Travel, Tech, Thoughts…

  • Alaska Cruise – Seattle

    My in-laws are kind enough* to take the whole family on vacation every few years.  This time the destination was an Alaskan cruise, disembarking from and returning to Seattle, with stops in Skagway, Juneau, Ketchikan, and a very brief stop in Victoria, BC. We flew into Seattle on the 8th, arriving late in the evening,…

  • Ireland Trip – Cliffs of Moher

    On my last day of touring before the conference, I decided to visit the Cliffs of Moher.  I had seen pictures, but it’s hard to really comprehend how amazing the cliffs actually are. It took a few hours to get there.  When I arrived, it was raining and cold.  I decided to put on my…

  • Ireland – Carrauntoohil

    I’m always up for a good hike, and it often turns out to be a great way to see places most people don’t see.  One of the places people recommended I visit in Ireland was the Ring of Kerry.  As luck would have it, the tallest mountain in Ireland, Carrauntoohil, is within the Ring of…

  • Ireland Trip – Newgrange and Knowth

    After a good night’s sleep, I packed up, cleaned up the apartment, and headed out.  There were just a few things I really, really wanted to do in Ireland, and Newgrange was at the top of the list.  If you’re not familiar with it, it’s a pre-historic monument similar to Stonehenge, but of a different…

  • Ireland – arrival and Dublin

    One of the perks of my job is that I can occasionally get funding to attend international conferences.  Since I love to travel, this is a great way for me to get out a bit and see the world without spending tons of my own money while also making international connections that will advance my…

  • LibreOffice – Comments Inserted on the Left rather than the Right

    I’m guessing I have discovered a bug in LibreOffice, but I don’t know if that is the case for sure.  Regardless, it’s a problem. Here’s the situation.  I have my students submit all sorts of things to me digitally so I can grade them digitally.  I just finished a marathon grading session and finals are…

  • Limesurvey: How to Randomly Assign Participants to Different Conditions (i.e., Experimental Designs)

    I’ve used LimeSurvey for a long time and really like the software.  It’s powerful, yet very easy to use.  But one thing I couldn’t figure out with the software was how to assign participants to one of several conditions within a single survey.  For example, if you want to randomly assign participants in your survey…

  • In Memoriam: Donald P. Hartmann

    One of my professors from the University of Utah, Donald P. Hartmann, recently passed away.  I took one of Don’s advanced classes as an undergraduate and, during that class (with about 8 students in it), he invited me to consider doing some research.  I later joined his Peer Lab and spent quite a bit of…

  • Linux: How to Change Password at The University of Tampa

    Despite sending in feedback to the Information Technology department at my University about the myriad ways they could improve the process of changing passwords, they haven’t made the process much easier.  Since the process is overly cumbersome, not at all intuitive, and I forget about the complications every time I have to change my password…

  • LibreOffice: Printing with Comments in Margins

    UPDATE: As of 12/15/2015, LibreOffice 5.0 broke this feature. See here.  This should be fixed as of LibreOffice 5.0.5. I do a lot of my grading in my classes electronically.  As a LibreOffice user, one issue I’ve had with the software is that I haven’t been able to insert comments into the document and then…