Archive for the 'CMA' Category
Protected: Response is time-dependant.
Monday, October 6th, 2008The people that committed from their team are pretty much all the goofy, fun-loving folks.
Friday, September 19th, 2008Spotted in the mess hall at 07:25AM on a recent Wednesday:
Natural wear pattern created by hand-sanding.
Friday, August 29th, 2008Indian summer is upon us. It’s the only summer we get here. This was the scene at 7PM last night at Ocean Beach.
And this was the somewhat exciting scene—it only happens once a year—this afternoon as our training ship made its way back to campus, fresh from a summer in the South Pacific and then in San Francisco for a drydock makeover. More to the point, this is me awkwardly trying to make conversation with coworkers and it rarely goes better than this:
Let me tell you how to navigate through the student records page.
Tuesday, August 26th, 2008The upside down bear can only mean one thing. *sigh* Summer is over.
Stop questioning “character and patriotism.”
Tuesday, August 19th, 2008Check out this monster sidewalk find. It was sitting on the corner of Noe and 19th streets, weighs about eighty pounds and has an auspicious future as the east wall centerpiece of my Maritime Academy office.
My anaconda don’t want none.
Saturday, August 16th, 2008Socializing has become less natural for me every year since college. Given a long enough exchange, meeting new people now requires me to confess that I work at a maritime academy in Vallejo. I have been experimenting with methods that prevent this from ending conversations.
On a cool night last week over cheap beer at some Mission District bar, I was doing my 2008 version of socializing with someone. The Academy eventually came up and this time it led to an inventory of nautical tattoos: she had two Popeye-style forearm anchors, a lobster on the bicep, something forgettable inside the lower lip, and a bunch of underwater stuff under her clothes. Then an 800 pound dog or something distracted me and that was that. Later, though, as is my custom, I let the episode get inside my head. When your life-changing decisions are another people’s personal aesthetics, is it time to find a new bar?
Instead of taking any kind of positive action, I think I’ll just keep screen printing useless postcards. Here’s the latest set, about San Francisco fast food, currently available at this place for approximately 1/500th of the cost required to make them.
The solutions were not very exciting.
Thursday, April 24th, 2008After 539 pages of final exams, 72 end of year emails, and too much Excel wrangling for a grad school dropout, the 2007/2008 CMA school year is done. In the final classroom for the final final on the last day, there was a bubbling surprise waiting for me in the middle of the room.
My very own novelty fish tank!
Fisch tank.
And now I am going to Cleveland.
Find out the simulated results for every single game.
Wednesday, March 19th, 2008Who will be the 2008 CMA commencement speaker, you ask? The more link contains all the answers you seek.
The Pope will be apologizing.
Tuesday, March 4th, 2008Here are the results from my Statics midterm:
The reverse bell curve. The ditch. The grave.
I spent a bunch of Sunday thinking about what this data really means. On the surface it seems like half my students get it and the other half don’t. I don’t really believe that, though. I keep pretty close tabs on my class and I think most of them are getting Statics. I think this data means that half of my students are good test-takers and the other half aren’t. And I think I’m still idealistic enough about education to believe that being a bad test-taker shouldn’t stop a student from being successful.
Of course many people might say that success should have nothing to do with exams at all. I’m not sure I totally believe that either. One of the most useful and least tangible things you get from engineering school is the confidence of finishing. Later on, you might learn how to actually engineer something. So good:I’m glad 14 people failed! If my 14 F students can find a way to improve their ability to solve highly irrelevant math problems under timed conditions, I believe they will have gained something significant. And if I can find a way to help my 14 F students get better at solving highly irrelevant math problems under timed conditions, then I will have achieved something, too.
Come for the speech, stay for the disinfectant.
Saturday, March 1st, 2008America’s election fever is so hot that even the Maritime Academy’s come down with a temperature. Cadet political action reached a one year high during student election week. A recent stroll across the major bulletin boards of campus revealed campaigns in the throes of various degrees of apathy.
Taking advantage of the carriage return feature of Microsoft Word, this candidate invoked the might of Nordic mythology. Although the office sought is perhaps a bit unclear, the candidate’s platform on flaming hammers is not.
Rejecting the slippery slope of university-printed campaign materials, this political poster explores the possibilities of an underused format. And with limited space to make a memorable impact, what could speak more to the people than a thoughtfully worded Post-it?
The senior from The Bronx misses the front end of a one and one.
Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008The annual Academy career fair took place yesterday. There were so many companies in attendance that the event overflowed from the gymnasium to the student center. That’s basically all the room we have here. Dressed in my steadily downgrading work clothes (jeans and homemade Willie Nelson tee-shirt for this non-teaching day), I took a few minutes after lunch to check it out.
It turned out to be one of those moments, like graduation or our arrival in Kobe last summer, that made me feel love for my job and the people involved with it. I found most of my seniors moseying around, dressed fancy, looking slightly uneasy. Here, in their quest for maritime employment between two Division III basketball nets, they suddenly seemed young. For a few moments, I was struck by the idea that I might be doing something here beyond amusing myself for twelve hours a week. And they all seemed very happy to see me.
Then, I walked to my office and read celebrity gossip on Yahoo.
Travel safely and we’ll see you again on Monday.
Monday, January 7th, 200809:00 on the first day of school and I’ve already made an ass out of myself. So I am teaching a class called Statics, which is kind of exciting because it’s the first real engineering course you get in engineering school and I enjoy having that kind of impact on college kids. I was under the impression that my class begins at 08:50, which would be true if I was teaching Thermodynamics.
What really surprised me is that nobody said anything for three minutes.
Looking for astronauts.
Thursday, January 3rd, 2008These writings are getting awfully negative. C.W.(formerly unhappily known as Freckles) pointed this out to me on a midnight bike ride to the sea and I think she’s right. Here are some positive thoughts to kick off the last even year of the decade.
-The grilled halibut at our 2008 faculty retreat was excellent.
-The biker I ran over last week insisted on a ride to 24th and Potrero instead of money for his broken foot.
-No class on Tuesday or Thursday this semester.
–CELLspace (where I screen print) is making me a spare key so I can come and go as I please. It could even be ready for the summer.
–The Mountain Goats on three consecutive nights at three different SF venues this winter.
-Ten predicted feet of snow at Tahoe this weekend.
-A too-good-to-be-true Kasper Hauser/Will Franken show at SF Sketchfest this January.
-Chance encounters at the no left turn sign at the intersection of 19th and Church streets.
–Double decker busses, killer tigers, and SPAM maps.
-BYOB with no corkage fee at Tajine. Lamb.
-The excitement back in my fitness goals, with inspiring expert instructors, personalized whole-body workouts, and the greatest outdoors in San Francisco.
-The U.S.P.S. Marvel superhero and America’s superlative stamps.
–Pitt 13 WVU 9
–Pitt 65 Duke 64
-End of semester emails from happy students.
-New neighbors, old penpals, family fans, calls from New York City, afternoons at Vesuvio.
-And of course: The Shanghai Dumpling King.