I teach. I teach a lot, even though it's not my day job. In the past twelve months I've taught two insurance courses and three university courses. I hear that that's a lot, although it doesn't feel as bad as it sounds.
One of my former students is moving to a nearby city. I've always had a good relationship with her - she's the teasing type that does it with a smile on her face so that you know it's good-natured. She's said some nice things about me to other people who know me, which is always appreciated, and I've always enjoyed dealing with her when our professional paths have crossed. Well, tomorrow she is moving, and she wanted to say goodbye.
She gave me this wonderful metal paperweight that's inscribed "Wisdom begins in wonder - Socrates" and a beautiful card. Wow. I was completely surprised. What a sweet and kind gesture.
The secret is that people like T. are exceptionally easy to teach. They are naturally curious and ask a lot of questions. They wonder why things are how they are and don't merely accept that they are that way. They have a sense of humour that complements their curiosity. Learning can be fun. For T., I'm convinced that it is - and because it's fun for me, too, we clicked.
These students are exceptionally rare. I've had some great students over the years that I've been teaching (seven, hard to imagine)... but a few really stick in one's head.
T., best of luck at your new job and in your new city. I'm only an email away.
I've been building custom kernels for most of my computers lately.
Yes... computers. Like many geeks, I have a few computers. Some of them are good, some of them not so good. They all do something.
canberra, my oldest so-called modern computer (and by modern I mean capable of running a *nix operating system), has been busy for two days now building a kernel. As I type this, it's rolling into hour 49 and it's still not done. The cool thing is that this modest computer (486sx25 with 32 MB of RAM and ISA slots only - no PCI or other such modernity!) is chugging along just fine. The metanetwork IRC network has a server on canberra, and it's still responding just fine without noticeable lag.
I almost threw canberra away once. As a Windows machine it wasn't much use anymore, so I dismantled it to scrap it. I never got around to finishing the project. When I discovered Linux and started getting curious about it, canberra was the only computer I had that was no risk to try Linux on, so I put it back together. I've upgraded it a little since then (added some RAM and a SCSI card, and more storage space) but it's essentially the same machine.
Not fast, but reliable. That's why it's still powered up. 201 days of uptime too! :)