This is my first class in a 2 year regimen to get my teaching credential. I proves to be a very tricky classroom environment; teaching teachers. There is a sense that I need to be skeptical of the education system when I am taught that the system is broken. How does this translate to the part of the system that I am in(NAT UNIV) to learn to teach and enter the system as a teacher. My mond gets caught right into the systems thinking I apply to all other endevours, the global system is broken and this is just one corner of that system. It happens to be a dense intersection of the foundations of society.
I am wondering if Kimo's teaching style includes getting us used to all the accronyms we find in the beauracracy.
It is very interesting to have a teacher teaching teacher candidates the loopholes of the system.

This is late, but better formed. It has been 4 months since I have written to this site and I have gained perspective on the web and beyond. I am starting a teaching credential program at National University near by in San Jose at Night and have been taking care of our, now 11 month old, son Taylor during the day. When Taylor naps I have been busy building a salvage woodshop in our garage. It has been very fulfilling building on the roots of my Grandfather's woodshop/garage, while inside raising the next generation of our family with Amy!
I stayed particularly close to home and close to my thoughts this holiday season. It was a strange pull on my emotions to witness our floundering economy, and to have "buy EVERYTHING" blasted into every sensory input for the entire month(1.5 mo.?) of December. But It is easier for me since the 00's were my first TV free decade! This New Years started a new era for us. We are learning how to manage a family together, start businesses and generally be more efficient and effective both individually and as parents(who are going to have a walking talking toddler in a few months!). Strange as change often is, there is a theme of simplicity that seems to ring through all of it, almost on its own. So I maintain that if I keep my mind on simplicity, the puzzles of change will work out.

This is the first piece that I have made specifically for sale on Etsy. It represents a large step for me in developing my business concepts for Plumbob. I am very happy with how this piece turned out and I hope someone enjoys using it sometime in the future. When I create any piece, I work from a shop full of parts that are forgotten and would otherwise be banished to the landfill. My shop is like a painters palette, and I take great joy in finding the right pieces to the puzzle I am working on. It is hugely satisfying to see a piece take shape and discover different elements that are sometimes purely chance. For example, This incense holder is completed by the cone incense when placed on top to burn, it just feels and looks right to me.

Something I have been meaning to do for a long time now is replace the light fixture in our playroom. I found the old one in the garage rafters years back and decided I liked it's dungeon-like wood and brass style. It had these funky yellow cracked glass light covers that were just an accident waiting to happen now that the room has become our kiddy playroom. So I created this piece that I lagged bolted to the ceiling so that it should never come crashing down even in an earthquake. This was my first light fixture and I learned a lot making it. My father-in-law helped me wire it up and I gained tons on new knowledge from an electrical guru. It was so much fun to have Amy help install it while Taylor watched and the flipping the switch for the first time. That day the room really began it's new life as playroom instead of a dining room. Check out the rest of the post for more info.

The theme of last week was 'knowing when to bend'. I was hell bent on making my living from designing and building Drupal websites. Except for the last few years every step of the way learning about drupal and web design in general was agonizing. The web is a place of great power and flexibility, but with all that comes a great variety in the way one can achieve a given goal. This ultimately is a very good thing, but to someone who is not innately able to look at and manipulate code, the innards of the web are a total nightmare for those of us who are used to having a few buttons to click to make something work. Drupal is getting ever closer to the dream, but simply having passion for the web and what we humans can do with such awesome connected computing power does not alone qualify one to be a builder of the web.