cactuswatcher (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cactuswatcher) wrote2021-02-10 09:11 am
cactuswatcher) wrote2021-02-10 09:11 am
Entry tags:
Week 48
I didn't post for week 47. My mind was kind of in a tizzy. My car battery died very quickly with our last cold snap; slow start one day, slightly slower the next, dead the next. So I had to go get a new one installed and got an oil change as well. Hadn't changed the oil in awhile because I haven't been going places (last week was a big exception). Monday I went to the bank to deposit a couple checks and made a quick stop the grocery near the bank. That afternoon I got my second stimulus payment. (You may not remember, but in the middle of January Trump's folk were saying if you didn't get one by January 15, you would not and you'd have to claim it on your income tax. Well apparently, the checks, at least many of them, were all made out. Mine was dated Jan 6. When Biden came in the folks in the Treasury Department decided to send them out.) So I went back to the bank on Tuesday and bought some business type software at Office Max. Wednesday I was going to make a circuit of places, but my battery was dead. I charged the battery up early Thursday morning and drove it to the shop to get a new battery. Had something I wanted to do at home so I skipped the circuit. Friday morning, I went grocery shopping early and did the first stop of my circuit to by a video game and got home in time for the same thing I wanted to do.
What was it that was stopping my mornings short, actually all week? I've been watching a geology class as it is being taught at Central Washington University by a PhD (not sure he's a professor) named Nick Zentner. The guy loves learning new things about his field, but not so he can publish, but so he can lecture about them to his beginning students and to the public in general. His YouTube channel has a wide selection of lectures on geology topics that he's given in recent years to the town folk where the university is in the foot hills on the east side of the Cascade Mountains. Last fall with Covid and no classes I guess he got stir crazy, because he did over a hundred lectures on the geology of northern Washington State just for the YouTube audience he's built up over the years. When he finished that series he learned his school was going to start the winter quarter (i.e. the classes now) remotely and begin limited face-to-face classes two weeks in. He decided why not put the first remote meetings of his Geology 101 class on YouTube and let all his subscribers get those beginning geology lessons, too. And he decided why not have the in-class lectures also available on YouTube for the remainder of the term. So I'm learning the basics of geology this winter. Thank to the virus only about 25 students are attending, scattered in the back of a big lecture hall and about a thousand people from all over the world including me, are mostly watching it live four times a week. Sometimes I forget and don't get on or can't and just watch as a regular YouTube video. You can, too. Just go to Nick Zentner on YouTube and start with lecture #1, and watch them when you can from the beginning. The videos are much longer than the 50 minute classes. You can skip the pre-class. He tells you at the beginning of the video how far to skip if you want and you can skip the Q&As after the class breaks up because that mostly comes from people who've seen his earlier lectures and often have very advanced questions. If he's smart, he'll delete all of these classes when the term is over so he won't have a bunch of students walking in the future, having heard it all, and getting easy A's without having to go to class a lot of the time. I'd guess time for these class videos being available is limited. He's going to go into detail on Washington geology as the class goes on, so the very basics are already mostly on YouTube.
What was it that was stopping my mornings short, actually all week? I've been watching a geology class as it is being taught at Central Washington University by a PhD (not sure he's a professor) named Nick Zentner. The guy loves learning new things about his field, but not so he can publish, but so he can lecture about them to his beginning students and to the public in general. His YouTube channel has a wide selection of lectures on geology topics that he's given in recent years to the town folk where the university is in the foot hills on the east side of the Cascade Mountains. Last fall with Covid and no classes I guess he got stir crazy, because he did over a hundred lectures on the geology of northern Washington State just for the YouTube audience he's built up over the years. When he finished that series he learned his school was going to start the winter quarter (i.e. the classes now) remotely and begin limited face-to-face classes two weeks in. He decided why not put the first remote meetings of his Geology 101 class on YouTube and let all his subscribers get those beginning geology lessons, too. And he decided why not have the in-class lectures also available on YouTube for the remainder of the term. So I'm learning the basics of geology this winter. Thank to the virus only about 25 students are attending, scattered in the back of a big lecture hall and about a thousand people from all over the world including me, are mostly watching it live four times a week. Sometimes I forget and don't get on or can't and just watch as a regular YouTube video. You can, too. Just go to Nick Zentner on YouTube and start with lecture #1, and watch them when you can from the beginning. The videos are much longer than the 50 minute classes. You can skip the pre-class. He tells you at the beginning of the video how far to skip if you want and you can skip the Q&As after the class breaks up because that mostly comes from people who've seen his earlier lectures and often have very advanced questions. If he's smart, he'll delete all of these classes when the term is over so he won't have a bunch of students walking in the future, having heard it all, and getting easy A's without having to go to class a lot of the time. I'd guess time for these class videos being available is limited. He's going to go into detail on Washington geology as the class goes on, so the very basics are already mostly on YouTube.