We’re just back from Torah study and Shabbat Minyan services, waiting for the kids to arrive for Jeffrey’s belated birthday party.

At Torah study, we finished discussing Parashat Noach (Genesis 6:9-11:32), spending most of the time on the story of the Tower of Babel. We were talking about the somewhat interesting order of events in chapter 11, verses 3 and 4:

They said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and burn them hard….Come, let us build a city, and a tower with its top in the sky….”

where first, they make the bricks and only then decide what to do with them. And it occurred to me that this was very much like the VC frenzy of the last couple of years:

They said to one another, “Come, let us gather venture capital…come, let us build a company, and a business plan with its top in the sky….”

where the funding seemed to come first, and only then a decision about what to do. But this time, instead of burning the bricks hard, it was the investors and employees who got burned.

At services, of course, we heard the regular weekly portion, Ki Tisa, and the accompanying Haftarah (I Kings, 18:1-39). The major action in the Haftarah takes place atop Mount Carmel — and, if all goes well, that’s where I’ll be in less than 48 hours (Haifa, to be more contemporary). It’s a small world sometimes!

Last night, we went to the parents’ orientation for the middle school Jeffrey will be attending next year (already? Yipes!). The principal, assistant principal, counselor, and a few teachers were there to present, along with more parents than could fit into the library (Jeffrey’s class is a big one).

In general, we came away pretty happy; they seem to have a good program going for assimilating the incoming 6th graders; they make extensive use of the rising 8th graders as mentors and supports, and from what I heard, the program works well.

There were, of course, questions from parents about safety at school — I was taken aback when one parent asked “Do you have lockdown drills?” (The answer, by the way, was “no”; they concentrate on earthquake, fire, and evacuation drills.) But I think the staff is on the ball in this area, too.

Next month, the school has their annual carnival, and rising 6th graders are cordially invited. Then they have an official visit with their 5th-grade classes in May; Jeffrey’s mentor should call him during the summer, and then orientation is the Wednesday before school opens — so much for travelling the last week of the summer!

And, just to add to the fun, the school is going to be torn down and rebuilt over the next two years; by the time Jeffrey’s in 8th grade, it should be quite a nice place. In the meantime, the good news is that the portable classrooms will have air conditioning.

Shabbat Shalom!

Today started awfully early — 2am, roughly, when the phone rang. I knew immediately that it was a crank caller, but I wasn’t awake enough to realize that I knew it, and kept talking to the guy for a minute or two until the glucose level in my brain reached a high enough level for me to figure out that the right response was to hang up the phone. I think I hung it up while I was in the middle of saying something, but I don’t really remember.

Of course, after waking up enough to deal with the caller, it took me a while to fall back to sleep, but I eventually did, and the alarm came as a shock, as usual. I much prefer days when I can wake up on my own schedule, but those are few and far between.

Spring Cleaning

I’m running out of room in my home office, so I’ve been going through some of the piles of paper, trying to get rid of stuff which I don’t need. This morning, I unearthed the score report from the test I took to become an OS/2 Certified Engineer — I took advantage of the opportunity to take the test for free at a Comdex many years ago, or I probably never would have bothered. As it was, I’ve never used the certification (I’m not sure I’ve ever mentioned it to anyone until writing this entry, in fact), so I guess I can probably get rid of the score report, even though it is prominently stamped “Save this report!”. Wonder where my certificate is….

Referrals

On Tuesday, I mentioned Artabunga as one of the more interesting booths I saw at the ACM1: Beyond Cyberspace Exhibition.

Today, I got a nice note from Helen Casserly at Artabunga thanking me for the mention and for the traffic I’d sent her way — glad to be of service, Helen!

But then I was wondering why I had so much traffic lately, and discovered that my tale of my day at ACM1 had been
Scobelized. Thanks, Robert!

I spent most of today at the San Jose Convention Center, attending the
ACM1: Beyond
Cyberspace Exhibition. I’ve been to many trade shows at the
Convention Center — but this wasn’t just another trade show.

Oh, sure, Microsoft had a huge booth, showing all sorts of whizzy
software that’s not ready for primetime (and no, I’m not making a snide
reference to any version of Windows or Office, past, present, or future
— not this time, anyway). And IBM was there too, showing various
research projects like
Blue Eyes and
Veggie
Vision.

But those booths weren’t the most interesting things at the
Exposition, not by a long shot.

I was much more impressed by the more unusual presentations. Things
like Artabunga, which gives kids
a place to draw on the Web (and share what they’ve done). Or
FocalPoint 3D Audio, something I’d
dearly love to have available on my next conference cal. And
e-chalk, which captures a
blackboard session in realtime, along with the discussion going along
with it, and makes it sharable.

The University of California at Berkeley showed four research projects;
the two that interested me most were
Telegraph, which shows
how you can combine data from different Web sources to develop
information, knowledge, and, if you’re not careful, falsehoods; I also
liked
Conversation Maps,
which might provide a way to deal with the mess of e-mail which makes up
my working day.

The best part of the conference, though, was seeing so many high school
and middle school students taking in the exhibits — not just wandering
through, either, but actively participating. And I enjoyed being
Fibonacci’d by the students at
Longfellow Middle
School — though by the time I came through, they were getting very
tired.

I hope ACM does this again in another few years, when Jeffrey would be
ready to enjoy and appreciate it.