The Redheaded Penguin

Random link of the day for the Holiday season… especially good for those that have had to deal with a research IRB before…

CAREB-ACCER Blog » Santa IRB

[update: appears that the link is no longer working... and so goes the web...]

Seems like only a couple of days ago that the year began, and now here we are at the end of 2007. It’s been a few days since I posted anything, so I figured it was time. The semester ended pretty uneventfully for me, though some of my students might disagree. Overall they did well and in a few days I’ll get to see how they rated me on the lovely course evaluation forms. I’m sure some were happy, some not-so-happy. That’s just the way things go.

I also finished up, for the most part, the on-line annual report system for a 2nd college at Texas State. So far, 2 colleges in the University are now using an on-line system I wrote as part of the annual reporting and review process. Most departments are using the course evaluation analysis program I helped re-write for the testing center on campus a few years ago as well. Looks like I’ve actually been more of a software developer there than I ever intended. I guess it just goes to me general approach of seeing a problem and wanting to find an efficient solution to it. I still have a few more personal projects I need/want to finish up before year’s end, but I should be able to do it. It also looks like I might be implementing the on-line evaluation/reporting system for a couple of additional colleges in ‘08, so we’ll see how that goes.

I’ve been trying to clean my office at home for two days now, and really haven’t made much progress. In fact, I’m taking a break from that right now to try and get things done. But, I’m letting myself get easily distracted I think. As I mentioned in a previous post, I dove head first into the blogosphere a few weeks ago and am now subscribed to more blog feeds than I can shake a stick at… though why I’d shake a stick at blog feeds I’m not sure, but anyway… Some are political focused, others technology focused, but strangely none are psychology focused… not sure what that means, but maybe I’ll add some in the coming weeks as if I don’t have enough of them already. Chances are I’ll be subscribing to most of them in the coming weeks because I’m not that interested in what they have to say… seriously, how many people outside of “the valley” are really interested in the social events of the bloggers there? They end up making themselves feel good by talking about themselves a lot, but in the end there isn’t that much there to be honest. More and more I’m realizing how out of touch with the “average” person they really are.

And really, the same goes for many of the political blogs that are out there. Seriously, when blog polls start to show Ron Paul with a 30 point lead over other Republican candidates you know something isn’t adding up. I know he has a fair amount of support and has done some amazing things in terms of fund raising recently, but I seriously doubt he’ll get the Republican nomination in the end. Then there’s the whole Huckaboom thing going around which is likely to turn into a Huckabust in the coming months. Sure he’s attracting some evangelical voters, but I don’t think it’ll be enough to sustain his candidacy for another year… big question is whether he has enough momentum to make it through the primaries to get the nomination. But this isn’t supposed to be a political post…those are coming later.

I’ll try to post a year end round up in the coming days, so we’ll see if it happens…

Okay, I couldn’t resist going ahead and posting one version of the new penguin… still not happy with it, but think I’m getting closer to what I want in a general sense… then I’ll have to work on smoothing out the lines and such, but hey, I never claimed to be an artist…

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Well, Ruth got her new phone a few days back and simply loves it. She got a fancy red phone that does all sorts of neat stuff. For the price, I wanted it to make toast too, but apparently they haven’t added that feature to it yet. Still, it’s a really nice phone and I’m glad she likes it (It does make sounds like a video game at times though…)

I’ve been drawing some different penguins and think I’ve finally settled on a version that I’ll be happy with. It’s pretty different from the ones I posted previously. I might post one or two in the next day or two, but still have to wait a week or so before I’ll have time to redesign the site to work with the penguin theme. (Chances are the post with the penguin(s) won’t be here, so be sure to check out my blog to see if I post it!) Who knows, if I really like the theme when I get done with it I might submit it somewhere to become an official WordPress theme. Of course, then I’d have to support it for other people, which I’m not sure I want to commit to doing at this point… maybe if I win the lottery…

Now, I’ve got a big stack of papers waiting to be graded that I have to get back to. The end of the semester is here and I’m ready for it to be over…

When I setup this blog a few weeks ago I really didn’t have any ideas on what to call it. I thought about “Marc’s Corner”, but that just didn’t sound right to me. Plus, Ruth felt it sounded like I was in trouble and had to go stand in the corner all the time. Then I came up with something about “rambling” because anyone that knows me is aware that I can start rambling and going on and on and on about things. So, “Marc’s Rambles” was there as a placeholder… but I still wanted something more “original”.

And so now we have the new name, at least the new name as of tonight: The Redheaded Penguin.

Now, with the new name in place, I don’t think the current theme is going to continue working as well as I would like, so once the semester is over in a couple of weeks I’ll begin tweaking the theme more and more to fit what I want. I’m also working on developing a “logo” to go along with the whole redheaded penguin idea… here are a couple of that I came up with tonight (well last night since it’s now early in the morning technically). I’m not “happy” with either, but then I never really considered myself much of an artist. I’ve got a few more ideas to try and sketch out as well, so we’ll see what happens… my goal is to have it all done and ready to go by Jan 1… we’ll see what it finally ends up looking like… click the “thumbnails”t the right if you want to see them “full” size…

And, as always, comments are welcome…

Well, the month to give me presents is here! Yes, I know it’s a little self-centered, but this month consists of my anniversary, my birthday, and Christmas. All very good reasons to give me gifts. As usual, some folks have started asking for my “wish list”. I’ve got a few things on it, but as of yet don’t have it complete enough to share… things end up ranging from a convertible laptop/tablet PC to kitchen knives with some books and other odds and ends thrown in. Okay, so it does tend to have a tech/gadget bias to it, but that’s me…

So, that’s it for this entry… if you are interested in giving me a gift, feel free to comment or get in touch with me