Moodle Doesn't Suck

With my most popular posts on this site about how Blackboard Sucks, it's about time to comment on my first year using an open source alternative, Moodle. Don't get me wrong, Moodle has it's share of issues- there are times when the Moodle interface feels just as much like a late-90s web app as Blackboard does. But there's a distinct difference- it's free. Free as in Freedom, Free as in Kittens. It appears to be some work to set up, and it's likely a project to keep it running.

Basically, if you want your organization to depend on a database-driven web application, you have to know how to develop, deploy, and maintain database-driven web applications. The question is whether to license expensive software and contract all the work on a mission-critical application, or whether and how much to do internally with software who's cost is entirely internal labor. Writing one of these things yourself is an expensive proposition- for internal use it makes little sense, and for external use, you'd better have a really good reason, as in doing things that Moodle or one of the Open Source alternatives cannot be made to do readily.

But before delving down the rabbit hole of Moodle configuration and plug-ins, there's a fair amount of the semester to resolve. Last grades to recheck and post, other paperwork to complete. If my dissertation had a status bar, it's hovering maddeningly at the 99% mark, and that has to be finished once and for all so I can go on to some more interesting projects. I have some suspicions about why people keep saying that Moodle is a resource hog, but that'll probably have to wait until Winter Break next year to start tearing apart.

Despite its shortcomings, Moodle can be downloaded, experimented with, taken apart, and modified as needed. Commercial stuff is fine for new tech, but for very old, commoditized software product categories, you may as well just go open source.

Kitchen Nightmare

Over the past year, I've discovered the many joys of Kitchen Nightmares, one of a growing genre of food-related reality shows. These shows are extremely formulaic, though morbid curiosity seems to have taken hold as the host, Gordon Ramsay grabs cobwebs out of restaurant ceilings, spits out sample entrees, and spouts enough profanities to require a censor with a Morse code proficiency rating of 20 WPM or better.

My thoughts so far:

• Any unknown object in the walk-in fridge will have been alleged to have been made "last Friday"
• The deep fryer is invariably a horror.
• The walk-in fridge is a horror.
• 3/4 of each episode could be described as "Getting it through the owner's thick head".
• All the food should be thrown out.
• Your own kitchen looks so much better after watching an episode.
• Failing restaurants share the same issues of an overwhelmed/burned out owner and loads of dysfunction.
• Nobody likes restaurants that serves reheated frozen food.

Having said that, one's home kitchen is often less healthy than many restaurant kitchens, and we're far more likely to be defrosting our meals than we want our restaurants. Most food poisoning seems to happen at home. On the other hand, we don't typically get fresh groceries daily (maybe weekly at best), nor is there a staff at home to take care of the management of the pantry, plan menus, prepare meals, and clean up. At home, there are limits on money, time, and energy to prepare meals, and nutrition often takes a back seat to convenience.

Black Market

I drove the kids to school today, when my son complained suddenly about having lost part of his pen. He had been fiddling with it, taking it apart and looking at the pieces before dropping one. Among the many stoplights on the way, I took a quick look at the back seat, offering suggestions where to look. For the sake of argument and as a result of my profession, I'll simply refer to them as Alice and Bob. (I teach computer science after all, and those were viable candidate names long before my career change would have made me regret it. I've chosen not to simply refer to them as The Girl and The Boy as another dadblogger might (such as Dean Dad: http://suburbdad.blogspot.com/).

There was a quick discussion for a block whether the part dropped was the upper or lower part of the pen, finally agreeing that the clicker was top, and the ball point emerged from the bottom, the part that was actually lost. In the course of his distress about not having functioning the pen he won, a G2 Pen no less, Alice mentions something about the Black Market. The /what/? I think, sensing another impending view into the hidden world of the Middle School of digital natives. Sure, Alice says, there's an underground market for stationery at her school. "Do they have pen parts?" "Pen parts, though ink is harder to find. You have to trade up big for that." "Like what?" "That might cost you some loose leaf paper, which is kind of how other things are measured."

Loose leaf paper is a currency? Sort of it turns out, but this is a barter market. I've heard of barter markets in prisons that monetize other goods in terms of ramen noodle packets and cigarettes, but like all barter markets, utility losses are heavy in direct trades. Money is better at preserving value across successive transactions. In these cases, the goods being traded are themselves consumed, and the supply is hardly fixed. Someone somewhere is gaming this market, but I suspect the SEC already has their hands full.

So a few thoughts crossed my mind. The ongoing cleanup of my home has yielded a couple of bins of school supplies. I joked about flooding the market with loose leaf paper and pens, but it made me wonder about the inevitable inflation. Also, I considered the effects of the impending end of the school year on the relative value of goods. With the ongoing house cleaning, we've unearthed an enormous stockpile of stationary. Enough perhaps to cause rampant inflation in the stationery market and greatly devalue the loose leaf paper currency. After dropping off Bob at his elementary school I spent the eternity of Turning Left considering a way to quantify the differences between the subjective currency of loose leaf paper and actual market value.

