New Teaching Career!

Hi everyone!

I just wanted to give you a quick update on what has been happening the past few weeks and what my plans are for the near future. So, I am finishing my student teaching in Keizer, Oregon. I only have one final project and two weeks to go!!! I can't believe it! Then I will be preparing for a summer program for gifted students for three weeks in July called Awesome Academic Adventures (A3). It will be at Willamette and I get to teach three week-long sessions on ceramics, flight and printmaking. The weeks are themed earth, wind and water and I pretty much got to choose exactly what I wanted to teach! That doesn't happen very often in the teaching field, so I am taking full advantage of it and packing my lessons full of things I find interesting.

After A3 I will be getting ready for.....(drum roll please...) my REAL JOB! Yes, I got a job in the real world! It is the perfect position...I will be teaching kindergarten in a dual immersion program...which pretty much means English speakers learn Spanish and Spanish speakers learn English. The program is set up so 50% of the instruction is given in Spanish and 50% in English. I will be doing all of my instruction in Spanish, because my students will get the English portion of their day during pullouts like PE, Music and so on.

I am so excited to teach kindergarten and to be able to keep up my Spanish language skills. This school puts all of my interests into one position!!! Not to mention the school is located about 2 miles from James' apartment and about 4 miles from where he works. We actually might get to see each other once in a while :)

Here is a link to the school web site...if you want to read more about it!

http://www.csd509j.net/lincoln/

I will be posting pictures from summer school and my new school when I get them! Enjoy!

~Jessi

My First Apartment

I made this video to show off how I'm doing and what I've been up to. Enjoy.

IX Web Hosting

For those of you looking for a place to hold your web presence, I've got a great suggestion for you. I have found a company called IX Web Hosting. I base my endorsement on three criteria:

1) Price: They are one of the most affordable business around. At their prices ANYONE can start up their own website.

2) Features: Their service includes all the features you could want. They support all the different web languages, have all the databases you could ever want to use and many more tools. I'm not sure about their tracking tools because I use Google Analytics.

3) Speed: Though I would say content in the number 1 criteria for a good website, speed of downloading the site is at least top 3. IX's location of their servers allows users to download your site information at great speeds.

Based on my experience with Yahoo! and Go Daddy, IX is a much better product for web developers.

Real Life

It's official! I'm out on my own living in the "real" world. I graduated on Sunday and it was quite the event. My whole family showed up and made sure to cheer extra loud. Afterwards most of the time was spent hanging out and packing up my stuff. Now I'm in an apartment with absolutely zero furniture. I'm sitting on the floor up again the wall right now. Thankfully, I have a mattress or life would be really tough. The best part about where I live is that it's only a mile away from work. Today I jogged to work and I think I'm going to make a habit out of that. That should give me an excuse to eat as much Mac and Cheese as I want.

Jessi also graduated on Mother's Day and is finishing up her student teaching. So she still has AC, heat, wireless internet and furniture. She is also still interviewing with schools and is very hopeful to land an excellent job. I know she'll be a great catch.

Digg.com - Worth Checking Out

Have you heard of Digg.com? It is worth checking out. Basically, it's a news aggregation website. Here's how it works: people surf the web and find interesting news articles. Then, they submit the URL along with a short description to Digg. Then users can view the site. They can also add comments about the article. Finally, users can "digg" (this cool, as in, "I dig it") the article or bury (This is lame) it. If the article gets Dugg enough, it will make it to the front page as something popular.

Why is it Digg instead of Dig? Well, according to an interview with the founders it's simply because Dig.com was already taken. Personally, I think they lucked out by spelling it weird because in some ways it makes it easier to remember.

Here's how I use it: I have Google Desktop with the Google Sidebar. One of my gadgets is a website feeder (RSS basically) with Digg on the list. As articles make it to the front page (again, only the popular ones), they pop up on my sidebar. I can then pick and choose what I want to read. I have actually found that these articles make it to my sidebar faster than if I only go with regular news sources because of the speed at which people see and vote on these. It also naturally screens out items that are unimportant or poorly done.

So, give Digg a big thumbs up. You should check it out and then we can become friends and share articles we find.

