A Collection of Daily Wisdom by Dennis Sylvester Hurd since September 2003.

This week's page contains a number of photos from the previous week's trip to New Hampshire. I thought I'd round out Saturday with another. Here's a recap of a road trip on February 12th.

We travelled to Concord and then up I-89 to the New London exit. Next, we drove through George's Mills and into Sunapee. The town was cold as a strong wind was blowing. Soon, we followed Rt. 11 and then went on Rt. 103 past the house of my youth to the Mt. Sunapee ski area.

After, we drove through Newport and down Route 10 to the city of Keene. We took a scenic bypass visiting Stoddard NH, a town where my grandmother had a summer cottage. When we eventually walked around Keene State, it was still very cold and windy. (A big big dump of snow occurred on the following day.) I thought it was interesting to see how much my old college campus had changed. I got a BS in Education at KSC. Of course it have changed a lot as I first lived there in the fall of 1977. In the past thirty years, the state has obviously put a lot of money into the college system. Certainly no money has been sent by this alumni though!



After walking around the campus for a half hour, we left and ate a a Friendly's Restaurant. It was then a quick trip back Route 202/101. We didn't stop to see what was going on at the office of The Old Farmers' Almamac in Dublin.

Labels: New Hampshire, Sunapee

If I were on anti-depressants or other medication, I'd chalk up my happiness to the drugs. I don't think fish or flaxseed oils have much in the way of mood-altering effects though.

For quite a few years, I've been very pleased with the stuff of life. I would rush to attribute these feelings to the positive situations in my life. I honestly can't think of things I'd have any differently even if given three wishes from the proverbial genie in a bottle. I look around the world and feel fortunate and very lucky.

In reality one's satisfaction probably isn't directly related to ones circumstances. Some people worry too much. Others feel blue. There are those with broken relationships and others who hate how they earn a living. Yet, regardless of the situation in which I discovered myself, I think I'd be pretty grounded. And I guess, that's just one more reason to be happy, isn't it?

Labels: feelings

This picture was taken last week in Concord NH. I had to go online to look up the name of this building. Last week, we drove to the capital just to see its golden dome. I couldn't find anything under the New Hampshire Legislature, and the NH Capital Building offered no results. Somewhere online tonight, I discovered it is called the New Hampshire House of Representatives or simply the State House.

How had I forgotten all those NH history lessons from grade school? I don't think I'd ever really committed many facts about it to memory. For example, the Legislature moved into the building in 1819 which makes it the oldest one still in use in the US. I don't think anybody ever told me it cost $82,000 to build.

Yet, I did recall one fun fact. The building is witness to the third largest legislature in the English-speaking world. Only the US Congress and the British Parliament have more members.

Labels: New Hampshire

If you do make the trip you might realize how much you've changed though. In fact, I thought I should jot out two important realizations that I learned about us from our recent trip to New Hampshire.

First, we're most suited to urban settings.

I don't know how this happened to a kid from Sunapee. Even when staying down in Manchester NH, with its mall, I kept noticing how rural things were. Cars are an absolute necessity in order to survive. Even in the big city, the bus system doesn't run on Sundays.

In addition, I don't like cold weather anymore.

The locals were saying it had been quite warm through the end of January. The temperature during our week there averaged about negative 15C. About 10 inches of snow fell in southern NH. I like access to occasional winter, but have definitely been spoiled by the years away from New England. I'd hate to live where the winters are real.

I grew up in Sunapee, NH but winter there wouldn't seem
to suit me now.

Labels: New Hampshire

Hooray for Tuesday! The week has gotten off to a fine start. My new students are receptive and eager to study. I'd say this is generally the case. As these courses only last for five weeks, the positive momentum hardly has time to fade.

I decided to carry my notebook around with me at BCIT. Finally, wireless access has been improved over on this side of campus on Royal Oak. I put my computer on the front desk along with the piles of papers near my briefcase. It is handy. I carried the notebook down to the teachers' room and started this entry during break.

When coming back upstairs, I saw others running around with their computers. Several of my students even use them to take notes during class. I suddenly had the notion that my long-held dreams were coming true. Technology has come a long way but, honestly, educational adaptation takes too long. We can log on to a common course page wirelessly from any desk at BCIT. If we were to require notebook ownership, then I'd be able to put up most teaching materials in e-form rather than photocopying stacks of handouts. Except in COMM classes, I doubt there's a place where so many people write text with pencils or pens.

Well, in a way, this happens. We meet in NE1 Room 201 on Thursdays. It's the swanky new computer lab with flat-screen monitors that fold to provide group and individual workspace. Students log on at 1:00 and off at 5:00 although we also have regular instruction and testing. So, there's a little more 't' in my BCIT courses than there used to be.

Labels: BCIT, computer lab, technology

I may switch to evening posts. I suppose it'd be better not to make any promises other than there'll always be something here before midnight. If the last few years are any indication, that's a promise I can keep.

Today, I had a new batch of students for a COMM 0004 course. Yet, I spent most of the morning installing things on my notebook. A few weeks ago I discovered that this Gateway 3522GW cannot handle Windows Vista due to an incompatible BIOS. I had the notebook with me in New Hampshire and realized I need it most for email and net access when travelling. So, I can continue to use Windows XP until I'm ready for a new device.

I had half installed Vista though. It left lots of junk on my hard disk. It also required quick action upon boot-up to force it to load XP rather than trying to complete the installation of the new operating system. I decided to format the hard drive and load up a copy of XP Pro that I had.

Starting from scratch takes a great deal of work. For example, the wireless connection didn't load from the Windows disc. I had to search at the Gateway site to find the file. Then of course it and others needed to be copied from my other computer via a writable CD. When I did get access to the Internet, there were more than 70 updates from Microsoft. Loading up the necessary MS Office programs took a while too. I also needed to get McAfee up and running. There a dozens of small tweaks still required!

All that rigmarole and my afternoon class is why I'm typing something here now (on the notebook by the way). What a long winded excuse, I guess.

Labels: Hardware, Windows

Ah ... there's no bed like home's.

Flying back was nothing out of the ordinary. United managed to screw up bags in Chicago by changing gates at the last minute, and we spent an extra hour in the plane as a result of it. That meant we got into Vancouver after public transit had ended. We took an airport taxi to New Westminster to the tune of $40. We didn't get to the apartment until 1:15 am.

The weather at 10C seems warm. (Indeed it is 20C warmer than we experienced for a week.) Fish and hamster are fine. I had checked the fish regularly from here while in New Hampshire.

Lots of catch up on with the computer, food, housecleaning, and getting ready for a brand-new batch of students tomorrow.


The rental car we turned in at the aiport didn't look quite
as good as when we rented it due to running on New Hampshire
roads in the winter.

Labels: flying, New Hampshire