Besides, what do they need paper for? The school website announced there will be 17 more testing days before the end of the school year, 6 weeks from now. It just makes me wonder what they will have time to learn besides more effective ways to fill in tiny circles. There may be a run on #2 pencils after all, and we may be able to corner that market. I just hope there will be enough learning around these state tests for this generation to be able to cover my social security when I finally retire.

As usual, the missing pen piece was between the seat and the door. An undiscovered force in the universe seems to draw all lost objects there, perhaps fueled by lost left socks. This research will have to wait until well into summer after I post final grades for the semester.

One year later...

It's been a year since my kids stopped living in my house full time, returning only part of the time by the terms of a custody agreement. Though they're never gone for more than 4 days at a time, their arrival continues to be a joy and their departure a sorrow. I estimate 25 Sunday drop-offs when the kids leave my car and go to their mother's home, a process that has become only less difficult over time. I am reminded that it will never be easy, but at least more accustomed.

Midway through my second semester teaching at a new school, things have finally started to feel routine. I remember the codes for the photocopier, though I rarely have a reason to use it. My small fridge and microwave are safely set up in my office, next to a coffee pot I have yet to use this year. Two boxes of slightly-aged computer books still sit on the floor of my office, waiting for me to clear out two bookshelves of much older books.

Realizing as I get older and more of life's adventures and conflicts have slipped into the past, a year can seem both an eternity and a moment, at the same time, and without contradiction. But with more tasks finally completed, and fewer remaining ahead, the time to start new projects is approaching after the old ones are finally put to rest. A year of reconnection with the past and the start of new experiences, new relationships, and new projects. This has been a long journey, and this leg of the trip is just about done.

Timeline

Swap out the word "cancer" for "divorce" and the rest of it isn't far off the mark. Or the timeline, which was a bit eerily coincidental when I spotted it this morning, and my "Vaguebooking" posts of the last couple of years have alluded to this.

There is little constructive to say about the experience here, and I won't attempt any hackneyed parallels between these two kinds of destructive events which afflict the lives of so many people. There are just the survivors left behind with varying wounds to heal, the debris left behind by a disaster to clean up, and the process of finding one's bearings to resume course once determined.

There is more to moving forward than surrounding oneself with the tired cliches of perseverance. Visualization techniques help far more than pasting quotes on the wall, but being neither artistic nor particularly athletic has limited their benefits. Even memories of performing the most mundane tasks have been helpful on some days.

One can dwell on the specifics of events and actions of others, and doubts about what could have been done differently. But the lessons learned are likely to be skewed by perception and of little use for the future. It won't be the same river again the next time you try to cross it, nor will you be quite the same person.

And every day, it seems my children get a little taller based on hash marks in the basement doorway. I understand their worlds far better than I did previously. Their interests and directions are a moving target, and part of the job that remains is to help them find their targets and sharpen their aim.

And every day the clean up continues, the repairs done, and the course resumed as before.

A new course

After an extremely difficult couple of years, the old course of my academic, professional, and family life have reached an end, and a new course must now be plotted.  I remain thankful for my wonderful children in all this, without whom I would surely be lost.  The future is uncertain in many ways, but there is at least hope in a new direction to pursue and the promise of adventure ahead in the rebuilding of our new lives.

I'm often given quotes involving God opening and closing doors. I'm sure God has better things to do than invoke complex Boolean logic on my behalf. But there are times when things seem to fall together or fall apart inexplicably, and having seen much of both over the past year or so suggest that any such plan is unknowably complex to plot any action beyond just moving forward as best we can. And so we shall.

End of Summer

After my first full summer home with the kids, it's back to teaching next week. Classroom teaching starts Tuesday at 9, hardly a grueling start of the work week by many standards.  The churn of the start of classes has been well underway for a while now, in that there are always details to resolve, but I've gotten better at adding to the checklists with each successive semester.

Some semesters begin with weather disruptions. Last Spring started in a snowstorm. This semester is starting with Hurricane Irene. Finals for the Fall 2012 semester fall during the Apocalypse. The important thing is to plan ahead and have contingency plans when things don't work out as expected.

It has been a privilege to share so much time with the kids despite ongoing life events, and there is no knowing what the future will hold. But just as today's sun and tranquility may be replaced by gale-force winds and driving rain on Sunday, the slow pace of summertime will be quickly replaced by the whirlwind start of the semester next week. I hope my future students of next week have a safe weekend ahead and that the effects of the storm are at a minimum over the weekend. Also thankful to be 300 feet above sea level here in the relative tranquility of my hometown Upstate this weekend..