I’m reading Joan Hess’s Muletrain to Maggody, which is set in a fictional hamlet near the real town where Hess and I both live. I like Hess’s books, but Suwanda was saying yesterday that they were offensive. They do rather play up to stereotypes of our region. I sort of feel like it’s okay since Hess actually lives here, but Suwanda rejected that notion.
I spent a couple of hours yesterday reading. Otherwise I worked, since I’m trying to finish up my class and as much of my paid work as I can before I leave town. Today I am working mostly for The Chocolatier. I’ve gotten communications from all the designers I’m currently working with, so I think my chances of getting the current websites wrapped up before I leave are good. Then there are a couple more that will wait till I return. That means I just need to keep up with my retainer people while I’m gone. I should be able to do that, assuming internet connection. I believe that being in the L.A. area guarantees internet connection everywhere I go.
I asked The Computer Guy for advice about my final project, and he sent me a list of stuff about making my text look better. I would never have thought about any of those things, but I bet once I implement them my project will look way better. he did not vouchsafe to me the secret of divs.
There’s a guy in my class — I might have mentioned him before, either as the over-achiever who posts to the discussion board all the time or as the former Secret Service guy — who is, like me, trying to make his final project look really good. He is using tables for layout. I know you are all shocked. I’ll give you a moment to compose yourselves before we go on. Better now? Okay. Anyway, we were chatting this morning about how everyone manages to get their containers to work and we can’t. We’ve been talking about this for weeks, sharing our various theories and all the things we’ve tried that haven’t worked.
He concluded that we just haven’t learned how to do that. I said that I felt sure that the instructor knows. I don’t get why she won’t tell us. I mean, she reads the discussion board, and grades us on our participation there. Here we’ve been struggling with this literally for weeks. There are no professionally-built websites that don’t succeed in getting their columns into the right places, so it can’t be some kind of special, arcane skill.
When I teach online this fall, I’m going to try to get the amount of discussion going that this teacher has in her class, but when people need help, I plan to help them. She requires five posts a week, which is probably the main reason she gets all that discussion, but part of it may also be sheer frustration, which drives us to try to get help from one another.
As soon as I get back, I’ve got to work on my online class for next term. I think I’m way behind on that.
I shall stop thinking about that right now. I’m going to hit the gym and then get going with The Chocolatier’s website. That ought to be fun.