Job at HP

Well I did it. I found a job. It was a long search this year with many companies showing interest, but ultimately HP proved to be an excellent place for me. So, what do I get to do? I will be a marketing analyst in the printing division. You see, every month HP collects data from people who have opted in to share information about their printer usage. This is data such as how many pages you printed or how many times you hit cancel. All of this data is collected and stored, I'm sure, in some remote place. Then a team of outstanding individuals start analyzing the data to learn about customers habits - think of it as a type of CRM (Customer Relationship Management).

My job will be to simply help further that process by working on variables previously not fully integrated into the analysis. In plain English, it means I'll be creating a structure for the data to go into to make it easy for analysis. Accepting this job means I won't be returning back to California, but I will get to live in a smaller town that everyone says is just plain nice.

So, that's what I'll be up to for the next few years. It will be a ton of fun and I'm excited to start working and contributing to the greatness that is HP.

Fun in the Sun

Hi again,

It seems like I have a hard time getting on here to post updates on life. But it is definitely time to put something new up.

I have been job searching down in California, for elementary teaching positions. The process is slow but mostly painless. I have had two great interviews for two school districts and am waiting to hear back from them. I also applied to about 7 other districts and once again am waiting for positive feedback and invitations for interviews. I wish I had a job already, where have I heard that before?... oh, yeah, James wishes he had a job already too :)

James and I also had the oportunity to spend Spring Break with his family in California. On top of the job searching we had a fun filled week! The pictures are from a trip I took with James' mom to San Francisco for a day! I had my first trip to Chinatown and my first cable car ride! It was a blast! We also ate lunch at a little restaurant called the Pearl Orchid...I think? I would recommend it if you are playing in San Francisco for the day. We also stopped by a new hotel and learned about their environmentally friendly practices...it was really neat.

I hope you enjoy and I will keep you updated on the job search!

Jessi

Mr.Bean Guide to Dating

It's always important to get dating right. This clip explains it all. I hope you enjoy it because it is very funny.

Same 'ol Same 'ol

It nice to see that somethings life don't change.

Since my childhood, plenty of things have changed. For one, I'm in college finishing up graduate school. I'm over 600 miles from my parents. I still have no money, but that's besides the point. Of course, that does point to me being right in the middle of my job search. Also, I have girlfriend - the coauthor of this blog. So you see, on many major levels my life has changed a lot.

Currently, my girlfriend is away for the weekend job searching which leaves me all alone. So, I went to GameStop to buy a game only to find they were out. Not only that, the sales person there actually tried to discourage me from getting it. I know he thought he was doing me a favor, but please. There is only one person who is an expert in the games I want to play and that's me. I understand trying to sell me something else, but he didn't even do that. Sorry for the digression, where was I? Oh yeah.

So, I'm at school, alone, looking for something to do. Since I can't play my would be game, I decide to watch a movie. Here I where I come full circle: In the midst of all these changes, it's nice to know that one thing remains constant. Like I said, I was looking for a movie so I could relax (and write this). They all looked so good, but I ended up going with the tried and true. That's right I'm watching Top Gun right now. It is such a great movie! If you haven't seen it, you must. Even if you have seen it, go ahead and watch it again. You'll thank me. I've watched Top Gun so many times I can reenact the whole thing. When I was a kid, this was my favorite movie which I watched at least once a day. I'll admit I don't watch it as often as I used to, but it's still my favorite.

That's it for today. Just a little update on what's going on with me.

Adobe to put Photoshop online

I saw this article the other day:

http://blogs.pcworld.com/techlog/archives/003811.html

In the wake of Google announcing they will be selling their application software to corporations, Adobe has come out with some of their own big news. According to the article, Adobe is developing a software program to be used over the web that will act very similar to their current Photoshop program. Users will be able to access and use this program for free.

To me, this is a very interesting bit of news. Does Adobe think that's where software is headed? Is this the way software is headed? If I remember correctly, Microsoft is also going to be coming out with a web app that interfaces very nicely with their current Office software too.

It sure would seem that software is headed in that direction. It makes sense on a bunch of levels for the company. No packaging costs, no shipping costs, no distribution hassles, no sharing revenue with retailers and they can easily update and fix the software. Those are all extremely nice cost savings, which if passed on to the consumers make the products just that much more attractable.

