When I look at the calendar, things are pretty booked through late July. This is only a season and I am hoping that with kids starting their own journeys that I can look forward to future years of a more controlled fashion. All this being said, too much focus on the present can loose track of steps to prepare to future projects that need to happen now. I share my tunnel vision and encourage you to take a step back so that you don’t miss the opportunity.
Tag: graduation
May 8, 2025 – When Did Printers Start to Suck?
I am in a rare mood where I am pissed off. It starts with the high school moving graduation from the high school football field to the local college football field. Last fall, the school district tried to push a vague bond measure that would have included funding to replace the 13 year old turf. Of course, they wanted something like 50 million dollars to study replacing a grade school and some other things but more of it was just not specific. It went down in a ball of flames, as it should.
Miraculously, the district found the funding for the turf and it got installed at the beginning of the year. The district now claims that the surface is not ready to be used in time for graduation. Never mind the fact that they have been sticking javelins in it all track season. Fortunately, we have a NCAA Division II university in town and they graciously agreed to host graduation for a small fee of $5000.
It gets better. Graduation at the high school was open for all. I am hearing from teachers that it is going to be restricted to eight guests. I guess that they are going to spring this on us at the last minute. But there is a cherry on top. Those grad announcements that we paid a princely sum ($3 ea,) for in the fall are printed with all the details at the high school.
The announcements were black. My wife wanted to just cross out all of the details using a Sharpie. I tried one and it looked like crap. Since we were going to print inserts anyway for the graduation party details, I suggested that we print labels instead and cover the erroneous text. I took careful measurements to see what label available would be the perfect fit. I found one that was available at a local office supply store.
Time to print up some samples. I wanted the right font, the right words and it had to fit in the label space. I have done some label printing over the years. I used to run a lab where we would print shipping labels daily so I am aware of some of the finicky-ness of the process. I printed some samples on paper and life was fine.
Printing seems to be a constant problem in this house. Not with me but everyone else. Most of it has to do with being on the wrong network. You have to be on the same network as the printer to print. My wife who keeps her phone on the IOT network so that she can fiddle with the robot vacuum daily claims that she has lost the ability to print. No, you have to have your phone the right network. As a result, she e-mails me stuff to print all the time.
If it is not being on the wrong network, then the ink cartridges get crusted up. This means that the quality of print is poor. I have taken to buying generic cartridges mostly because they just do not remain viable and they cost so much relative to how much we actually print.
As soon as those elements are figured out, then somebody used all the paper. I have a smaller personal printer in the basement because my wife doesn’t want me or the kids randomly printing while she is working. But, it only holds twenty sheets of paper. Since we do so little printing, it is no big deal but the majority of the printing occurs on the smaller printer.
A new phenomenon has developed. For some reason, I have to reboot the computer each time I print because the spooler software gets stuck. I am more than sure it is a driver problem because this computer and printer have been paired for more than ten years and I never had this problem before. It has taken me several evenings to troubleshoot and figure this out.
I originally set this computer up as a user computer. So, my profile is not an administrator and I cannot reboot the print spooler. I have to log out and do those tasks as an administrator which is another pain in the butt. It makes me pan for the days that had the LPT1 connection.
Our first printer was a dot-matrix printer. We had to buy the paper from a computer store. A giant box pretty much lasted the life of the computer. Color is cool, print quality is much better, it is significantly faster than the old printer and we didn’t have phones that needed to print. But, I will tell you that it always printed.
End our Programming Routine: What has me stewing is that I am irritated at the school district and so anything that prolongs this process of getting these invitations completed just keeps rekindling my ire. When I get frustrated, sometimes I do a salty internet search to see what others are saying. I found lots of relatively recent forums commiserating my problems. It really does no good at all other than I feel better. I am going to give HP/Microsoft the benefit that they will get the driver situation figured out with time. Fortunately, we don’t print very much.
June 13, 2022 – Baseball, Graduation and Better Weather?
I was looking back on the years and I wax poetically about graduation at some point every year. This of course is the time that it happens. High school graduation was last Friday and the local university graduation was last Saturday. I love the hope that graduation represents. I love the party atmosphere, people seem to genuinely be in a good mood around town.
