My desk upgrade journey hasn’t gone as planned. The monitor mount I bought has a really small clamp, which I should have checked before buying it, but I was so excited about a good deal. It fits on the desk and looks great, but I’m not able to spread the weight with the steel plates I bought, and I don’t trust a particleboard desktop to stand the test of time with a clamp. I spent a long time trying to brainstorm solutions (modify the clamp? build a wooden desk top?), and I had a sleepless night stressed about it. Eventually I decided to just order a different mount and I’ll try to sell this one locally to get my money back. It’s a bummer because the arm is really nice, but I wanted the piece of mind of using something that isn’t jerry-rigged. Normally I’m down for a stupid solution, but not when it’s holding up several hundreds of dollars of tech.
I’ve been podcasting on and off for over ten years now — all shows that I’ve since abandoned1, either intentionally or due to time — but I’ve kept websites for them up and running for archival purposes. Originally, the sites were powered by WordPress and podcasting plugins (PowerPress and then Podlove). I didn’t want to continue paying to host the sites nor maintain a WordPress install2. I could, of course, use one of the many podcast hosting services out there — but just like I believe in owning your own space on the internet, I believe you should own and control your podcast feed (and not have to pay a company $15/mo in perpetuity). I use Hugo (which I then deploy with Cloudflare Pages) to generate the sites and feeds; I chose Hugo because I understand how to use it. I’m sure you could make this work with other static site generators. There’s an 11ty plugin out there, for example, which is far more advanced than what I’ve set up. But I built this myself. It works. It does not require me to endlessly fiddle or update (unless I want to).
I’m still working on planning for the college class I’m teaching in a few weeks. I need to have my basic syllabus done within the next week or two, but I don’t really plan that way, so I’m going week by week and outlining the entire lesson. It’s a lot of work, but I’m feeling a lot better than I was last week. I was previously trying to reverse engineer the previous professor’s syllabus while bringing in some of my own resources, but I gave myself permission to do my own thing and only consult her work when I felt I needed something more for a lesson or a text. I’m moving much faster and things feel easier now, so it’s just a matter of doing the work.
I’m teaching (adjunct lecturing) a college class in the fall for the first time. I’m starting to put together my syllabus and lesson plans. I have a lot of resources from the previous professor (who is a friend), but I’m also trying to do my own thing. It’s a lot of work and I’m very stressed about it.
I know it’s only just August, but it somehow feels like the summer is already over. It’s the Sunday scaries month of the summer for me, which is ridiculous because who else gets two months off from their job every year? (Aside from, you know, people in civilized countries that get actual vacation days.)
Joe and I visited some of his family with a lake house this week where my farmer’s tan became more and more pronounced. I also “worked” two days this week: I had committee meetings on Thursday and then a joint meeting to coordinate middle school/high school/college GSAs in my area. I also went to a concert (more about that in the music section) with a friend who moved away a year ago and who I missed a lot!