December 6, 2005

Where: Barclay, Ginther schools
Who: Ketchell, Adam, Aiden, Evan, Chris, Me
When: 1-3:15 PM

Ketchell: Today he was being rambunctious prior to music, as his aide Mr K. told us. However, during music we only had one incident where we had to wait for him to pay attention, and after that, it was rather fun. Ketchell decided to be a “warrior prince” and don a string for a weapons belt and a string for a bandanna. We spent the remainder watching him run circles around the room (the size of a normal classroom) and try to ‘break the secret code’ by reading off numbers to us. We improvised nicely, and he had to break the code in order to save the heart and lobster stuffed animals from the evil grips of me. We then played with the big ball at the end because Ketchell got his five stars.

Adam: It must have been monster day at Barclay school, because Adam wanted to be a Christmas monster. He spent 5 minutes roaring before we played Rudolph and Jingle Bells. We also continued with the book game, getting him to read the words. He’s getting faster and actually has a few of them memorized. Adam’s getting better at looking at us while he’s speaking to us.

Aiden: At Ginther, we have a smaller room. Aiden’s been bringing a friend along, and an autism specialist was with us today as well. Which means a room the size of a walk in closet was filled with two five year olds and three adults. Aiden actually said two syllable words today, the first time I’ve ever heard him do it. He sat on my lap most of the time, my feet were numb from sitting indian-style for a while. Aiden also played with the rain stick all by himself for a short amount of time, which is better than what he was originally doing. He’s doing well, I think. We did the zoo song, ring around the rosie, a movement song, hello, and goodbye.

Evan: Evan has no ability to process rhythms at all. He’s unable, as far as we know, to do a “Simon says” type maneuver involving rhythms or actions, instead of words. Besides that test, we sang jingle bells and the reindeer song with movements (“Santas reindeer were running around and they run, run, run…”) and then it was time to go because the rhythms were so difficult they took up a large chunk of time.

Otherwise: I called Agape Physical Therapy today and am expecting a call back so I can shadow at their West Avenue location in Brockport, hopefully.


What: Website Stuff
When: Dec 2-6, about 4 hours altogether

The Quill group is meeting today to decide on a website layout; I visited with the librarian for a moment today to make sure she would let me know what she was going to use.

I emailed someone today to check on the possibility of the Quill having their own server instead of taking space off of my old one (http://www.hp-h.us/b/tootg/.....).

Over the weekend, I worked through my errors and realized what was wrong with the Update script. When I first built my website, I pulled various scripts from all over the internet and basically just forced it to work. As a result, looking through that code was confusing to me. However, I removed the code from my mind and started with a blank slate, so to speak, and outlined what I needed to do, exactly. In the end, I realized that most of the old code was unnecessary, slow, and clogging up the server. I removed probably half of it, and now the script works faster and only has to execute once instead of trying to do the same thing four different times.

The lesson of this particular inquiry? Don't think. Do what you understand, and don't try to complicate things. "Keep it Simple, Stupid!"