Today, I received an email from Google about this BLOG which I've been neglecting. There were supposed to be some messages telling me what I'm required to adjust. But, as you might expect, there are no messages for me from Google.

Sigh

 Hey, this is FUN! Well, sort of fun anyway.

One recent afternoon, my main email account in Outlook 365, appeared to stop receiving email. I could send it email without any reported error, I could send email from it, but nothing new was visible.

I tried to access my email in that account, using Outlook for web, same thing, no new email. Using Outlook on Android, same thing.

I called Microsoft for help and after waiting about a half-hour, a technician in India called me. It took about another half-hour for him to find my "missing" email in the RSS Subscriptions folder and then he looked in rules and sure enough, there was a rule I had not written that grabbed all new email and moved it to RSS Subscriptions. He had me delete the rule and move the messages to my inbox.

Next day, same problem, and the bogus rule was back. There were messages on the Internet about my account having been compromised. and other people were seeing the same problem.

I changed the password and that locked out three applications. Bitdefender, and two other sources I did not recognize. I reactivated Bitdefender allowing it to access my email and the RSS Subscriptions problem did not reappear.

Then I received an email from tti-corp.com telling me I had two secure messages to view. I used Windows Sandbox to view them; one was an invoice for $5 for something I did not buy. The other was a receipt for $5 paying the invoice.

After ending the sandbox, I checked the rules in my main email account and there was a new rule that moved only messages from tti-corp.com related to secure messages to RSS Subscriptions IF, the message was about a secure message. I deleted the new bogus rule and left it at that.

Things have been quiet since then. 

I alerted Bitdefender to the possibility that their code was compromised. I will send them a new message telling them they are not to blame.

My concerns is that if all of my inbox mail was sent to the RSS Subscriptions folder, POSSIBLY, a message with a link to change a critical password could be sent to someone trying to break into one of my financial accounts and they could make the change and take over my account. My bank accounts are secure because they require a secondary verification for any logon and that involves my cell phone (which I otherwise hate! But don't tell my cell phone as it might be insulted and then refuse to process those secondary verifications. It's very sensitive and easily offended.

My Edx.com Scholarship ran out

 I had guessed that I could continue to complete any course I had enrolled in. At least, any course I had started. I was wrong. 

The nine courses in the Data Science package, all taught by the same Harvard Professor, were horrible. Well, the ones I got through, in any case. This professor is about the worst I have EVER seen at the post-secondary level. I was not surprised that the course was written around his book. At least I didn't have to pay for the book separately. 

When faced with paying for these dreadful courses, I decided that Data Science was not for me. I posted some rather critical messages on the discussion boards, and one of the staff members tried to defend what I felt was a clear error. 

Do you recall learning the "quadratic formula?" The one for finding the solutions to a quadratic equation. The latter being: ax^2+bx+c = 0. Quadratic is a word reserved for an equation with x^2, x, and a constant. 

There was a series of values that were the result of an exponential equation but not precisely a quadratic equation. When I pointed that out to her, she said the equation they used resulted in the sequence, didn't it? Sure, it did, but that didn't make it quadratic. In the lecture, the professor said it's quadratic. 

There was a mathematician who adopted the nome de plume of "student," and a statistical test he developed came to be called the "Student's T-test." The professor insisted on calling that "Student T-test." A Harvard Professor should know the correct name for that particular test. I posted that on the discussion board as well.

As soon as I accumulated enough points to pass the course and receive the certificate, they pushed me out of the course, and I arrived at the place where I could claim my certificate. There were some problems I had not completed, and I missed out on the opportunity to learn that part of the course.

There was one group of problems I simply did not understand. I decided to go through the course and request the answers to the problems I could not solve. I saved the source code for the correct answers, and in the end, I unenrolled from the course. I intended to take it over, and if the problems were the same, I would use the saved solutions as my guide. They postponed the following access to the course to a future date, which was after my scholarship was to expire. They really didn't like having me around.

For anyone familiar with CS50 at Harvard, the biggest course at Harvard in terms of the number of students. You know the professor's name: David Malin. He is the most amazing teacher I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot. 

When that professor created another course, Malin offered enthusiastic words of promotion. I sent Malin an email about my experience and was not surprised that I did not get a response.

As part of my MBA program, I had to take a course in business statistics. Two teachers offered the course, and we were told that one was far more demanding. "How hard could business math be?" I asked myself. I signed up for the demanding teacher. I did get an A grade, but I learned that business math can, indeed, be HARD! I kept the textbook and still have it now, thirty-four years later.

