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So the AMC Studio 30 is showing Serenity at 12:01 am. It would be totally ridiculous to go (especially since I would be going, ahem, alone), but ooh, SHINY.

…and other things I learned during my first college lecture

I lectured our intro computing class for the first time this morning. I picked up a few tips along the way.

1. Bring your own whiteboard markers. This one’s a gimme.
2. Bring your own energy. Even after almost a week off (thanks to the hurricane) most of the class was quiet; hey, at least they weren’t totally asleep. Hence the Powerade: a steady supply of simple sugars helped me keep my own energy up. By the end I had students murmuring answers and asking occasional questions, which I consider a victory against first-class-of-the-day somnolence.
3. Energy is fine, but don’t be an ass. I accidentally gave a student a Family Feud buzzer when I really meant to give it to myself, which was rude and unhelpful. I had said, “Is this [code on the board] enough?” and, expecting no one to respond, I started to shout “AANGH!” … but not before a student said, “Yes, it’s enough.” Now it seemed like I was buzzing him. Bad move.
4. Printed notes are fine, but make sure you can read them. I eschewed PowerPoint slides (which I run through too fast and which are almost impossible for an audience to absorb meaningfully) in favor of whiteboarding the whole lecture, and printed some lecture notes for myself. I wrote out a lot of details I didn’t need to refer to; scripting the lecture was helpful for me while practicing, but all I really needed during the lecture was a list of topics (and listings of correct code for the board). What I did, however, was print out my entire notes, 2-up front and back; whenever I lost my place or wanted to make sure I had covered everything before moving on, I had to squint at 7pt type on a folded-up piece of paper. I’m sure I looked stupid (and blind) doing this.
5. No class runs under time. About 2/3 of the way through the material, I was about halfway through class, so I was really worried about running under. (I seem to be fundamentally unable to fill the time alotted when presenting material, so this was a legitimate concern.) Suddenly it was 45 after, and I still wanted to do a little exam review before the students all got up and left. We finished about a minute over; several students had already stood up and were walking out the door by that point. Hell, this class is usually at least 5 minutes or more over time; I managed to finish up pretty close to on-time. Where’s the gratitude?

Canned food’s no good if you can’t open the can.

(The girls, too.)

There’s still a lot to relate, but it turns out the rest of the world didn’t stop turning while Houston ran and hid, so I’ve got a lot to catch up on first. Exhibit A:

Palm Inc. is teaming up with Microsoft Corp. to launch a Windows-based version of the Treo smart phone, marking the first time the handheld computer pioneer will sell a device based on its former rival’s software. […]

“In terms of the level of importance, this would be — in this space — the same thing as Apple announcing they were going to be using Intel processors,” Enderle said.

Correction: This would be the same thing as Apple announcing they would start shipping Macs running Windows instead of the Mac OS. (Hey, PalmSource: what’s that on the wall?)

The Rice emergency page currently has a letter from President Leebron:

Rice is well prepared for the oncoming storm. As I write this, the winds are indeed beginning to increase. We are asking everyone to be secure in their shelter building not later than 7:00 PM. unless advised otherwise by those in charge of their shelter building. We estimate that a bit more than 2,000 students, staff and faculty and their families are on campus.

The page goes on to state that students are being fed, the mood is good, and that classes will be cancelled on Monday to give Rice time to transition back to proper working order.

We should start seeing some weather by 6PM, and will probably continue to experience direct hurricane effects for another twelve hours. The net effect of the storm’s eastward corrections is a substantially better outlook for those of us on the west side of town.

It took hours for officials to begin recommending that residents stay in their homes, even after the situation on the highways became absurd. The newscasters all wanted to say it, but since no official had given the word, the best they could do was to say “Each of us needs to make a choice, whether to chance it on the roads or chance it at home.” Finally, last night, Bill White said in a press conference that “the time to leave had past,” and so the talking heads were free to repeat it.

Our decision to stick around is looking better and better as time goes on. Not in terms of the hurricane’s strike probability, of course; the storm track has bent northward again, sending the eye over the ship channel (pretty much the worst case for Houston). However, the highways leading out of Houston are now so full of cars that the drive is taking hours and hours (24h at last report to Dallas), causing almost all motorists to run out of fuel and become stalled, causing the roadway to move even slower. In computer networks, we call this scenario congestion collapse: without any kind of organized back-off protocol, links can become so bogged down that the utility of the link goes exponentially to zero. [Note that reverse flow is being implemented—too late, perhaps.]

…RITA BECOMES THE THIRD MOST INTENSE HURRICANE ON RECORD…