Personally, I'd like to see programs head in that direction. Then I could have multiple computers and not have to worry about my information being where I need it. Plus it would mean I always have the latest and greatest solution at a reasonable cost. Very cool. Anyways, interesting food for thought.

Job Searching

Right now I'm in the midst of my job search. During my process I discovered a neat site. It's called:

www.indeed.com

It pulls from the top 10 job search sites on the web and displays the most relevant positions to your query. The site uses Google search technology, and has a nice clean display. If you're in the hunt for a job, I highly recommend checking this site out. Even if you're not looking for a job it's pretty fun to do a search to see what's available in your area. Happy hunting.

NetFlix Instant Online

http://slashdot.org/articles/07/01/16/1253255.shtml

It's nice to know when I get something right. A year ago I said the way Netflix should improve their product is to create some sort of program that people can download and then watch movies on their computer. That way they wouldn't have to deal with DVDs and customers getting upset about having to wait for their movie.

According to this article, Netflix has done just that. You can download their applet and then stream video onto your computer. It sounds like they're just testing it out with a few customers, but I'm pretty sure this is going to work and soon everyone will have access to this.

If anyone at Netflix is reading this, I still need a job and I thought of this idea a year ago. Furthermore, Netflix put out an offer of $1,000,000 to anyone who can come up with a better, which I'm going to be working on this semester.

Back on topic. This move for Netflix makes complete sense. They save money because they don't have shipping costs or replacement DVD costs. Customers can watch movies faster and don't have to worry about the DVD being damaged. Furthermore, with all the new technology coming out it's becoming easier and easier to put this content onto your TV. Image, you could by a Mac Mini, download the program, connect it to your TV and now you can watch DVD's, downloaded video (music, pictures, etc), play computers (oh wait, it's a Mac) and all sorts of other activities. Isn't technology fun?!

Michigan

This last holiday I had the pleasure of visiting my Dad's side of the family in Michigan and it was a blast! We played tons of games, watched lots of movies and traveled all over the place. We were there for Christmas and stayed all the way through to the new year. Most of our travels involved seeing family members, we we also got some quality shopping in and visited the Ford Museum. That museum is amazing! If you're ever in the area, I recommend checking it out. Some highlights are:

• The car JFK got shot in (by the way, did you know he wasn't the last president you use the car?!)
• The bus Rosa Parks refused to give her seat up on
• The Chair President Lincoln got shot in (it happened in the Ford Theater)
• The picture is of one of the largest trains I have ever seen

Another amazing part was the weather. Surprisingly, it was beautiful the entire time. As a matter of fact, it was constantly one or two degrees warmer that it was in California. But don't think of a second it's global warming because this is the exact same time that the Denver Airport got shut down because of the horribly bad weather. Over all, it was a wonderful trip.

Sony's PlayStation 3

Sony has recently come out with their PS3 and quite honestly, I'm still trying to figure out why they're allowed to stay in that business. They ran into the classic problem of being the top dog, relaxed a little bit, and is now getting walloped by the competition. However, even if Microsoft and Nintendo weren't around, Sony has made it a point to mess up in as many areas as possible. Every time a read a report, they've done something new wrong. For the fun of it, I compiled a list of some of the things I've heard:

• Delays in development of the new system out (I know, lots of high tech firms do this, but it doesn't make it right).
• Promised features they couldn't deliver on.
• Cut back production estimates multiple times.
• Doesn't have perfect backwards compatibility with older games.
• There are very few games to choose from, especially relative to the competition.
• The system is extremely expensive, again especially relative to the competition.
• Their big claim to innovation are the graphics, which game developers aren't taking advantage of yet, but even still this is more of incremental improvement rather than true innovation (read "Leading the Revolution" by Gary Hamel to get more on this).
  

Historically, when companies have issues like these, they fall hard and fast. Just look at the ups and downs of Boeing and Airbus and you'll see what I mean. It amazes me that consumers would line up and fight to get this system. Is it really that cool? Everything I've read would suggest no. On the bright side, I believe the free market system is going to work and Sony has a very high chance of falling to third place in the gaming industry. I believe this because of simple math. Sony has sold 400,000 units, Nintendo has sold 2,000,000 units and Microsoft has sold 7,000,000 units. Furthermore, with the shortages of PS3's and Wii's, X-box sales have picked up again. By the end of the year, Nintendo plans on having another 1,000,000 units out. Sony on the other hand, wants to have another 600,000 units out by the end of the year - though analysts say because of the production process it might be closer to another 400,000 units. Oh yeah, don't forget that Sony and Microsoft lose money on each system and Nintendo makes money on each system.

