Tag Archives: Fritz

Reflecting on the Rebuild

Posted on by
1

I have to say that having a few days to tinker and rebuild fritzwinkle.com has been a bit of a joy. It has been something that I have been wanting to do for sometime.

Over the summer, I conceived of making a big switch and redoing the whole thing, but it didn’t happen. Instead, I got busy doing other things and, for the first time in awhile, just trying to enjoy some of the summer free from work. Of course, I did get myself involved in somethings that took up some time too.

Unfortunately, I had made some miscalculations with the domain name, which rendered everything offline for a bit. That forced me to have to go into a waiting mode, until that got itself worked out. I also have a tendency to get myself quite wrapped up in various projects and classes while teaching full time, as well. This has always made maintaining the site a challenge.

On the plus side, I have been riding a little bit of a website development wave. From tuning things with the various sites I have been using with students, as well as developing the new sites for both the Massachusetts Writing Project and Boston Writing Project. These autumn activities made for a quicker transition once I had everything ready. Plus, I had a lot more knowledge and understanding at the forefront of my mind since I was using it more regularly. This made it kind of fun and it didn’t take forever, which best of all.

Photo: Fall Kids

Fall Kids at Play

Now, as always, I just hope I can keep things updated and fresh, which has always been a challenge.

Fritzwinkle Reborn

Posted on by
Reply

It is hard to believe that it has been a whole year since the last post on ye old fritzwinkle. Well, having two kids to chase around definitely creates some challenges. Plus, for awhile it seemed like everything I did involved a website. So I guess I simply needed a break.

Then again, I ran into some serious technical problems that seriously hampered efforts to make the necessary improvements needed to reduce the time needed to maintain the site. Considering how long the site had been online, it is amazing that it worked as long as it did. To think I hand-coded the thing from scratch in the beginning. This time around, I have systematized things a whole lot more and hopefully that will make all of the difference. So, I am back again with a brand new look and feel and future improvements on the horizon.

Thanksgiving Spread

It seems almost fitting that it has been a year since the last post. It was last year when we had our first Thanksgiving in our own home. This year was no different and equally wonderful. Ali, with a little help from Keri, whipped up a feast for all of us. The Patriots played and won. The kids enjoyed the spread.

Family Thanksgiving

They were both ready, adorned with headdress. Now that Hadley has begun school, she is returning home with holiday crafts. She is a particular lover of pumpkin pie. Even little Fritz could partake in some of the grub. He seems to like turkey quite a bit, in spite of this fantastic look.

Turkeyhead One Turkeyhead Two Mmmm, Turkey

Another Summer Ends, Another Autumn Begins

Posted on by
Reply

As if the last day of summer rang a bell for the seasons, New England is already beginning to show its fall colors. The leaves are just now visibly changing, speckling the green with red, yellow, and orange. We have had a couple of sharp, biting cool nights which usually helps make for a beautiful autumn.

Of course autumn signals the start of football season, and the indoctrination process has long since begun. Of course soccer has started across Europe too. Plus, more games than ever are now on ESPN. I am loving it.

Go Pats! Cutest Pats Fans

School has gotten off to a good start this year, at least more noticeably than the typical first month. The only real trouble is that our computer network has rendered the internet almost unusable, which significantly impacts the day. Yet, I have been able to work round this for the most part. It is just mighty inconvenient, especially now that three out of the five classes I am teaching rely heavily on regular internet components, one is exclusively online, one is half online, and the other will spend half this term involved in a project that is almost exclusively online. Despite all of this, I am very much enjoying the classes and it looks to be a good year.

In His Grill

On the soccer front, my team of freshmen girls look like they are about to start really making progress and getting results. It is still a bit early to tell for sure, but the early indications are good. Their last game was the best they’ve played yet.

http://www.flickr.com/apps/video/stewart.swf?v=71377

Ali continues to be a remarkable mother of our beautiful children. Fritz is really starting to reveal his personality now that he is smiling and cooing. He definitely has quite the expressive little face, in spite of his Chuchillesque cheeks. His expressiveness seems to be focused in the brow and mouth, as opposed to the eyes like his sister. Sadly, the photographs don’t quite capture this as well as video. As for Hadley, she continues to talk away with enthusiasm. If only she would do more of it when prompted by the phone. Then everyone could hear her little chipmunk voice cuteness.

http://www.flickr.com/apps/video/stewart.swf?v=71377

Hopefully, the videos reveal a bit more about each of them that a simple photograph can’t quite capture.