A year after I got my MBA degree (paid for by Boeing Computer Services,) my wife enrolled in the same MBA program and asked me which business statistics teacher she should choose. I recommended the teacher I had and got hell for that from my wife. Like most students, she was there for the piece of paper while I was there for the knowledge I wanted to acquire. Eventually, she divorced me, but not for that reason. "Go know!" My wife had a bachelor's in Math from Brooklyn College and an MA in Math Education. She had been a math teacher at a Catholic Girl's High School and then worked for Computer Sciences Corp at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. 

What have I been up to, neglecting my blog for so long?

 From the little piece of the Catholic church I was exposed to at Saint Joseph Parish, I'm happy to be out of there. It's run like the military (not that I've been in,) with everything flowing from the top to the bottom and there is no time or desire for information flow in the other direction. 

The last staff meeting I attended was, supposedly, for the principal to explain the reasons behind the new dress code regulations. There was no explanation. The math teacher declared his subservience as: "you make the rules and we follow them!" The principal, whose face was so amazingly telling, gloated with satisfaction, hearing that. 

I, on the other hand, was reminded of the first Mass I attended as an employee. The local parish priest called the principal up to a speakers podium and asked her: "Who has the final say about everything that happens in this parish? "You do!" pandered the principal. "Yes, that's right!" gloated the priest.

The reality, of course, was quite different as it was the Bishop, located downtown, who always had the last say. But the priest was, it turned out, trying to establish his superiority so that nobody would ever consider escalating an issue to the Diocese Office. 

I had always imagined that priests were dedicating their lives to the care of their "flock." The flock being the members of the parish. Imagine my surprise when the priest, at another mass, warned the students not to challenge the rules because if they did, the matter would be escalated to him to deal with and, he added: "Let me assure you that you don't want that to happen!" What a pathetic little nothing he turned out to be. 

After leaving Saint Joe's, I've had two short jobs. The first was as a Computer Science Teacher at Basis North Tucson. I was rather surprised at the interview, which went so extremely well. I asked if I was a "Viable Candidate" and the immediate reply was: "Oh yes, indeed you ARE!"

They took zero time to discuss their (the three of them) opinions of me. During the training period, all sorts of obstacles were thrown in my path. I struggled along until classes began and only then did I realize they were trying to get me to quit. My best guess is the principal had a friend lined up at a salary the business did not want to pay. By getting me to quit, the system was forced to accept the originally desired teacher. The last time I checked, that principal (called the "Head of School" in the Basis system) was no longer there. I wonder what that was all about.

My next, and even shorter job, was as an IT Support person. The head of IT, after an in-person interview, sent an email asking me to come back again the next day for a second interview. There he told me he had arranged with is boss to create a special position for me with greater responsibilities. I was to be an IT Specialist II, he was a III and my colleagues were all I's. Only the "Team Lead" was also a II. It seems she did not like me having the same rank that she had and after a short time she managed to get me pushed out. The explanation was: higher manager had rejected the new position and it was terminated. That was the end of July, 2022 and I've been applying for jobs ever since. 

I wanted to get back into IBM Mainframes as a Systems Programmer, but IBM has moved on quite a bit and my skills are deemed to be too outdated now. 

Another option came to light just recently. It seems that cybersecurity is the hot growing specialty and Udacity, an online education business, announced a coming scholarship program sponsored by Udacity and Bertelsmann, a German company. To apply, you study a short course, and then take a qualifying test. I passed the test and was accepted into the Cybersecurity "nanodegree." nano, being the prefix for a very small entity. This entity, which most people would call a "certificate" was intended as a basic introduction to cybersecurity. Everywhere I look, they remind us that this training is not sufficient for us to get a job in cybersecurity but that additional training was definitely necessary. 

What Udacity has done is package together four of their existing courses each with a culminating project/assignment. At this point I have completed three and my culminating projects have been accepted. (They can be submitted multiple times - a giveaway at best.) I have also completed the fourth course but I'm procrastinating on the project as it's such a bore! Somehow, I have GOT to get to that and get it written. This one has no "hands-on" computer element; it all writing and nothing but writing. 

From the above, you can conclude that I can write if I want to. It's just that Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance are not my favored topics. At least I know exactly what in Cybersecurity I definitely DON'T WANT TO DO! (It's a good thing for anyone to know.)

