Chrisus zlog

Driving down to Mötz at 6.10 a.m. with 30 km/h behind a slipping lorry in heavy snowfall. Dangerous. Got the train, but in Telfs was train-end. Between Innsbruck and Völs the contact wire of the train was fallen down. So no train could pass. After 3 hours of waiting in Telfs I had a train back to Mötz, because school has ended in the meantime. Driving up the hill to Fronhausen 2 lorrys slipped over the street and stopped all the traffic. I moved along their side and had luck and passed them! This was the beginnig of the xmas-holidays. Curious: in the afternoon it started raining, and now we have mush of snow.

Today me and my pupils finished installing ubuntu and kubuntu in one computerroom. We decided not to change the default boot to windows. So everybody who takes no look at the boot-prompt will end up in Linux.

On thursday afternoon I tried something new with my pupils. We tried to install different linuxes on our school-pc's. The first try was damnSmallLinux (DSL)where we had no success, because the installer couldn't find the free partition and I hadn't read exactly the instructions.
The next try was Knoppix, but we read the howto and the first sentence was: "In any cases DO NOT install Knoppix to a HDD". So we stopped this.
Try number three was Kanotix but there was no success either. The howto told us: "Simply start the installation by clicking on the item in the menu". But in all cases we startet Kanotix _this_ item was missing.
Number four was kubuntu but alas, I had the dvd with me, and in school we have only CD-drives.
The last try was ubuntu. And this one worked. Only very few inputs had been requested: Language, country, is the hardware clock GMT and the username and password oft the "Quasi"-administrator. After 45 minutes all and everything worked fine. Grub detects W2k, we have net-access, and ubuntu comes in german, which makes it more easy for my pupils. We added a normal user to work and tested it. And I must say, the optical outfit looks cool.

Just finished the paernts evening and told 15 parents the same old story of their kids: They should learn more, they should learn more, they should learn more, heyheyhey! (sounds like a song?). But the day, that begun at 5.15 a.m. is not finished yet. The teachers will have a "nice" evening with dinner afterwards. So i think, it will be the last train back home today.

update: It was not the last train, it was Bernhard who brought me back to my car in Telfs. Now I am back home at 2.15 a.m. We had our xmas-event at the shooting-guild in Mils, where we had the chance to try the shooting sport with air-guns. We tryed shooting at 10 meters on shields of 5 cm diameter. They are divided into 9 rings and in addition the center is marked as 10th ring. So maximum account was 100 rings to shoot. Quite difficult to see those tiny little rings. But I was the winner with 96 rings.
But shooting at the xmas-dinner has some sort of bitter taste.

Unfortunately my boys were some kind of dismotivated in taking part in the FIRST Lego League. One week is missing. From a maximum ammount of 400 points they could only get 135 points with big luck. The presentation of the research was some sort of "null". So 2 of 6 didn't come today to the last briefing. In this case we decided to cancel our taking part in the competition in Schwaz. Unfortunately.

When I woke up this morning, I saw little pieces of snow lying on some places. Oh, not the amount of snow that the forecast told. But when the train came nearer to Hall, the snow became more and more. In the five minutes by bike to school I became wet all over. In the meantime here in Obsteig too there lies a lot of snow. Gipsy's feet are too short to walk over the field. She sinks.

My boys failed to install DSL to the HDD. But they liked the live-CD.

Today I told my pupils some facts about Microsoft an Linux and who ports to Linux. They wanted to know more. So I started Knoppix and showed them Runlevel 2 and KDE 3.4.x. Some of them wanted to know more. The next story was about GPL and what that means. Some of them wanted to know more. After Kanotix and DamnSmallLinux two of them (all are 15) wanted to know more about DSL. So I started a download, burned the iso-file and we booted one PC. They wanted to know how to bring this dsl to HDD. I told them but said that if they are not gurus, they should keep fingers away. "Egal, des riskier ma!" (Anyway, we'll take the risk and do it). So they took home an iso of DamnSmallLinux. Wonder what they will tell tomorrow.

Today we had an event at our school: SchuWiDu which means in german: "Schule, Wirtschaft und Du". We had 20 different manufactors her, from "Gartencenter" to "Spengler" to "KFZ-Mechaniker" to "Maskenbilder", "Zimmerer", "Tischler" and so on. Pupils from 3rd and 4th class from 7 schools arround Hall came with their teachers and visited the different jobs. Somtimes there were pupils from the last years, they presented their work, the young pupils could do some handcrafts. So they (hopefully) got an overview over different jobs they could do and maybe the cought a glimpse that doing a handcraft job is not worse than going to school for 4 more years. All in all it was a good event for all. We presented our school and what we do here. In fact, our pupils did this, I didn't say a word. And that was very good and they did a good job.

Today we had our first conference in school after the ones from the beginnig of the school-year from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. Strange, but it was a fast event. No long discussions, no feeling like walking on hot asphalt. Afterwards a beer at the geisterburg. Back home by train and car from Telfs.

Now I know, how long it lasts from waking up 'til driving away: 5 minutes. Wake up, shock: 6:00 a.m. put on my clothes, make some lunch for the day, no breakfast, put on my shoes, take my school-bag, close the house, start the car: 5 minutes. puh! 8 minutes to the railway-station, one minute too late, but: the train itself was 2 minutes too late, so I got it! What a start in a day, that brought me 9 lessons until 5:05 p.m.

After 6 years of teaching in my 7th year I have the first girl in my electro-group. She wants to become something like a technical drawer. Or maybe a "Druckvorstufentechnikerin". Dont't mind what, but I have a girl that is interested in technique. Great!

From today on I have a bike at the main train station in Innsbruck, so i can drive through the town whenever I want. I tested it last saturday and found it useful. Tomorrow I will visit my pupils at their jobs with my bike. The locations are spread all over Innsbruck. I'm happily looking forward my bike tour tomorrow.

Finaly I did it! I bought a one-week-ticket from the vvt, stood up at 5:15 a.m. and got the train at 6:07 in Mötz. Five minutes from the station in Hall to the school by bike. Sure, a bit early, but half an hour half asleep sitting in the train is fine too. Now I'm going to test the way back home.

Unfortunately today an accident occured on the highway near Innsbruck. I left the highway and took the way through Innsbruck as hundrets of drivers did. At least my way to school lasted 2 hours. For 50 km.