Sad news

One of the ladies I bonded with at VoiceTrax emailed me that her grandson has terminal brain cancer and gave me the website his aunt set up for him. I met this child at the VoiceTrax picnic the first year I attended classes there. Louis was four or five years old and struggling to open a can of soda pop. I offered to help and he politely refused because he was determined to do it himself. He conquered that can without spilling a drop. The smile on his face showed his joy. He touched my heart with his determination and tenacity that day. That's why the memory is so clear.

To hear he's now twelve and dying breaks my heart. Apparently about the time his grandmother quit taking classes when he was seven, he had his first incidence with a tumor on his brain stem. They got it and he recovered most of his functions on his left side over the next year. Then little tumors started appearing elsewhere and were dealt with until his brain stem is now infiltrated again and it's inoperable.

I sent him some money to enjoy the two months they say he'll be able to do things with a decent quality of life. Poor kid.

In case you're curious: http://web.mac.com/judylillian/Louis/Welcome.html

Whew! I was off on my calculations

It turns out I have another week before finals. What threw me was I was under the impression J was having foot surgery the first week of Spring quarter and it turns out he's having it the last day of finals week instead. I think that's a wiser choice. It's not good to start off a quarter missing your initial classes!

I just finished gathering the online modules into searchable wordpad documents for taking the assessments. Still need to take assessments 6 through 10, but that's doable. I'll need to put in some lab time this week in the evenings but I should finish up in plenty of time, if the equipment will actually do what I need it to do. If I can't get it to work, I can't do the labs. End of story. I've already had to pretend the ones that use a server for checking user names and passwords were doing that. The "server" was a demo program that expired halfway through one of the labs. I've seen it work so I know I had the settings correct. That wasted about four hours of a Saturday lab trying to figure out how "I" broke it. *grumble*

Our instructor is pitching an online Cisco lab to the administration. They have up-to-date equipment set up for every Cisco lab in any of the courses. He'll still use the physical lab for the beginning classes to teach people how to cable and stuff, but those of us needing the advanced features the school can't afford to purchase would be in heaven with the online setup! The company has been around six years and has a great track record. We were all urging him to pitch it soon! Then we wouldn't have to depend on the rinky dink setup we have currently. We spend at least half our lab time figuring out how to change the labs to fit the setup. I might put off Network Security 2 until he gets that going. I'm pretty fried right now. I've been feeling this way all quarter. I need a break.

I'll be back to reading my FL soon! I miss keeping up with all of you!

Hey! Squeakers hasn't yowled in over 4 hours! I wonder if she's finally going out of heat?