Friday, July 31, 2020

A fresh disaster on the horizon: http://trackthetropics.com/isaias-2020/

With COVID-19 raging, economy tanking and congress not taking action before fiscal help (unemployment, moratorium on evictions and foreclosures, etc.), our incompetent POTUS always ready to send out another idiotic message to the populous (the latest re postponing November’s moment to get rid of him)…and now a series of storms on the way.

Our Surf City haven has now been put back into shape–for about 2 months now. Hoping against hope that we make it through the season without more destruction. Just don’t know if we can withstand another wipeout. At least it’s not our primary home, as much as we’d like it to be.

The daily work is progressing. It’s challenging, very time-consuming, but is moving ahead step by step. Reconsidering teaching as a “flipped” model which puts all teaching materials on the server for students to access at their own pace; then using our synchronous meetings to review via exercises, get questions, work on problems, etc. And, to boot, reconfiguring a 15-week semester into a 7.5 week term. Lots of rethinking going on.

Big hump these past days has been getting the synchronous tech (Webex) able to share all sound/video for other attendees. I think I’ve got it figured out, but… made an appointment for a tech consult this morning so that i can try it out. If it doesn’t work, though, I know that the consultant really won’t be that much help, as these music-specific tech issues are always beyond the knowledge of the IT and tech support folks.

Fingers crossed.