Archive for the 'General Interest' Category
Apr
26
“Visualize victory!” As a rally car co-driver, I remind my driver with these words when we start a racing event. Ours is the ultimate team motorsport: two of us in a fully-caged race car, one driving, the other (me) reading from a set of notes that describe each curve and hazard ahead. We’re rocketing at over 100 MPH on dirt roads through forests or along the edges of cliffs, day or night, in mud, snow, fog, dust, or heat. I trust my driver to keep control of the car at maximum speed, and she or he trusts me to read the correct notes with enough time to react. In short, we literally trust each other with our lives. In every sense, our victories are shared, and not just between us, but with the crew who keep the car running, the officials who provide a safe, fair, and fun playing ground, and the spectators who cheer us on.
“Visualize victory!” applies to our students too.
Teaching or studying at Cal Lutheran is much the same way – but without the wild crashes that can happen when you make a mistake – with faculty and students teamed together, working towards a common victory. Instead of a service crew, we enjoy the support of CLU’s amazing staff; instead of race officials, we have top-drawer administrators; and instead of spectators, we have our family and friends.
As a CLU graduate myself (I earned my degree later in life) I appreciate the value this university provides to its students and their families. It’s an honor to be part of this fine institution, and it’s a pleasure to work with my colleagues for the benefit of all. Indeed, it’s because of the quality of my professors during my graduate work here that inspired me to join the faculty, to be part of CLU’s educational team.
Every semester I explain to my students that it’s my job to help them succeed. They have to work – and work hard, by many accounts – but my students know that if they’re willing to put in the effort, I’ll be there with them, shoulder to shoulder, helping them grasp the material and become proficient in the skills I’m teaching.
Sometimes budget constraints interrupt our successes. For lack of money, we have to park the car before reaching the final checkpoint of a rally. For want of funding, a national championship might be lost. Some powerful drivers and co-drivers have their hopes dashed when they lack the resources needed to help them cross the finish line. The same is true for some of our students who, fully capable, fully committed, nonetheless struggle to complete their degree, or even fall short because of finances.
Most of the classes I teach are in the Professionals program. I enjoy teaching students who’ve faced the hardships that prevented them from getting a degree earlier – as I did – who have a solid foundation in life and a well-based and hard-earned appreciation of the importance of higher education. These are students who recognize the value of what CLU offers, even if (or because) they’re no longer in the 18 to 22 age bracket. These students are sometimes forgotten in the money hunt, with few opportunities for financial aid. That’s why the Unstoppable Scholarship resonates with me, and I hope it will with you too.
A hard-fought victory, whether in education or motorsport, is a well-deserved reward for dedication and commitment. To watch my students “make the walk” – in cap and gown instead of helmet and fire suit – across the “finish line” is a joyful event, a celebration of their continued effort, and a recognition of their achievement for all to witness.
I look forward to many more years of teaching. More importantly, I look forward to witnessing the continued success of our students.
With your help, that august body of graduates will grow.
(Written for CLU Cares Day 2022)
May
10
Partway through the Spring Term our lives radically changed. Dangers were discovered lurking everywhere, gathering on the surfaces we touch constantly, and getting transferred into our lungs by rubbing our eyes, scratching our noses, touching our faces. Worse, the dangers are hidden, invisible to the naked eye, and don’t manifest themselves for two weeks. How many places do you normally go in two weeks? How many people do you see, counters you lean on, phone calls you make, while the nastiness works it way undetected through your body and your community?
I know two people with CoVid-19, one in the Spanish countryside and another in Rhode Island. It’s not good.
The upshot of all this is that we have had to radically change the way we live, communicate, and for the audience of this blog, the way we teach and learn.
I’m a computer geek. I teach geeky stuff. My material is easier to teach with virtual technologies than the classes of my colleagues in the physical sciences, the art department, and drama. I would guess that professors of the language arts, and psychology, and communications are all extraordinarily challenged in this new, virtual world, even without the need to handle test tubes, lasers, oil paints or props.
As challenging as this is for faculty, it is doubly or triply so for our students. They are forced to learn new ideas, discuss important concepts, develop new skills, while remaining socially distant and disconnected from their peers. This places them at a huge disadvantage.
A key factor of education is in discourse, the clear exchange of ideas, but these dialogs are hindered by the imperfections of video, the difficulty of reading body language, and the ever-present distractions bounding into the home environment during classes.
As a student, I found great value in the physical process of going to school. It was a place where I could focus on my studies without the distractions of roommates on drums in the other room, or children asking you read them a story, or the temptation to take a short news break and get sucked into the rabbit hole of one internet article after another.
