Mahalo nui loa, Aloha. A hui hou!

Wall•E, Andrew Stanton’s latest film from Disney/Pixar, is inching closer to its June 27th release. What appears to be the full-length theatrical trailer has been released, and it looks really great. Be sure to check it out.

Apple had their press briefing on the iPhone SDK Roadmap today, and I think it’s going to be pretty tremendous. There’s a lot of power, especially with what they’ve demo’ed so far- some pretty intense apps were shown by developers who had just two weeks to develop their apps on the iPhone, including AIM and Spore. Along with the SDK, Apple announced the 2.0 version of the iPhone software, which includes real enterprise support for Exchange servers- I’ll be able to access my corporate email now! Goodbye Outlook Web Access, and good riddance!

Unfortunately it won’t be out until mid-June, but when it hits, the iPhone is going to be a huge player in the enterprise telecommunications department. I can’t wait for this to drop.

As you all may have noticed (as evidenced below) I’ve made a lot of posts on this blog concentrated on my experiences as an intern on the Walt Disney World College Program. In anticipation of further movement in that direction and requests to put more of my experiences down to paper (er, bytes), I’m spinning off all future discussion on this topic to a new blog on this site: Irrelevant Ramblings: Disney Edition.

At some point, I may merge these two blogs, and I’m sure there may be some overlap, but with the amount I’m planning to post on the subject in the near future, I think it’s better to split it off for now.

More personal posts coming to this blog, later.

This blog post has been a long time coming- I simply have just not had the time to get my thoughts down on this blog. Disney likes to keep people busy, and I am no grand exception to this rule. I’ll post three items today, and some additional things later on down the road.

Item one: Moving up in the world. I’ve been working as part of the podium cast at ‘Ohana, a family style feast at Disney’s Polynesian Resort for the past couple months. While I’ve had a blast, there really hasn’t been anything hugely dynamic or differentiating about my experience- it’s an average role with average interaction (...and even though I work my tail off and make the magic happen everyday, somethings can get a little stale after a while). No more, however. Upon a visit to the training office (so I could, myself, take a trainer’s course to become a bonafide, certified trainer), I was coerced into becoming a facilitator for Disney’s Aloha Day class. In short, I’ll be training new hires coming in to the resort on one of their first days about Polynesian culture, the resort itself, and the excellent guest service we pride ourselves on. I sort of took the bone begrudgingly in a way; I accepted the role only in passing, but now I can see that I’m honestly very satisfied with the decision I made to become a facilitator- it’ll be something to distinguish my time at Disney from most others who have done this program.

...and best of all- no costume!

Item two: the big move. In the midst of having almost two sets (!) of roommates terminated over at Vista Way, I had gotten a little fed up with life over at Vista. Those who are familiar with the situation know that I had tried to move over to Chatham Square, only to meet strong resistance from the program housing team back in February (”...we cannot move you to Chatham, it is not compatible with your program. If it was my choice, I would move you… but it’s not my choice to make, and there is no one person that can make that decision). I got on the horn in June, and low-and-behold, they’ve decided that they’d grant my request to move after the last original roommate I had was terminated.

Chatham is a much, much nicer complex. Even though I rarely see my new roomates (Mike, Parker and Rodney), life is good.

Item three: Disney. I’ll have to expand on this in another post, but I love the company that I’m working for. Disney represents a lot of great things, and I don’t personally think that the extent of all that I can do here, all that I can take advantage of, is complete. I’ve chosen to extend my program up until January 2008. That probably marks some insanity on my part, but I’m insane to begin with.

Item three and a quarter: my iPhone rocks. More on that in another post.

That’s about all for now, I’ll post more soon.

I’m now part of the cast at ‘Ohana, a family-style restaurant at Disney’s Polynesian Resort. ‘Ohana of course means family, and in that spirit, all of our guests and cast members are cousins throughout the course of service. The neat thing about ‘Ohana is that it in itself is a minority at the Walt Disney World Resort- our meals are served family style, meaning that you could have as much as you’d like (ala buffet), and we bring it all to you. It’s all very cool. If you (or anyone else) happens to stop by, you’ll see me either checking in guests at the podium, or guiding them to their tables.