From what it looks like, Sony can't produce enough units to catch up even if every single one of them sells. Knowing gamers, they're going to jump systems rather than wait for Sony to get their act together- which is already evidenced by the increase in X-box sales. It really is not looking good for Sony on plain raw numbers, which they deserve for all the mistakes they've made. Though I must admit, it would have been nice to see them put up a bigger fight against Microsoft. There's nothing like seeing two titans go after each other. Oh well. Perhaps in 6 years we'll see a better effort by Sony when the new wave of systems come out.

Getting Ready for Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is just around the corner. I'm excited because it means I get to go home for the weekend. I'm going to get to hang out with my family and just have a good time. If I get lucky, I'll make it over to my cousin's house and try his Nintendo Wii. Then, don't forget the loads of food I'll get to consume as well. Now all I have to do it get there.

I'm driving, which doesn't seem so bad, except it's an 11 hour drive. It really takes time to prepare yourself for such a trek. I must eat well, sleep well and mentally prepare myself for sitting and focusing for so long. I remember my first time was really difficult because I simply wasn't ready for it, but after that I've been fine with the long trip. Here are somethings I do to have a successful trip:

• I eat well the night before, really well the morning before and light the rest of the trip. This way I've got the energy I need.
  
• I get 8 hours of sleep TWO nights before and 8 hours the night before. This way I'm well rested.
• I listen to talk radio most of the way. I find it gives me something to focus on.
• I open the windows periodically to let fresh air into the car.
• I leave early, because I'm a morning person, and I skip a lot of the traffic.

With that, I'm off to start preparing myself for the long haul. See you soon family.

Apple Teams up with Airlines

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2006/nov/14ipod.html

Apple just announced they will be working with select airlines to allow their iPod to be perfectly compatible with the players on the back of seats in airplanes. This way you can take your travel companion with you a watch it on a slightly larger screen. This idea is brilliant, but I think so because of thought of it a couple years ago. I'll admit, my idea was slightly different, but the concept remains.

My first experience with the airplane's small screen was during a trip to Italy. It was a blast watching all the different movies and it really helped time pass. I started thinking about all the different kinds of content airplanes could buy. My first idea was the "ESPN Classics" series. Passengers could watch their favorite games and competitions while traveling. Just imagine watching all the Ali fights on the way to a business negotiation. I liked the idea because each episode stands alone, doesn't take two plus hours and are entertaining. I could easily see this extending to other favorite TV series (Simpsons, CSI, Law and Order, etc). It really was grand hopes for the airline industry. Right now most of them were mainly competing on price and there aren't many winners in that game. This would allow an airline to start competing on entertainment - something business might be willing to pay more if it increases employee satisfaction.

I'll admit, this is a much better idea because now passengers can watch exactly what they want and the airlines don't have to invest millions into new content. Very smart. Good job Apple. Of course, Apple made it a point to partner with so many different companies that it won't lead to a distinct competitive advantage for one company. Hopefully though, it will give them a more overt way to distinguish themselves from low-cost carriers.

Bathroom Remodel Project

This weekend proved to be a busy one. I'm taking a project management course, and part of it is to manage an actual project (makes sense). I chose to help a friend remodel his bathroom floor. This type of project is what's known as a "marathon project" where we worked numerous hours to get it all done in a weekend.

The reason for the remodel stemmed from an uneven and squishy corner on the floor. As we pulled up the layers of linoleum, we realized that a fix had been done before, and so we set out to correct the work. Instead of boring you with the details, I thought I'd share some things I learned from the project.

1) Projects never go exactly as planned - even if you plan for it.
2) Putting in 12 hours of physical labor a day can get tiring REALLY fast.
3) Toilets are surprisingly easy to replace, but still read a tutorial or two first.
4) Floor patterns are EXTREMELY important (guys: pay attention to this).
5) Start with small projects to learn what you're doing - inviting experts to help doesn't hurt either.

