A snowstorm today canceled school, both for the kids and for me. I met a job candidate for a position in the biology department, but otherwise stayed home. We got around 10 inches of snow over the course of the day. The snow tapered off by mid afternoon and I went out to shovel. I got most of the driveway clear. Ugh. I hate shoveling snow.
I've saw a reference to 
RSVP yesterday and have been addicted ever since. I managed to beat it today. A great game.
Last night was ADTC. There was a pitched battle over letting members have blogs. The folks I'm working with on the ELNA site think I'm a nazi for wanting to make sure people can distinguish between "official" ELNA pages and the rest of the site, but some of the ADTCers think I haven't gone far enough by allowing people only to post in their own blogs: they think no-one should be able to post anything unless they have the approval of the whole committee. I pointed out that no-one thinks that a blog posting at yahoo.com suggests that the posting represents the opinions of Yahoo as a company, but this person was offended that I would make such a comparison. There are still a fair number of people who don't get blogs -- just like people didn't get email at first. It's changing rapidly and, in a year or so, I don't think I'll get the same arguments anymore. I got off with putting a disclaimer on the page. (At least I hope that's enough). I posted something in my ADTC blog this morning.
We began the bioinformatics lab a few days ago. I've been relatively satisfied with the outcome so far -- at least as far as the students are concerned. Randy and I (and Robbie) have spent a lot of time down in the labs helping the students. The performance of the TAs is extremely uneven. A few do OK, but some are absolutely terrible. When I arrived in one class yesterday, the students didn't seem to have even the vaguest idea of what they were supposed to be doing. I visited each of the groups of students and, eventually, when it was clear that they were all lost, I took a few minutes to give them the 5 minute overview of the lab. Of course some of the students are purely focused on leaving as quickly as they can. I think I may try to emphasize with my students the idea of dedicating a particular amount of time to the writing class next semester -- maybe through the use of "learning contracts" or something. I'm torn because when students like that leave, the class probably gets better, although it exerts peer pressure on many students who feel stupid for "wasting their time" on class when other students are already "done".
I haven't found time to work on the EUSA site lately. The most serious challenge confronting us has been finding a new hosting service. The current service EUSA is using indicated in their literature that you'd have to spend a lot more money to get a mysql database (which we'll need for drupal). I got Rob to call them and ask whether they'd be willing to give us one, rather than have us move to a different service. It turns out that they have a special package for non-profits, which they don't advertise, but which will save us money over what we're currently paying and get us the additional services we need. SCORE! I love being able to delegate unpleasant tasks (like calling people on the phone) to competent people.
Tomorrow, there is a "town-and-gown" dinner at the Chancellor's residence. And a cub-scout meeting at our house, and a birthday party in Northampton, and who-knows-what-all. Bad craziness, as HST would have said. Hopefully, I'll be able to find time for a little SC. Maybe.
StevenBrewer