All kinds of crazy....

It's been a few days since I last posted. Part of that is because I have been in Hot Springs at the ARDLA (Arkansas Distance Learning Association) annual conference and shin-dig. Ray Simon (the US Deputy Secretary of Education and former Director of the Arkansas Dept of Education) gave the keynote speech. There were actually a very good number of vendors that came this year versus previous years, which show (hopefully) that ARDLA is growing... :-)

There was also a 'speakeasy' casino night, which was fun. i spent the evening at the Hold 'em table, losing my imaginary money... I noticed I am much freer with the words 'all in' when it's not real money at stake.. :-)

I presented at the conference. I figured I would talk for about 20 minutes, take questions and call it good. Somewhere, I got excited about my presentation and I ended up running over my allotted time.. :-) No one seemed to mind though and I seem to have gotten several folks interested in trying out Share Point (A Microsoft online collaborative tool, upon which the AR K-12 DL Curriculum Portal is based: http://ardl.k12.ar.us/).

There were a lot of good door prizes - iPods, an XBox360, some kind of warbly microphone thingy... I didn't win anything. I probably should feel jaded, but I can't complain... The first time I won anything of significance was when I lived in Virginia. I worked in Alexandria at a little shopping plaza house between two high-rise office buildings. While hanging out in the computer store where I worked, I had the radio on for background noise. We had very few customers ever, so when this badly dressed Santa Claus came in to the store, I was pretty sure he was lost, drunk, or maybe they were filming the sequel to Trading Places... :-) Instead, he walks over, pulls off his headphones, cocks his head to one side and asks me if I am listening to 105... With a raised eyebrow and one hand on the phone (to call for police support), I slowly nod... He blurts out something about me being a winner, and how I would get 105 dollars... I was like, "Yeah, right..." So, of course he had to call the office and I had to do a little on-air spiel, but sure enough, a few days later I got a check for 105 bucks! :-) Now, a caring, sharing, responsible employee would have bought something for the boss... or had a party with the other co-workers... Not me. I bought a 6-disc C changer. Mind you, this was in 1989/1990... I bought a Garrard 6-disc changer that has the pop-out cartridge thingy.. :-) I still have it and it works wonderfully... :-) So, to get back to my tale, I never truly expected to win at ARDLA... Sour grapes? Okay, maybe a little, considering the "Apple Die-hard" of the group won the flippin iPod! How Brian B managed to pull that off, I will never know!! :-)

So, what's with the title of this post? Emily and I were washing dishes the other night and I was being my usual loony self, making up songs and stuff... I stopped at one point, looked at her and said, "Your Daddy sure is weird, isn't he?" She looked at me and with all seriousness, said, "No... You're just all kinds of crazy..." That, from a 4-year old.... When I was a kid, we used to tell my dad, "Now, don't act weird in public..." Guess I inherited some of whatever he's got.. Lord help us all......