What has Glee become?

I’ve written a few tweets on my displeasure with Glee this season, so I thought I’d spend a minute to put some more thoughts down on my blog about it.

After what I would consider a very good first season, Glee’s second season has been, at best, up-and-down, and at worst, bad. The writing has been consistently unbalanced and the characters have been either shadows of their own selves from season one or show no sign of actually being interesting or growing.

It’s a shame because the music is as superb as always, but the show itself has been a disappointment for me. Granted this is nothing more than my opinion, but I’ve been very disappointed.

The best way I can describe it is this way:

Imagine Star Trek: The Original Series has one season where a lot of time is spent dealing with the growth of Kirk, Spock and McCoy. It goes really well, but then, in the second season, they move the focus to Scotty but then decide to move him off the Enterprise onto the USS Stuffy Place, change all of the characterizations for the original main characters.

Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me. That’s what it feels like with Glee right now. I’m hoping the second half of the second season can be better.

Moving On … Again

It seems like just a short while ago I was writing about moving away from New Ulm and taking a job with Apple Inc. in Milwaukee, and now I am writing the reverse of that post only a few short months after the actual change took place.

Short version for those who don’t want to read: I accepted a position with Martin Luther College in New Ulm, MN to fill a vacancy in Network Services. It is a new position, titled Webmaster/Technician, and I am looking forward to getting back to work again with all of the great people there.

I’m leaving behind a great group of people at the Apple Store at Bayshore Town Center in Glendale, WI. I’ve had a great time working with everyone there, and they have all been great and helpful in helping me transition from higher education to the retail setting. To say that I’ve had some fun times would be an understatement, but an opportunity presented itself for me to make a career move for myself and a move for my family as well.

The reasons for originally moving away were many and valid, and looking back they still are. Part of me would not have been happy staying in New Ulm if we had not made the move to the Milwaukee area and made it work for the last four months. Doubts would have lingered in my own head about what I am capable of and if I could ever be successful outside of the town I had grown up in.

However, I’ve now learned that it IS possible, and I come back with new experiences (including my first trip to California), a new perspective, and a new appreciation for some things in life I had begun to take for granted. I come back, hopefully, a more mature person than when I left.

This move allows me to get back into web design and development, something I have been dearly missing. I look forward to throwing myself at many hard problems when I get back and get settled. I give myself a couple of days at most.

The more structure schedule will allow me to have more time with my family, and that cannot be overstated enough. I’ve missed being able to tuck my son into bed every night and help with supper, and being allowed to do that again is too enticing to pass up.

My family means the world to me, and I can’t spend as much time away from them as I have been since the move. It is a matter of not knowing what you have until it is gone.

So, we move ahead with our fourth move and fifth place for the year 2010. First on our list when we get to New Ulm is to figure out how to buy a home and then do so. I think I can say pretty definitively that we are done moving … for a little while.

The Talk Show on 5by5 →

If you are not listening to this podcast, shame on you.

Fixating on specific technologies, such as interactive whiteboards, has cost schools dearly and has largely failed to meaningfully transform classroom practice.

— http://speirs.org/blog/2010/11/3/on-strategy.html

Conan O’Brien Presents: SHOW ZERO! (via teamcoco)