On Easter Sunday a much of a which of a wind came up and blew all the ice out of the lake. Now we have the sound of the water back and boats are out fishing and last night we heard the loons. It must be spring. People are moving around again. We've had several full houses at the B&B in the last two weeks. And the night before Easter thanks to the fact that I sacrificed sweet potatoes and offered them up in an awesome pie, Maine won the National Hockey Championship. By the end of the Frozen Four I was beginning to catch on to the rules and the jargon. Hockey is one of those areas where "rudeness" is a tricky concept to define. It's kind of like the halls at Slidell High during class change except that the players carry sticks. "Checking" sounds like something you would do with chess pieces, but no, it means body slamming someone into the railing. The amazing thing about hockey to a southerner is the fact that they're doing anything at all while skating. At work I'm trying to get a project done before the JazzFest vacation. The web team, consisting of a graphics person, a public relations content person, and a programmer person (me), is putting together an online course catalog for associate degree level courses from the seven UMaine campuses and the seven technical colleges. It's not the real thing yet, just a proof of concept, a working demo. Users will go to the site to search for a course by location, provider, time offered, etc. For this purpose I designed an Oracle database and I'm writing CGI scripts(programs in C with embedded Oracle language in them) that search the database and output the reports to the web browser. Our model for the project is Western Governors University which is not a school itself, but a broker of courses offered by a number of schools in the midwest. Universities have to get into the market of offering courses online and at a distance because that's the direction things are taking. The future of education is asynchronous. The schools participating in this catalog (the guvnah tolem they hadda do it) are so threatened by tuition comparisons that the actual project will probably never see the light of day, but hey, the demo will look good on my resume.
In the midst of pre-vacation busyness, we took this blue sky Sunday off and went to Portland. We wanted to see the new public market which is a wonderful glass and beams space full of vegetables, fresh breads, pastries, coffees and such. The vaulted ceiling looks like a big post & beam barn. With 65,000 people, Portland is Maine's biggest city. It's about two hours drive from Unity.
My friends Anita & Malissa sent me this cute book that says You Know You're Drinking Too Much Coffee When...