Category: Unrelated News

I got my paper done. I am somewhat pleased with it. I don’t think it is as organized as it could be, but that is what college papers are about. I certainly would spend a lot more time with it cleaning it up before submitting it to a magazine.

Today was the deadline. It absolutely had to be postmarked today. Well…that did not happen. I have written the college to find out if they will have mercy on me for one day. Knowing them, they will not. But, I am going to hold out hope. There is nothing I can do to change that at this point.

The paper was done at 3:15. An hour and 15 minutes before the post office closed. We had just filled up the ink cartridges on the printer so that I would definitely have enough ink. Only problem was that while changing the cartridge, I did not know that the printer would tell the Mac to disable it. So the Mac would not communicate to the printer. By the time I got that figured out I had already sent the print job to the printer a couple of times. It finally started printing at 3:45. Because I wanted it to print at a higher quality, I knew it would take a bit longer. Fortunately we only live 5 minutes from a post office.

Just a word of advice. When a printer says it prints 17 pages per minute, remember that is on the lowest quality setting. It took 2 minutes per page to print my document. It finished printing at 4:20. 10 minutes to get to the post office should be plenty.

I arrived at the post office with 5 minutes to spare. CLOSED!

Closed? Yup. That branch closes at 4:00 whereas the branch where our PO Box is closes at 4:30. That was 20 minutes away. By the time I got there they were long gone. I did not really expect to catch anyone there since they are usually gone 10 minutes before closing time.

So, here I sit with my paper on my desk waiting to go to the post office tomorrow morning. Here’s to hoping they will have mercy.

I took the final exam today. Ouch! Some of the material I knew quite well. Unfortunately those weren’t the things he asked on the test.

I am writing my final paper exposing the evils of Outcome Based Education. I am 8 pages into a 10-15 page paper. I think that is not a bad start. I basically have my outline together now and should be able to flesh it out well tomorrow after a good night’s rest (like 6 hours or so). I don’t think it will be all that bad. I won’t have the number of references that the teacher would like for me to have. I should have 15 or more sources for my research. I have 5 main resources, but there is always Wikipedia. My last paper I got by fine leaning pretty heavily on material that I found on-line. Maybe I can get by with it here too.

Funny, I am starting to think Outcome Based Education may not be all that bad. If Dr. Reese would just take into account that I don’t have a college library available to me and that I did not get my books until late in the semester. Also I had to suffer through 95+ degree days through the month of December. Surely I have put forth enough effort that he will give me a good grade on the final exam even though I did not show that I knew the material well. Oh, and I am ADD too, that should count for at least a whole letter grade.

Besides, I wrote a very entertaining piece for the final essay. He should give me credit for that. I know that talking about the virtues of Wikipedia and pimping my podcast don’t really show my knowledge of the changes in education in the US from the 1600s to the present, but it was fun to write. I enjoyed myself in the process. That too should be worth another letter grade.

I had so many things that I wanted to post to the blog tonight. Normally on Sunday evening I get a chance to veg. But, I am way too far behind on getting a class knocked out for my Master’s Degree. I have a 10-15 page paper due on Tuesday and I have not started writing it. I did, at least, choose a topic yesterday.

I will take my final exam tomorrow while also working on my paper. Then I have to have it all postmarked on Tuesday. That means it must be done and at the post office by 4:30 in the afternoon.

Yikes!

Today is the first anniversary of my Grandfather’s death. Though I am sentimental and an emotional type person, I would not have known this had my genealogy software not sent me a reminder of this fact.

What I found interesting is that today would have been his older brother’s birthday. He died about 10 years ago. I am sure my Mom was aware of this bit of trivia. But, I don’t remember it being mentioned at the funeral.

My grandfather was part of what has come to be known as The Greatest Generation. These are people born around 1920 (PaPaw was born in 1923). This generation went to World War II to defend our nation, the bastion of Western Civilization and freedom, from the evils of the rest of the world. They fought proudly and pulled our nation back to it’s patriotic and religious roots. Unfortunately, this was not always passed down to the generation that followed.

Tom Brokaw wrote a book with the title The Greatest Generation. I have read some of the book and have a much greater respect for my grandfather and the world in which he grew up.

PaPaw did not talk about the war much. And when he did, he talked about people and friends, not actions and events. Or, at least, that is my recollection. His funeral was attended by a military honor guard. I still have a shell casing from the 21 gun salute that was bestowed to him.

It was my privilege to speak at the funeral, and typical of me, I did not spend hours thinking about what I would say. I just sat on stage and jotted down a few thoughts while the pastor was delivering his comments. I probably still have the paper that I wrote those few words on (my wife claims I never get rid of anything). I just commented about how my grandfather was a man who influenced many lives and that he was a good example to us all. A good and faithful friend.

As a Justice of the Peace in Texas for 25 years, he was well known both in the small town of Pecos, Texas where his office was located and the even smaller town of Toyah where my grandparents called home for 50 years. The funeral was attended by every branch of law enforcement officers in the area. If my memory serves, we even had a couple of Texas Rangers (not baseball players) in attendance.

I am thinking more about his generation than him at this time. While I am reading a book about the moral decay in the USA that took root in the 60s and lingers to today, I think back on the world which my grandfather helped to shape. Or, at the very least, that he was privileged to enjoy. Though his generation was not perfect, they, as a whole, remind me of an ideal time period which we remember fondly when we look at Norman Rockwell paintings.

If you live in the US and have access to someone from the “Greatest Generation,” take some time to sit down with them and learn about a different world. Though I don’t think I could live without a computer, it would be fun to step back in time to visit the world that they knew intimately. Obviously the War was a tough time, but the US before and shortly after the War was a special place to be.