Capt. Mondo's World o' Mondo-ness

Taught My HTML Class (Friday)
Friday I spent from 9am-3:30pm doing my one-day course on web design, HTML forms, tables, and frames at the U. of T. as part of the Continuing Ed program for the Faculty of Information Science. The class was small – only 8 students this time – just the way I like it. Normally I teach up on the 3rd floor of the FIS building that is part of Robarts Library building (a structure I have always thought of as some strange alien concrete spacecraft that crash landed on the U. of T. campus), but this time the class was situated in the basement level, in a newly renovated computer lab, with funky flat-panel monitors and with accompanying slim-line Dell machines gracing each table. The class itself went very well. Once I got into my “groove” – relatively easy, since this is the ninth time I’ve taught this particular class – I riffed off on all things Web-y and HTML-y over the course of the day.

The only major difference this time around for me was that I decided to place all of my major links for the course online on one of my scratch Web sites, so I could easily get to all of my reference pages quickly and easily. Perhaps too easily. I found on a couple of occasions that I was running under time. This wasn’t so bad, since I could fill the time easily riffing off what I knew about font settings for one 15 minute stretch, and doing a quickie tutorial on CSS in about the same time. So the students got slightly more than the bargained for. In part it was because we had no particularly slow students this time, and the pace was good and largely regimented throughout. And thankfully there was nobody who had more than a beginner’s knowledge of HTML – even though we emphasize that this is a course for beginners, sometimes a person who is a bit more advanced gets in, and is subsequently disappointed.

In the end all went well, and I enjoyed myself quite a bit, teaching what I could to the students. All of the appraisals at the end of course were good – except one. One person didn’t seem to think much of the course, and especially of learning from the handouts. This is mitigated somewhat by the fact that a couple of the other students found the handouts were terrific, and that the “bad egg” was the only one who rated the food the school provided during lunch as “Excellent” – the poor twisted soul. ;-) Kidding aside, it’s the one dud report that rankles, and even though I realize I “can’t please everyone”, on the subway ride home I was turning over other ways to teach the course that would have kept that person happy while ensuring that I didn’t throw everything off for everyone else...

Dinner... at a Pub!
When I got home, I dumped my backpack and almost immediately set out again, this time to go with Erika to a local pub. We dropped Vanessa and Annie with a kind neighbour down the street, and Erika and I headed over a couple of blocks to Murphy’s Law, a relatively recent Beaches pub established at Queen St. and Kingston Rd.

On the way there, we saw small flocks of excited kids and their parents heading to the local movie theatre, on their way to see Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone on opening night. We figure it’s going to be around for a while, so we’ll see it sometime later.

Thanks to a rather draconian anti-smoking law (which otherwise I am in favour of) Erika and I don’t get out to pubs much these days, since nobody under the age of 19 (i.e. Vanessa and Annie) is allowed inside. So all of the restaurants with bars in them declared themselves to be pubs/bars, which do not have to adhere to the anti-smoking rules. But pubs/bars can’t have kids, so we’re screwed...

...Unless you have a sitter for the kids for a night, which we did. We almost choked on the smoke in Murphy’s Law after steeping inside, and we were very pleased to find the no-smoking section was in a completely separate part of the building (downstairs). It’s nice, it’s cozy, and the food and drink is good. I had a Murphy’s Stout right off the bat, which soothed my throat, which felt a bit raw after so many hours of speaking during the class. Erika had an Irish lager, and we settled down for a pleasant meal and a drink (or three) sans kids. For a pub, the food is really good, and is easily better than most of the other pubs in the Beaches area (only Quigley’s may be better, but like I said earlier, we’re a bit out of practice these days. ;-) Only source note food-wise was when Erika sent back a steak she had been given, as it was way overdone. The replacement was done to a “t” – very tasty.

It was great to have the chance to sit down with my dear wife and just chat and be ourselves without having to worry about the kids. Great stuff. After dinner we picked up the kids, and then put them, and soon after, us, to bed.