I'm finally planting! about 1/2 way there.

I am sitting in the webmaster issue cue on Drupal.org waiting to see if I will be aggregated on Planet Drupal. I was going to write something once I was accepted, then noticed that I was getting click throughs from the issue que anyway, so decided to start here instead. This is a weird post for those of you who read this blog already. I have created a feed that only includes postings from this blog that are in the category 'drupal', and I am asking to be included in the Planet Drupal aggregator, which is currently 339 bloggers strong. I have had a Drupal login since 2002, at best guess. My current account is from about 3 years ago because for some reason I signed up again. At a Lullabot workshop in L.A., Webchick merged my two accounts, using the newest one since it had the most activity(not that I have a lot).

I salvage "waste" building materials and build home furniture and crafts, such as this picture frame, out of it. One of the beauties of the craft is in saving perfectly good materials from the landfill where it would become the next generation's problem. On a walk today, I saw this scene(picture) at a new development in our neighborhood. The typical building process is so wasteful, it makes my heart heavy to think about. At large scale "cookie-cutter" development, there is no room for mindfulness of resources. Waste is just factored into the cost of business. Whats worse is that new construction uses such crappy materials that not much of it is even worth salvaging. Most of my salvage comes from remodels and rebuilds. In these cases they are removing good, sturdy older wood and replacing it with laminates(particle board), flimsy aluminum and plastics.
This craft is one of symbolic beauty more than anything, and it is very satisfying. It is tough to want to build ones livelihood from it since it would be necessary that our building practices stay the same, not to mention it is logistically tough. Financially it wouldn't necessarily be impossible if one found their niche among the population that could afford to purchase it. But again, this would also assume the status quo in building would remain, else you'd be out of a job.

I have been getting a crap-ton of comment spam in the year that I have maintained this site. Sometimes I get more than others, but it's always annoying to have to delete damn ads of the likes of banks, money scams, masters degree programs, and of course porn, to name a few. So I am finally going to do something about it and I have added a CAPTCHA to my contact and comment forms. Now when someone wants to post a comment, they will have to add up 2 numbers and enter the answer in a field. This is to check if the person trying to submit the form is human and not a robot trying to dump their crap in my front yard.
Sorry for the inconvenience, but it should be a fun little experiment to see if robots can do math too.

I began substitute teaching in Spanish classroom 14 at Hyde middle school. Four school years later I finished my substitute teaching life in Arts/Crafts classroom 15 right next door. After a month-long transition and reflection period, I am happily a stay-at-home dad and part-time web-designer! The years I spent in the classrooms of my childhood school district were eye-opening, mind-bending, fun, often frustrating, disappointing, painful, hopeful, soulful, always special and an education further than I could have ever imagined would come from those rooms, hallways, blacktops, teachers and most of all, the students.
I have undergone 4 years of on the job training, I am going to spend the next 3-5 years working on becoming a 'real' teacher, as the kids always asked me to become. I have a rough idea of what the road to an art credential looks like. I know it will involve a lot of explaining the unexplainable and participating in an education system I have a hard time reconciling my feelings with, but I am committed to getting my credential in Art and Industrial Arts so that I can return to the classroom and get to know the next generation of kids.