Most importantly, in the classroom I felt the vibrant energy of support, of interaction, of immediacy, of presence.
For me, I can learn simple tasks from books and on-line tutorials, but to learn deep knowledge requires human contact, human exchanges, human guidance.
Even though I’m now on the other side of the lectern, those same qualities are why I prefer to teach on-site, why I enjoy teaching in a classroom: it’s the personal interaction between myself and the students, and my students with each other, and the immediacy of help I can provide when they need it.
These are some of the things that make it so difficult in today’s quarantined/locked-down environment, for students and faculty alike. Not only do we have to worry about the health of our friends and family, job security in our own household and for others, and struggling to learn new survival skills in a world already turned upside down even before the pandemic hit, we have to educate and study in a crippled environment.
The good news is this: we are adapting. My students have risen to the challenges thrown before them, have continued to excel despite the abundance of difficulties in their paths, and have shown the focus and dedication in their studies that makes us proud as faculty members.
I’ll confess that this has not been an easy transition for me. It’s tough to move from classroom to empty house, to try to deliver real and useful content from a chair, to restrict my motion in order to stay in camera frame instead of wandering in front of the board, moving between desks to study their code, field their questions, and congratulate them on their presentations.
Fortunately, my students have been understanding too, recognizing that we’re all in this together.
I’m thankful for many things…. we have technology that was unthinkable a century ago, we have a supportive university that enables us to deliver maximum value to our students, and we have students that are here to learn, not just because mommy said they have to go to college.
We’re all adapting, and we’ll get through this.
May
25
A few of you know that I sponsor the Koa-Plumeria prizes. One is awarded to the best essay in an introductory English class while the other goes to the best work in CLU’s literary magazine Morning Glory. English department faculty judge the student works and make the selections.
This short article will explain the meaning of the name. I’m privileged to be able to offer these prizes, but I’m doing it for the students, not myself. I wanted the prize focus to be on the writing, not me, which is why I elected not to have them called the John Dillon Writing Awards or similar.
Since I grew up in Hawai’i, I tend to relate to items from my childhood, thus I chose to name the prizes with a flavor of my upbringing.
Koa is a hard wood, used for musical instruments and weapons, including edge weapons like war clubs.
Plumeria is a fragrant flowering tree whose beautiful petals exude a mildly irritating sap, such that you normally soak the flowers in cold water in the refrigerator overnight before threading them onto leis.
In summary, the idea of both prizes is to reward edgy works that employ musical language, and lovely, sweet writings that get under your skin.
Jul
19
In many ways I am a cheapskate. I seek bargain prices and special deals for things that I consider generally mundane. However, there are some things and services that trigger brand loyalty in me.
For example, I much prefer flying on Southwest Airlines. They have the best frequent-flier program in the industry, there are no assigned seats, they are the best about rebooking flights without penalties, and they have a wonderful vibe to go with all the other things that one requires in flying these days.
Certain products also have characteristics that insure my loyalty. I like Kleenex brand tissues for example. They’re just a bit softer on the nose, less scratchy, which is important when you have a cold or are otherwise sick. I like Harry’s razors too. They were a gift from Jessica and Aaron, but I prefer them so much that I don’t like shaving with any other brand. (When traveling, I carry disposable razors, but that’s strictly for the convenience factor.)
I know that there are some foods that I prefer in brand names, but I can’t recall offhand which ones they are. I’m on a treadmill at the moment and I am unable to look in the pantry. Of course, there’s practically no food in the pantry anyway. Oh, I do remember a couple of things: I like Paul Newman’s spaghetti sauce and Frito-Lay queso in a jar.
What triggers loyalty to a specific brand? For me it has to be something that offers sufficient differentiation over it’s generic rivals. Quality has to be sufficiently better to warrant the higher cost or the extra effort to find the product or service.
I am curious: what things do you consider should be purchased by brand?
May
28
This is not a day of happiness, but of respect, honor, and grief.
It is a day of thanks, thanks given to those who sacrificed so much, and it is a day of reflection, reflection on the many great things we enjoy because of those sacrifices.
It’s also a day to consider again our priorities, the things that we fight for and the things we choose to ignore, our values and our vices, our noble battles and our petty, selfish squabbles.
Patriotism is not about saber rattling, boastful roars of “we’re number one,” or arrogant attitudes suggesting ours is the only “right” way to do things.
Instead, it’s about love of country, willingness to serve, and respect.
I’m a patriot in my own quiet way, proud of those who stood up for what’s right, even when they’ve been opposed by tyrants in power (our own as well as others).
