for now. Hopefully I’ll get another post or two in the hopper before the end of the night!

My schedule is packed today, so I’m just going to leave ScribeFire open and post my thoughts throughout the day. Kind of like Twitter, only…not.

• I think the upgrade to WordPress 2.5 messed with my previous layout, so I downloaded a new one and tweaked it last night. I kind of like this one better. Of interest: I think a Subscribe button should be conspicuous but not obnoxious. This one seems to fit that bill. I am going to tweak the stylesheet when I get a chance, as I don’t like the line spacing in this one. That’s my only complaint.
• Speaking of WP 2.5, I really like the new dashboard layout and options. It was worth the wait.
• Had pizza with the drummer of our worship team last night. It’s cool getting to know new people.
• I work with some innovative and flexible educators. Sometimes, just being able to juggle all of this requires constant re-thinking and re-organizing.
• Disturbing news shared by Maurice via Twitter this morning. I’m going to comment on it later.
• Imagine running a 400m race. You have 12 hurdles in front of you. The guy in the next lane has 6. That’s what our ELL kids have to do every day at school, and some of them perform really well in spite of those odds. Or maybe because of them.
• Last summer, I thought about getting a team together for the Hermiston 3-on-3 tournament. Now I’m not so sure I’d be able to handle that any more. Sheesh, Kareem was averaging almost 15 ppg in the NBA when he was my age.
• That means I need to start hitting the bike pretty hard if I’m going to stay in shape. Better do that after school today.
• Some kids just don’t fit the educational categories that we create for them. Imagine that.
• It’s not even noon, and my schedule has changed about 3 times already. Oh, district counselor’s meeting tomorrow.
• Ok, I’m REALLY looking forward to a bike ride along the Columbia River today.
• Attendance is a huge issue at our school. It’s amazing the lengths some parents will go to to keep their kids out.
• Gorgeous day out. Our third graders are really competitive in anything they do. Didn’t want to come in from recess!

Technorati Tags: Floating Thoughts

A little more than a tweet, but not quite a full blog post. 

8+ inches of the stuff yesterday and last night.  We haven’t had this much snow for quite a while. 

When I was in high school, if they would have closed school for this amount of snow, we probably would have missed school have the winter.  Times change.

Sometimes, sleeping in is good for the body and mind.  Lord knows I’ve been up too late lately. 

REO Speedwagon is a guilty pleasure of mine. 

I’m using GIMP to create some postcards for an upcoming event. 

I take wireless access for granted sometimes.  Right now I’m in a place where they don’t have it at all. 

Good Monsters by Jars of Clay is one of my favorite albums from last year.  Nope…Mute Math, then Monsters.

I just read on Mark Lee’s blog that the music industry is opening up millions of titles to be downloaded for free.  Does this mean the end of iTunes as we know it?  How will the artists and composers be compensated for the work they’ve done? 

Got homework tonight.  Better get on it.

A little more than a tweet, but not quite a full blog post.  Just some stuff going through my head in between meeting with students and parents today:

• Lots of student assistance team meetings this time of the year.  Has it always been like that, or is this year different for some reason?
• Our superintendent wants to come down and have lunch with my leadership kids next month.  How cool is that? 
• When I get a chance, I need to tweak my blog layout.  I don’t like the line spacing, and I’d like to leave some room in between paragraphs and bullet points.  Time to break out the Eric Meyer book.
• I wish I could get “set publish date” to work in Windows Live Writer.  Anybody got a cure for that?
• I need to get signed up for my Praxis school admin exam some time very soon.
• I’m amazed at the number of high-poverty kids we have in this school. 
• We have one parent here whose three kids have been here ever since I have.  Her youngest is a 5th grader, and we won’t have her as a parent here after this year.  I’m going to miss her kids here.
• §504 plans seem to go in fits and starts around here.  I’m amazed at how different school districts each handle those things in their own way.

Have a great Friday everybody, enjoy your weekend.