Trail maintenance crew

I am soaking in a hot bath.  I enjoy doing this anyway, but today I need it.  Today I went out for my first shift with the trail maintenance crew.

This is a, seemingly completely informal, group of guys who work on the trails around the area.  I had heard of their existence soon after I got here, and have been trying to make contact ever since.  Finally, on the Lazy Ass Hikers trip to the Beaver Pond trails, we ran across the crew doing some brush clearing.  I gave them my contact information, and I got a call last night, and blew off Tai Chi in order to go out with the crew this morning.

At the moment trail maintenance is somewhat dependent on the weather.  Well, I guess it's always very dependent on the weather, but at the moment the scheduling is a bit hit-and-miss, just in case it's raining.  Today it wasn't raining.  At least not this morning, although it got cloudier towards the afternoon, and the forecasts are telling me that they expect rain overnight.  But it wasn't raining when we headed out.

It was, on the other hand, freezing cold.  I had two t-shirts, and two hoodies on, to try and keep warm.  Hiking out to the area we were going to clear with tolerable, although it got somewhat warm.  As soon as we started digging out sword fern, I figured that I needed to take off the outer hoodie.  After I dug out the second sword fern, I took off the other hoodie.  I am definitely going to have to rethink wardrobe.  By the time we had done an hour and a half, I was so drenched with sweat that I figured that I needed to take a shower before I went and gave a presentation to the Rotary.  So I cut out early.

Sword fern is not an invasive species.  But it is, definitely, an encroaching species.  If you want to keep a trail clear, you have to make sure that you keep sword fern plants well back from its margins.  Sword fern spreads like crazy, particularly in open ground, like paths.  You can't just cut it down: you have to hack out the roots.

Wardrobe is not the only thing that I will have to rethink.  I am, to put it mildly, hardware deficient.  I don't have shovels and rakes and implements of destruction.  What I'd really like for Christmas (or, I suppose, my birthday), is an axe-mattock or cutter mattock, similar to a pulaski.

Walking back, by myself, I realized that, tired, sore, and aching though I was from the unaccustomed labor, I felt pretty good.  Being out in the woods, on a sunny day, even if it was one that was pretty cold, was good.  Doing some productive work, for other people, and getting some thanks by a passing hiking crew, and one dog walker, felt good.  And, possibly, even the extra work, different than my normal walking, felt like it might be a pretty good idea.  So I look forward to the next call out from the trail maintenance crew.

Hebrews 11:1

Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see.

Grandchildren

They said, had we known

Grandkids this much fun, we'd had

them first.  So, I did.

Job 3:26

I have no peace!  I have no quiet!  I have no rest!  And trouble keeps coming!

MGG - 4.1 - All Things Work Together ATWT - fired

(Yeah, I need to edit some of this ...)

This story has a lesson which I didn't learn for a long while after the initial occurrences.  It took many years to come to the final outcome.

As previously noted, I took a long time to come to the realization that I did want to be a teacher: that I was in fact a teacher, and that I loved it.

I didn't particularly love my first teaching job.  I was teaching in Kitimat a town of about 14,000 people.  It was then that I realized that I was not a small town boy.  I wasn't particularly fond of living in a small town, with the social restrictions that that involves.  I used to tell people that I was living forty miles from nowhere, nowhere being defined as Terrace, which was the next town up the highway.

Although I didn't realize it at the time, I was in a teaching position that was possibly the worst type of teaching position I could have been involved with.  I was teaching in the largest elementary school in Kitimat.  Although nobody knew it at the time, the principal of that school was sexually abusing young boys within the city.  Therefore, the basic policy for the operation of the school was that nothing could attract attention.  I attracted attention.

The position that I obtained within the school was that of a specialist science teacher.  This was not a usual position in an elementary school.  Elementary schools, particularly of the day, held that teachers should teach all subjects in elementary school and specialists were to be avoided.  The science teacher who had preceded me in the position had, basically, taught science by doing fancy experiments as demonstrations for the kids, without really teaching any science principles.  This had gone on for a number of years.