I’m proud of, and thankful for, all those who have sacrificed their daily lives and their mortal lives in our defense.
It grieves me when our warrior youths are wasted in vengeful exercise, but I am honored that they serve on our behalf, that they will be there when needed, despite the many hardships and dangers they face.
I have no special plans for Memorial Day, except to remember those who have fallen, and to be thankful for their courage and sacrifice.
Perhaps you’ll take a moment to do the same.
Jan
15
Each time you turn around, there’s another news story about compromised passwords and computer security. Just recently we’ve learned of massive breaches at Target, Neiman Marcus, Adobe, and Cupid Media (the OK Cupid dating site people.)
An important thing to remember is to use unique pass phrases on every web site so if one site gets compromised, the others aren’t.
For example, if the Adobe data dump revealed your password of “I-Like-CLU-in-2014″ to the bad guys, they will try to use that same password on your banking site and could rob you.
Some people resist using multiple passwords because they’re a pain to remember.
Here’s a suggestion — not perfect, but will do for the majority of sites — that will help keep things reasonably safe, while still making every password unique, yet memorable.
Given some baseline pass phrase (more than just a password) that only you know, such as the aforementioned “I-Like-CLU-in-2014″, append a site-specific suffix mnemonic to it. For example, your pass phrase for the Wells Fargo web site might be: “I-Like-CLU-in-2014.WellsFargo” while you might use “I-Like-CLU-in-2014.Target” for the Target web site.
If a “black hat” puts eyeballs on your pass phrase they may recognize the pattern, but in my opinion that is highly unlikely. When they harvest 40 to 70 million IDs and passwords at a time, they’re gonna write programs that test your credentials against other sites, not humanly scan each one individually.
As a side note, I recommend using a different e-address for each site you access. Unless you have some technical savvy and your own domain, this might be problematic. However, you can use a service such as offered by SpamGourmet.com to generate anonymous e-addresses that are site specific. I’ve had about 95% success with Spamgourmet.com addresses. In only a few cases (Redbox and the City of Phoenix are two that come to mind), the vendor blocks, drops, or ignores those addresses even though they are valid.
Lastly, it’s old news but I’ll repeat it anyway: make your pass phrase long enough that it’ll be hard to guess, with a mix of letters (upper and lower case), numbers, and punctuation.
Yeah, it’s all rather a pain in the okole, but replacing your credit cards, recovering stolen funds, or trying to repair your credit history is a much bigger pain.
John
P.S. I was directly affected by the adobe.com breach. After the breach I began receiving phishing e-mail from Russia. Fortunately the messages went to my SpamGourmet address, so I just disabled that one address without affecting my other logins or addresses.
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Sep
3
Here’s an interesting idea about using The Human Body as Touchscreen Replacement from the Nielsen Norman Group, experts in the usability field.
Aug
8
Here’s a quote from an excellent article by Andrew Pollack about the importance of going beyond the simple capturing of requirements:
When I'm brought in to work on a significant development project as the lead, the first step is to sit down with the client and understand not just the requirements, but the goals behind the requirements and how the work they're asking for will impact the people using system. My job, at this stage is to use my experience to anticipate the unseen requirements, the potential problems, and the unintended consequences of the changes they're requesting. I do this through asking questions and getting them to walk me through both the current process and the updated process. If we have the right people in the room -- not just the project managers but also representatives of people who use the systems daily -- then during this phase they realize how the real world use differs from the project plan paperwork. We're able to adapt the plan and build what they need. Spending the right money up front on this kind of analysis prevents the kinds of disasters Cringley is pointing out.
The full article is not about requirements capture per se, but the quote above is relevant to my classes in Systems Analysis and Design and Visual Programming.
Jun
14
For my upcoming CSC-300 students in the Fall 2013 term:
I haven’t yet completed the new syllabus, but I thought I’d share the one I used last year so you can get a sense of what we’ll cover in class, nor have I selected a text book yet.
There will certainly be some changes to the syllabus because my previous classes were one night a week for four hours instead of two days a week, but I’m sure you’ll get the idea of the rough schedule.
Jan
18
I support the efforts of many, many people and organizations, who oppose the SOPA and PIPA legislation that was pending in the Senate. These organizations include Wikipedia, Firefox, and Google, to name just three of the big hitters.
My personal web sites, including the Widget Rally Team site, were blacked out to show my support.
The issue of content theft (“piracy”) is of great importance to the country, but these bills go much too far and would cost our citizens far too much.
Check out AmericanCensorship.net1 for more information.
(This was posted in January of 2012.)
1Thanks to Morgan Kinney for pointing out the new domain name.