Capt. Mondo's World o' Mondo-ness

A Busy, Successful Day
Started off the day by heading down to Royal Alex Theatre in order to pick up replacement tickets for a performance of Mama Mia that I had bought ages ago as a treat for my Aunt Audrey. I managed to loose the previous ticket for her, and will undoubtedly find it months from now from whatever "safe place" I put it in. ;-) I headed to her apartment and dropped off the ticket.

Then I head to the FIS faculty on the U. of T. campus to talk to the head of the Continuing Ed program there about teaching future courses. First, I dropped off about a dozen computer books off at their library, and then went to talk The CSS course I had recently taught simply didn't get enough attendees to warrant being renewed for the coming year, but I am still eager to teach, and a couple of course ideas I had put forward got accepted! So beginning in October I'll be teaching an 8-week course on Wednesday evenings covering PHP and MySQL, and an admittedly ambitious 1-day course on how to install, set up Web and email services on a Red Hat Linux machine. I may have bitten off more than I can chew with that one, but over the weekend I'll be coming up with full course descriptions, and ensure that the latter is as feasible as I think it may be. I am pleased that I'll continue my teaching efforts at the U. of T.

My next intention was to head to The Computer Paper offices to talk to my editor there and pick up further books I knew would be waiting for me. Along the way I stopped off at the R.O.M. and spent the lunch-hour there. I deliberately went to the sections I never normally get to spend a lot of time in – in other words, the one's which aren't as kid-friendly as the dino section. ;-) Spent my time having a leisurely look at the Art Deco exhibit, the Samuel European Galleries, plus the Roman, Greek and Etruscan areas. I ran into a school group in the Egyptian section just as they were at the mummy section. The woman leading the group was an Egyptologist I had recognized from an episode of @Discovery.ca a while back. She mesmerized the kids telling them all about what was known about the mummy and the religious motifs on the coffin lid. The kids must have been studying Egyptology in their school as they answered some questions she posed to them about ancient Egyptian gods and funeral practices. She read to the meanings of some of the inscriptions, which amazed one of the kids who asked her "how can you read that?" ;-) Lucky kids to get such a guide!

I headed out shortly afterwards, making my way to The Computer Paper offices. Sure enough, there was a healthy pile of computer books for me to look at and review. I also had a good long talk with the editor there, who gave me the lowdown on what the paper's near-term plans are publication-wise. Nothing I can reveal here, but you can expect some interesting changes with Toronto Computes! come the fall. I hadn't realized that they had been doing some radio shows at an Ottawa radio station, and am keen to send them a sample story or two to see if it will fit into their format.

Soon after getting home, we headed out to Ashbridges Bay where the local police organized their annual fun fair for the local kids. Annie in particular had a blast bouncing endlessly in the inflatable bouncing castle they had there, both of them got balloons and got to meet the venerable Blinky the Police Car who chatted to both of them.

Later this evening, I'm off to see the Matrix: Reloaded. Review to come!