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Just a drop in the bucket when you consider the cost of maintaining the town’s fleet of 4WD vehicles and money spent on lawsuits (two more discussed in an 8/11 nonpublic session), but $500 for disaster recovery services is truly a waste of town treasure.

The town already has 100g of ‘off site storage’ under the control of the nearly-dormant-website-committee.  Simple configuration of a free program called Cobian Backup could provide the town with 100% free disaster recovery.

It’s only $500, but the town is facing at least three lawsuits, so let’s not just give money away.  I would be happy to install, configure, and monitor backups for half that — $250 per year.  And I’d provide the offsite storage for another $100 per year.  That’s not charity, I’d do it for any individual or business.

Just in case they don’t put up some signs before school starts, here is a digram of the new traffic flow…

Note that all parents and students now enter the parking lot in front of the High School.  Click the image for a larger, printable document.  Thanks to Peter Bealo for traffic map.

Click here for 2008-2009 bus routes.

If It’s Yellow, Let It Mellow I was at the HS last night for the end-of-band-camp-potluck-dinner.  We got there early, so I had my kid take me on a tour.  The place is a mess.  We checked on a couple perpetually broken rest rooms.  Not only were the bathrooms not repaired, but the toilets were not flushed.  YUK!

Waste Not, Want Not It kills me that the SAU is making NO EFFORT to save energy.  One of the empty rooms had a desk lamp running — incandescent light, no less!  And two rooms we entered were full of computers — everyone of them turned on, every monitor on.  To make matters worse, vending machines were running throughout the school.  Some rooms were warm from the heat coming off their refrigerators.  The only thing missing was a continuous loop of An Inconvenient Truth.

Every computer should be on a power strip that can completely isolate it from the power grid when not in use.  This saves energy and minimizes the risk of damage from power fluctuations.  How much money could have been saved if these PCs were unplugged before leaving for summer vacation?

Bulletproof Secretary As we were walking past the front entrance, I heard the familiar clicking of a motion detector.  Looking around, I saw it was above the doors to the entrance — right over a 1/4″ gap between the doors.  So, if you can’t get the bulletproof secretary’s attention, fold a sheet of paper in half and pass it through the gap in the doors to trip the motion detector and open the doors.  The doors opened fine for me.

I hope no terrorists read this blog!

I Actually Like The New Traffic Patterns I think this will help a lot with flow.  I hope they aren’t done, though.  The signage is terrible — as in nonexistent.  There ought to be signs on Greenough Road telling people where to enter for each destination.  In the parking lots, there should be signs directing people to the destinations and the exits.  You know, like at the airport — parking next left, terminals right, etc.  Painting these things on the roads only works when there is only one car in the parking lot.

Governor Wentworth Regional school district voted on reducing the school week from five to four days during the coldest winter months to save energy.  Does this proposal have merit?  Could a four day school week benefit the TRSD?

Ignoring the economic and scheduling challenge for those who rely on day care, I think it could.  Let’s consider the impact of four day weeks from December through March.  Looking at the 2008-2009 school calendar, this period covers fourteen weeks (not including vacations).  During the fourteen weeks, there are four early releases, and two closed days, so we are talking about eight teaching days (twelve legal days).

Giving back April vacation, and moving three professional development days, we’d need to add four days to the beginning and/or end of the school year.  As a bonus, moving the afternoon activities from the four remaining early release days (not counting the last day of school) would result in four additional teaching days.  We are also 20% less likely to have snow days.

Now is a good time to think about this.  We’d need to put this in the upcoming contract.

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