Tomorrow morning, I have a phone interview coming up. It's a defense contractor and they will sponsor me for a top secret clearance. Those are expensive and having one is a ticket to hundreds of jobs. Most companies don't want to sponsor clearances. I would guess I have submitted 200 - 300 job applications for which I've had about 10 interviews. This interview was requested in an email that stated: "...you are very fortunate to have made it this far in the hiring process."

We shall see if I clear the next hurdle.

 Wow! How time really flies! And, you don't have to be having fun either.

At long last, my wife's online courses at Pima Community College, are over. I spent countless hours helping her through writing all sorts of things from discussion comments to a research paper on barriers to communications. 

But now it's over and she is in line to collect her certificate with a perfect 4.0 GPA! I knew she could do it, as long as she could write in Chinese, translate via Google, and massage using Grammarly Advanced. The latter may not be quite as advanced as they claim. Any sentence beginning with "this" or "that" is always flagged as lacking a clear target. Nearly any two sequential sentences are possible targets for a suggestion to 'join into one sentence using "and" which turns out to be horrible English.Then, there are the suggestions to make changes that radically alter the meaning of the text. Only very rarely are the suggestions useful. But Grammarly excels at finding small errors that are easily overlooked. For that, it's worth the cost.

I used to report the worst of the errors to Grammarly who would reply that the matter had been forwarded to the Editors for their review. I never received any response and the errors have always remained. Finally, a customer rep told me nobody ever receives a response and it is unknown what, if anything, the Editors do with such input. So I quit reporting errors because it's time-consuming.

Interspersed with tutoring, I've been frantically applying for jobs; if only I knew what category of jobs I want to pursue. One big area is getting back to being a systems programmer on big IBM Mainframes. The second category is to become a cybersecurity guru an in that vein, I'm taking a Challenge course at Udacity that could lead to a scholarship for the full cybersecurity nanodegree. Along side that I'm working my way through a bunch of free IBM Education courses to refresh and update my IBM Mainframe skills. That, at least, is proving to be fun. I've had some fun with Udacity which provided a PowerScript which was supposed to install the Virtual Machine they use for teaching but on one's personal Azure account. The instructions were minimal and nobody seemed able to get the script to run. They referred me to their help team in India who also seemed unable to solve the problem. Eventually I solved it myself and now I have a tiny VM with Windows 10 sitting on my Azure account. The underlying machine does not support Windows 11 and I am yet to explore fixing that.

 

 The REAL teaching began on 8/5 (and ended on 8/13!)

That was the shortest job I ever held! Boy was I in over my head! I had four courses to teach (one with two sections) for a total of five 50-minute classes every day. While it's true that the administrative tasks took almost all of my time, and that there were logistical problems that kept me from being effective, the real problem was my hearing. I could not understand what my students were saying to me unless I walked over to the speaker and stood right in front of them. Even then, it was really difficult. Couple that with my long-standing inability to remember names, and I was doomed. 

I've only now recovered my composure and gotten my head back to some version of together. It's definitely the end of my K-12 teaching career. Those seven days cost me about $1,500/day. 

Oh well, now I can concentrate on my wife's two on-line courses and help her with English.

Live and Learn!

 Microsoft is in the business of educational support, competing with Google. My school has recently switched from Google to Microsoft but the tech support guy says Microsoft isn't really any better.

Microsoft SPORK looks a lot better to me! It's a serious course content management system. I particularly like being able to, (with some lingering problems,) copy a class that someone else presented last year and then modify it to suit me. This saves a whole lot of work!

It's still a bit confusing and I see that with two sections of one course, I can create two iPlanners but I can't tell them apart. So I deleted on and asked about that.

The other problem has to do with one course of mine that seems to have to be "Mentored." but that one, I cannot access last year's courses to copy. 

This is going to be a VERY BUSY school year for me!

I wish Microsoft had some extended training for this system.

 My new job began Monday of last week (7/12). I am the one and only Computer Science teacher at Basis Tucson North.

I will be teaching four courses, one with two sections, making five periods every day. Three of the four courses are very much settled so I will do as the previous teacher did - as best I can.

The final course is called ENGINEERING and it was formerly a robotics class - in which I have no experience at all. Besides that, I'm not particularly interested in robotics. So they are allowing me to create an entirely new course to my own liking. Today, I finally got my syllabus in order and sent it to the principle for his comments. Boy is that a load-off!

Next year (how can I be thinking about next year when this year hasn't started yet) I can work on changing two courses to my liking. The final course is an AP Computer Science course and the College Board sets the curriculum so that's sort of cast in stone.

Wish me luck!

Jam