Tom Caswell

Listen. Share. Learn.

Category: Random Thoughts

  • Wife: What do you do all day? Me: It’s complicated

    I decided to track myself for a couple hours to see if I can connect the various activities I do in an average day. Here goes…

    My initial plan was to review some proposals within the Teacher Education Group for the 2009 AECT conference. For anyone who is going into academia, I highly recommend signing up to review proposals. A good way to understand what reviewers are looking for is to be one. As I login to the AECT site I realize that they have a jobs section. My MIT job ends in 4 months, so I decide to take a quick detour and post my resume. But rather than allowing me to post my newly polished resume as a PDF, the AECT site asks me for all the same information, piece by piece, in little forms. So I do some quick copying and pasting. Except it asks me to fill in the number of employees at each company I’ve worked for. Grr… How many employees are at MIT? Google search. How many employees at Utah State University? Google search. How about Redlands Unified School District? Another Google search. And at the end (step 5 of 6) it asks me for a goal statement. GRRR… I don’t have time for this. No one is ever going to look for my resume on AECT.org anyway… Wait! I did on of those when I filled out my LinkedIn profile. Copy… paste… done. After about 30 minutes I go back to reading proposal #1. Just then, my boss at Notre Dame instant messages me with a question about a session for an upcoming conference. But someone else messages her and, poof, she’s gone. Then I get another IM from someone. Then my wife calls me back. Another 30 minutes later I’m back to reviewing proposal #1. It is unclear and poorly written, and I think I did the AECT attendees a favor by rejecting it. As I start on the second proposal, I see a tweet from Doug Holton to Andy Carvin on Apple in education. I’m curious to see that two seemingly unrelated twits I follow on Twitter know eachother, so I click the link. The site is call themacsucks.com, and makes the claim that macs are too expensive for tight education budgets. I agree, but it’s an oversimplification, so I take the bait and add a quick comment. Then I realize that for all it’s posts, themacsucks.com has a pagerank of zero. So I am basically commenting to myself and one other guy who admits he is not an educator. It’s been an hour and a half, and once again I’m reading AECT proposal #2.

    Some would say that I am easily distracted. I prefer to call it “flexible.” This is what most days are like as I work on my PhD, my job, and everything in between.

  • What really fits on those tiny cell phone screens?

    Ever wondered what your blog looks like on a mobile phone? Here is a simulator for the Opera cell phone browser: http://www.opera.com/mini/demo/

  • Imitation = Flattery

    After 3+ years of blogging I finally got around to updating my boring, blue theme. I looked at dozens, maybe hundreds of themes, but they all look pretty lame. So I finally decided to use the same theme that my friend is using on his blog. I hate to be a copycat, but as far as I can tell this is the only decent looking free WordPress theme. So I’ll call it reuse — that always makes copying stuff sound more legitimate. And besides, they say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

  • Why I like Amazon.com

    I ordered a MacBook pro a few weeks ago. The best thing about the new models is that they made the price of the older models drop like a rock. So I took advantage of a great price on Amazon plus a $150 rebate, which made brought the total price to $1550. It’s a lot of money, but a really great laptop. Somehow I justified it.

    When it arrived I noticed a small cosmetic defect that eventually bugged me enough that I finally decided to do something about it. I could have sent it in for repair, but since I just bought it on Amazon.com it was easier to exchange it for a new one. Amazon doesn’t do exchanges — they just tell you to you return the item and buy it again. So I ordered the second one, copied everything over from the defective one, and send it back. Easy as pie.

    When the $150 rebate check arrived for the first laptop, I figured there would be trouble. The price on the laptop had dropped $100 by the time I bought the second one, so I figured they wouldn’t let me keep the rebate. I clicked the “Call me now” link and an Amazon rep called me 10 seconds later. I spoke to someone with a U.S. accent and asked what to do with the rebate check. She said I could cash it, and was also able to reimburse me for the cost of shipping and insurance when I sent the defective laptop back.

    Try doing this with any other online retailer. I dare you. This is why I buy everything on Amazon.

  • No apologies here…

    I’ve always thought it strange when bloggers apologize for not blogging for a while. Like the whole world was reading just their blog and theirs alone. Sitting there, refreshing the page — hoping for a post. The way I see it, I’m not syndicated, so I don’t owe anyone anything. Besides, if I post a big “I’m back” article, think of the pressure that creates for me. What if I get busy right after that? So, yeah, it’s been a while. I may start blogging more. Or I may not. 🙂