Cal’s 2007 Alumnus of the Year and a great philanthropist passed away today at age 81.  Let’s have one last big GO BEARS for a great man.

The more time I spend on the back end of the sites, the less it seems like I’m able to post as content.

Interesting reads in Newsweek (and The Advocate) about a politician who took his clothes off for a magazine 27 years ago.  As though the non-criminal and never hidden or lied-about act of a 22-year-old law student in 1982 should or could disqualify him from public office in 2009.

Newsweek at least makes some good points about the double standards between coverage of male and female politicians, but the Advocate’s point seems to be that a “social and fiscal” conservative who doesn’t support gay rights is a hypocrite if he was sexually liberal in his youth.   Jeesh.  Some people need real lives.

I’ve been spending a lot of time the last two months on a little non-public website.  It’s no secret – it’s just that by design it has about 35 users and is not open to the public.  It started off simple – a place some kids could access online some photos Spinner uses as writing prompts for his class.

Then it expanded into a way for them to submit their related writing assignments online.

In the current iteration the class can get an assignment with text and related media online, and complete and return their assignments online.  Students get teacher feedback as soon as it’s entered.  True/False, multiple choice, fill in the blank, open-ended essays – it’s all there for the teacher to use, including some automated scoring.  Cross-indexing lets the teacher look at a student’s entire semester work at once to get a feel for progress or issues, and share that with the parents.  It even sends the parents e-mail copies of their kid’s work if they want.

Why?  It saves trees. Teaches kids computer skills for the real world, while incorporating content not able to be shown in text-based ditto copies. Lets a certain school district off the hook with their draconian photocopy restrictions. My husband spends less time carting stacks of paper around, and so has more time for Diego (and possibly me-me-me-me-me).

And it did keep me busy while other business was slow this summer and pumped up my php and mySql skills a notch or two.

But this week a silly little plugin and a developer’s gratuitous use of javascript(s) are pushing me to get out a chainsaw and pulp an entire forest into xerox paper for him just so the headache will go away.  I’m sure the feeling will go away after a short nap and some puppy licks, and I will get this update done and published, but I just needed to share.

The San Diego Superior Court will close all courtrooms and business offices on Wednesday, September 16, 2009 as well as the third Wednesday of each subsequent month through June 2010.

The California Judicial Council approved the unprecedented one-day-a-month closures for all state courts due to the ongoing statewide financial crisis and the Legislature’s reduced state funding to the courts.

Because, yes, this state is that messed up.   This is on top of San Diego already closing the clerk’s office to the public at 3:30 every afternoon.  Anyone care to remind me of any states where the California Bar has reciprocity for practice?  It would be nice if they coincided with states that recognized my marriage.

Had a great weekend over Labor Day, then a sucky work week, and now I’m just bleh about the upcoming weekend.  The heat and humidity drains the life energy away.  Even Diego’s a lethargic little slug.  The only thing around here showing energy are his #$^# fleas.

Might go to the La Jolla Rough Water on Sunday, even though injuries killed my training and no one I know is swimming this year.  Should get reminded of why I want to keep training and hope I can make it competitive next year.  I still think it would be fun if I can just avoid getting trampled to death on the start.

While pulling up a link to our wedding reception photos for a friend, I stopped in to look at Bryson Kim’s recent work.  Now I’m just trembling in awe (again) at the man’s skills.  Check out his collection from last weekend’s Fireknife finals.  Incredible renditions of what I generally call polynesian or island torch dancing, captured in beautiful stills.  The image borrowed here is just one, don’t miss the other 258 from that day, or the 317 from Saturday.

Maybe I do disagree with the President on a lot of issues. I definitely think the bailouts showed a certain weakness for maintaining the status quo, and that the lack of progress on repealing DOMA and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell betrays a bit of moral cowardice, if not apathy.    But the reality is that we have a two-party system where all he needs to do is be better than the ‘other guy’ and in the last few weeks the  ’other guy’ (and a few of their gals) have shown their true colors in all their glory.

[Image via JoeMyGod]

Finally getting caught up on some projects now that the lack of Cipro in my bloodstream is letting me focus for more than ten minutes at a stretch.  Not just work, but the household stuff like getting Diego in for a very overdue haircut this afternoon.

But that return to focus is starting to drift again as I look forward to this weekend’s annual Triton Invitational. Eight teams playing 16 games of water polo over the Labor Day weekend down the road at UCSD.