Monthly Archives: April 2008

Home Sweet Home… Alaska.

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This morning I signed a contract to teach high school math and social studies in the small, rural, Alaskan village of Shaktoolik. (See Google Maps: http://tinyurl.com/3el6f5 to figure out where this is.) I start on August 6th.

It’s is a dry (!!!), fly-in only village on Norton Sound with a population of about 250 people. Approximately 50 of those people are enrolled in the school with a high school population of 24. From what I understand I’ll be one of 3 high school teachers, the only single one with another 3 teachers doing elementary and special education.

Yes, there is plumbing, no I won’t be living in an igloo. I’m signing a contract for a year which will be extended next spring if both parties approve.

Before you ask, yes, they do pay very well and it will be an incredible adventure. If you’re interested in following along, bookmark the following sites and start checking them come August:

https://blog.aragirn.net (this site of course)
https://photos.kyleschneider.net
https://flickr.com/photos/aragirn

I’ll post more details as I get them.

Move to Linode

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Since I’ll no longer have a broadband connection (or much of a home) in a month to a month and a half, I decided that it was finally time for me to move my websites off of my desktop, which has been acting as my webserver for several years, and onto a hosted server. Having heard of Linode from several friends, I decided to check it out. The cool thing about Linode is that I get a virtual machine that I install my own OS on (I’m running Ubuntu 7.10 on it) and I have the root password for that VM. This means that I can do whatever I want, without having to rely on a sysadmin somewhere to install software as I need it.

So, starting today, I’ve begun the process of migrating my websites out of my apartment and onto the server. In another 3 hours, the data transfer should be complete and at that point I can begin testing to make sure I’ve remembered to install all the software and have the server configured correctly. Once I’m satisfied that everything is ready, I’ll update DNS to reflect the address of the new server and everyone should (hopefully) see a seamless transition as I’ll implement redirects while the new DNS settings propagate.

For those of you using Linode, do you have any suggestions for me? Nifty tips and tricks? Things to watch out for? If so, please, let me know.

UPDATE:

And the transition to Linode is complete. If you notice any problems, please let me know.

I’m a horrible blogger…

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Yes, I know that it’s been three months since I last blogged. I figured most of you didn’t care to know the details of student teaching. Good news is, I finish up in two more weeks. The bad news: I still don’t have a job confirmed after graduation. One thing at a time I suppose.

The sports seasons at Michigan Tech are pretty well wrapped up now, so I’m starting to get back into more non-sports photography. Sunday I headed down to the Lower Peninsula and came home with this photo:

Shoe Tree