Curious about our menu? Take a look.

I’m sure it took much thought and deliberation to put someone from Hawai’i at the Polynesian Resort, but I’m proud to be part of the team over at ‘Ohana.

I’ve been thinking about doing this for a while now- and having gone through the application and interview process, I’ve now come to the grand conclusion of the scheming and the realization of utter realities. You, the reader, are probably questioning what on Earth I’m talking about at this point, despite the massive hint in the image above. Shame on you for not being so observant, and shame on me for not being any more god damn obvious.

In order to get where we are now, we have to go back all the way to June, when I had come to the decision that I would take the year off from school and just lounge. Translation? Sit on my ass and twiddle my thumbs all day long. Not exactly, but you get the point- aside from the occasional miscellaneous side-job and ongoing projects, I haven’t been doing much these past few months. Back in June, I had toyed with the idea of doing the Disney College Program, but alas, forewent that opportunity.

Earlier this month, I had thoughts of doing this program again, and without the slightest bit of apprehension on my part, submitted the paper work and underwent a short interview. Nothing spectacular, but I figured I at least hadn’t bombed it. In the mail today came this lovely little packet from Disney Worldwide Services, Inc. stating that I had indeed been selected to participate in the program, and was extended a role as a FSFB Host. There’s a certain excitement to be sure, and at the same time, some apprehensiveness still on my part. What, exactly, is the experience to be? Only one thing is for sure- it must be better than sitting here on my tuckus most of my waking hours. If nothing else, this is an excuse to get my foot in the door over at Disney, which surely isn’t a bad place to get a proverbial foot in someone’s proverbial door.

That’s a stroke at brilliance, surely. I’ll be arriving in Orlando February 5th, and will stay for about six months.

Have a magical day. Strike that- have a magical new year.

California-modern style architecture tucked back into a wooded lot. With more decks than a cruise-ship, this lovely home was built in 1991 and features a lovely finished basement…

Just a house. Maybe.

More news at 11.

A lot of people ask me how online schooling works and perhaps more importantly, if I like it. I generally provide some canned response similar to “it’s flexible”, though lacking much insight into what I actually think. For a change however, I’m going to give a more legitimate answer. Before we get started, this post is unprovoked: merely containing some criticism for a fairly respectable institution in its own right.

For those of you who didn’t know, I’ve been attending Myron B. Thompson Academy, a charter school under Hawaii Department of Education titles. It’s a school that promises a progressive agenda in education, notably offering most of its curriculum over the internet. This sounds great, but in reality, it’s a mixed bag. It’s not so much the fact that the school is online or anything else, as it is an administration that doesn’t venture far from conventional wisdom. Instead of pushing the limits of what one could do when offering courses, old, stale obligatory standard content is presented exactly the same as it would be in a classroom anywhere else in the country- just online.

I never really learned all that much in conventional schools. I’m not learning very much here, either. I’ll tell you this much though: I’m peddling through more work than I’ve ever done in a typical public school. It’s highly bothersome, and the result is no different.

On flexibility, it’s only marginally more so than a typical school. There’s such a great potential for portability in this formula, especially with the advent of students tugging laptops wherever their journey takes them. Taking advantage of technology, one could expect students to turn out highly creative new media projects, instead of worksheets, to illustrate competency in a subject area. In that, open ended deadlines should always be realized as policy, where it can finish the equation for an open education- both for a school and its students. Why implement policies that prohibit real flexibility? I shouldn’t need to seek approval from anyone weeks in advanced to leave this island, much less need explain myself as to why. If an unfathomable response of “no” were to come about, one could only predict the storm that it would unleash. This is not a dictatorship, this is education. Staff at my school, all schools, should get the message.

So that’s what I truly think. In hindsight, I probably should have opted to 4140 myself, but alas, I thought Thompson would offer so much more.

In the same vein as my pal Dan Pourhadi, I’ve decided to give this blog thing another go. I’ll try to post something every once in a while, but unlike the rest of my generation (example one), I’m not going to go on about pathetic crap (most notably marred with poor grammar, spelling and such atrocities). Rather, I’m going to post about the important stuff in life. Yes.

*Queue the national anthem*

Onward and upward…