Those are some of my lessons learned. What do you think? Want to add some of your own lessons? Go ahead.

Oregon Weather is Back

It has been a beautiful fall in Oregon this year. There has been very little rain up until the beginning of this week. We really have been lucky. Each football game we went to was nice (ie. no rain and not cold) and I haven't had to bust out my warm jackets yet. Now as the rain starts rolling in, we get to pull out our umbrellas and rain jackets. Though the nice part about it raining is that it actually warms up here because of the cloud coverage (this, by the way, is why is rarely snows where I am in Oregon).

In other news, I have a flag football game today, which will be in the rain. I'm excited to play. The best part is that we'll be playing on field turf, so I don't have to worry too much about my footing and only have to focus on catching the ball. It's pretty fun playing with a bunch of my friends because we all get to play an important roll. That's about all that's happen on this front. We're excited for Thanksgiving and are working hard to learn as much as we can in our final year!

Oh yeah, the picture has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. It's one that my brother put together based off of a picture we took some time ago. I think it's pretty neat.

November goodness

Hi,


My work sample on Food Chains is going very well. We are officially half way finished, yay! I have about two more weeks before the final assessment and then I will be returning to 1st and 2nd grade...I really miss the younger kids!


The pictures are of the beautiful fall trees and some pumpkin carving fun my roommate, Cheryl, and I had for Halloween!



Also, more good news, I am looking forward to celebrating my 23rd birthday at the end of this month on the 27th. I will be good and stuffed from Thanksgiving and then I will get to eat even more cake!


Love, Jessi

Firefox 2 Review

Mozilla just came out with the next generation of their web browser: Firefox 2. I've downloaded it and been playing around with the different features. I'm not an extreme user, which means I haven't pushed it to it's limits, so this is more for the average user. For starters, I love the tab browsing. I downloaded IE 7 once it came out in beta because of the tab features (ironically, I just updated that too and it's now freaking out) and really like it. Below are some items I have noticed

Tab Browsing
You can put the tabs in any order you like. As a person who likes order, this is really nice. I can open my emails and move them all the way over to the side. I can do this even after I open some other pages. You can't do that in IE 7 (yet - I imagine). To close a tab you used to have to go all the way to the right of the browser, which was a pain. Now they're within each tab - it's clean and convenient.

Adblock
One of my favorite features is Adblock. Lets back up a step first. With Firefox you can download extensions. Some of them are fun and others are useful. One really useful extension is Adblock which does exactly as its name implies. It blocks flash (or animated) ads. So when you visit Yahoo! they aren't there. What's even better is that because of the way the extension works they don't even get downloaded, thus speeding up your browsing experience. IE has a wanna bee version of this, but it isn't near as cool because you have to select the ads you want it to block.

Google's Web Accelerator
Unfortunately, Google's Web Accelerator doesn't work anymore. I enjoyed seeing how much of my life I'm saving. Of course, I did notice that it took me 3 weeks to save 1 hour and then I was saving at least an hour once a week. So, I'm not sure how accurate it was, but the placebo affects were great. I'm sure Google is working on fixing this as I'm writing.

Spelling check
Okay, this is my absolute favorite feature. There is a built in spelling checker. When I spell something wrong (like on this post), a dotted red line appears under the word. It's doesn't auto-correct it like Word so I can go back and try again (Side question: Do you ever feel that Word is so good it actually makes you dumber because you don't have to catch your spelling errors?). If I can't get it, I can right click and a list of options come up. This feature works anywhere there is a text box. I bet Microsoft wished they had thought of this one first.

No Random Cursor
Before Firefox 2, the browser had a cursor problem. You see, when I read something, I like to highlight where I read because often I get distracted and have to look away. By highlighting the lines as I read, I can easily find my spot and continue. When I used to click on the text, the cursor would show up indicating I could type something there. I tried writing something a couple of times and it didn't work. Now all it did was annoy me by blinking. To make matters worse, the cursor didn't appear in text areas where I was supposed to type! This is still the case in many text areas, but at least the cursor doesn't blink at me any more.

Cool Looks
The browser just plain looks cool. Sometimes, that's all it takes.

That's my review. I think it is worth the try. If you want, you can learn more and download Firefox 2 at this site:

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

Let me know how it works out.