Science was not the only subject to have been neglected in that particular school, over the preceding years.  The intermediate grades in elementary school, that of grades four through seven, had a specialist music teacher.  The specialist music teacher, therefore, had to have the regular subjects for his classes taught by other teachers.  In addition to the science that I taught in all grades from four to seven, I also taught all of the math for all the grades six and seven.

It quickly became apparent that the students in grades six and seven had not even learned the math concepts that were supposedly taught in grade four.  So, I had to bring all of the grade six and seven students, up from a grade three level, to their own grade level.  In addition, of course, I had to teach science up to the proper grade level.

There was one additional factor.  The previous year, the school district had decided on a new science curriculum.  This new science curriculum was massive.  Given approximately seventy hours of instruction for an entire year, each of grades four through seven was supposed to be instructed in at least 150 different concepts.  A number of these concepts were completely unrelated to science, such as song, dance, and puppetry.

I was blissfully unaware of how many people I offended, and who, and how.  I saw problems in regard to the educational tasks I was given to undertake, and tried to address them as effectively as I could.  Unfortunately there were additional factors in play.

One of those factors was that the government of the day had undertaken what it referred to as a "restraint program," which, in essence, meant that they were trying to reduce the costs and wages of any civil service or government related jobs.  This was specifically targeted at education in a variety of ways, since teachers are generally paid out of the public purse.  The teachers union was, at the time, blindsided by a series of pieces of legislation mandating restrictions in budgets, longer working hours for teachers, and reducing any limits on class sizes.

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/03/mgg-33-masters-business-analysis-ba.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html

Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/03/mgg-42-all-things-work-together-atwt.html

Psalm 4:2

How long, exalted men, will my honor be insulted?  How long will you love what is worthless and pursue a lie?

MGG - 3.3 - Masters, Business Analysis BA - security

A few years later I got into the field of information security.  Well, initially I got into the field of computer virus research.  But it turns out that computer virus research is an excellent introduction to the field of information security in general.

At that time, Gloria was working as a church secretary, at a different church.  But our church got very interested in a church membership database, tied to a simple bookkeeping package, that allowed you to track donations.  (Anytime you mention money, people get very interested.)  The fellow who was selling this particular package was doing a presentation in Seattle.  So, Dad asked me to come with him and attend the presentation.  I did.

We attended the presentation.  We asked about security.  (Well, I asked about security.)  The developer said that the package was completely secure, since you had to use a password to access it.  (He didn't mention anything about encryption.)  Dad was very happy about this program, and ready to recommend it to the church computer committee, despite the fact that it required an MS-DOS computer, and the church only had Apples.

However, I had inside information, in a sense.  I knew that the church where Gloria was secretary used this church database and bookkeeping program.  Gloria was not given access (or an account and password) to the database and bookkeeping program.  Only the church clerk (who deals with membership) and the accountant (who deals with the bookkeeping) had passwords and accounts to access the database and bookkeeping program.

But, I had been helping Gloria, at certain times, with certain computer programs and problems.  In doing this I had found out a few things about the database and bookkeeping program.  It was written in dBase.  dBase had a standard, and fairly compatible, and accessible, database structure.  I didn't need to run the database and bookkeeping program.  I could figure out, from the file names, which parts of the database stored what, and for what purpose.  And, I could read everything.  I could, if I wanted to, read anything in the database, and anything in the donation files.  I could look up any information the church had about anybody.  I could look up anybody's donations.  I didn't, but I could have.

I informed our church computer committee of these facts.  I don't know what happened, and I don't know what any discussions were, but I do know that the church continued to use databases which they threw together themselves with simple user tools.

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/02/mgg-32-masters-business-analysis-ba.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html

Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/03/mgg-41-all-things-work-together-atwt.html