High school is really a stage gate. We went to some of the recent end of year awards ceremonies where seniors were recognized. Some of them put in a huge amount of time over the years, 1100 hours dedicated to one discipline. There was real emotion about the tenure ending. However, the exuberance about graduating is really like a caged animals getting released.
College graduation has a quite different feel. I would say it is more of a feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment. Because everyone has taken a different walk to get there, there is a different level for each person. Some have their parents, some have their kids, some are with friends because the family is far away and some are alone because that is the the way they wanted it. Each person knows that they have put in the work to meet the requirements to graduate. And so a new life begins.
Graduation is the transition between the school year and summer. When I was a kid, summer was the time to play baseball. I would say that it is was my favorite sport at that point, even though I really wasn’t good enough to make the ‘A’ team or the high school team. So, my participation in baseball waned as I got into high school. But, it doesn’t mean that I lost my appreciation for the game.
When I was younger and seemingly had all the time in the world. I would follow baseball. Later, I made attempts at some points but I guess I just couldn’t dedicate all the time. For a year or two we went to five or so minor league games before kids. The local team was a San Francisco Giants Single A team that was chocked full of future major leaguers like Buster Posey, Tim Lincecum and Pablo Sandoval. They tore up the Northwest Summer League. Unfortunately, that league was shut down in 2020 and never to return.
College baseball is somewhat big here as well. The Oregon State Beavers have won three national titles since 2006. I was listening to the Beavers play Vanderbilt last week and between the two schools they had five national titles this century. That is nearly a quarter of all the titles in that time frame.
Amazingly, they got in two games over the weekend (best two of three). Other events were not so lucky. There was an absolute deluge of rain Friday night which forced high school graduation inside. I have sat in the seats when it was raining before. It rained off and on all Saturday making college graduation hit an miss. And, baseball managed to miss it all. Last weekend, they played in rain that I thought for sure would postpone things.
This seems to be one of those years that maybe things will turn around July 4th. In the ten day forecast, I don’t see any highs above 73 degrees with more rain predicted. Yesterday, the high temperature was only 58 degrees. It feels more like Alaska than what we have been used to in the last five years. That being said, I remember a year in the 1990s that we didn’t get a temperature in the 80s until mid August.
End Your Programming Routine: In Oregon, you can’t stop for the rain. You just have to work around it. I guess what I can say is 20-30 years down the road you will remember bits and pieces about the graduation ceremony but not necessarily the weather. So, congratulations grads enjoy your moment and go Beavers.
June 9, 2020 – The final push to the end
This is typically a week I look forward to. It is a week filled with hope and optimism. I am talking about this week traditionally marks the end of the school year.
I live in a small college town and the Oregon university system has it’s graduation on Saturday of Father’s Day weekend. I don’t know many college kids, only one graduate this year. But it also marks a change of pace for our small town. Traffic lessens noticeably and the everything relaxes a bit. Commencement will be some sort of online ceremony not the typical, hope the sun shines, bask in the glory of completing school on the football field.
High School graduation was last Friday. Had our exchange student not had to leave, we would have been celebrating last weekend. We had a taco cart lined up to throw a combined graduation and good-bye party. They had a single person walk across the stage, one at a time (all day) ceremony. I don’t think that there was an all night party or baccalaureate or even the chance for a senior ‘skip’ day.
Today my oldest will cease to be a middle schooler and will be a high schooler. We have a ‘drive through’ promotion this afternoon. These are all events that I have very fond memories. Real or not, the feeling of accomplishment and the tingling unknown of what the next steps in life will look like have all been diminished a little bit this year.
I also have my own ‘graduation’. June 15 was supposed to be move in day for the apartment. I will have to do that one class in the summer, if you will. My apartment will not be ready by this weekend. Not because of anything I did, the bathroom contractor is behind. The current schedule is carpet tomorrow, window repair on Thursday. There is still the kitchen and some cleaning for my part to be move in ready.
So, for all of the online and drive through graduation ceremonies, here is my digital salute and congratulations to all of you graduates this year. I hope that you enjoy the moment and have fond memories of the year that sort of fizzled at the end. Know this, I am just as disappointed as you are because I feel like something was taken that you didn’t know you were going to have, a yearly reminder of that feeling of new beginnings.
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