TechnoGeek

Roe v. Wade in danger and my thoughts.

noreply@blogger.com (DBrenner) — Sat, 04 Jan 2020 03:30:00 +0000

In other news, aside from the impending shooting war, GOP is asking SCOTUS to revisit Roe v. Wade for “clarity”.

When/if they get it overturned I hope that our friends on the Right that control the legislature and executive branches, locally and nationally:

1. They put lots of money into medically & scientifically accurate sex-ed: curriculum, training, qualified teachers, etc.

2. Provide free contraception

3. Provide day care so single mothers have an easier time completing school or entering the workforce

4. Provide adequate support to SNAP; we are talking about feeding CHILDREN that didn’t have a choice in the matter

5. Form a line and sign up to adopt all of the unplanned children given the opportunity for another loving home

Hell, if you want to reduce the abortion rate, and we all would, just do #1 & 2 RIGHT NOW. That’s proven to work.

In a reasonable society that really cares about life, the economy, children, etc. we should do ALL of these regardless of whether Roe stands or not. It’s the correct thing to do.

I hope that I’m pleasantly surprised but I doubt they will sign up for any of my suggestions. Did I miss any?

(Let me be 1,000% clear, I fully support autonomy for women to make their own medical decisions. I don’t want to be involved other than to support ensuing that everyone has the right to make decisions concerning their own body)

2019 in review

noreply@blogger.com (DBrenner) — Tue, 31 Dec 2019 22:24:00 +0000

2019 has been a really hard year. That’s a bit of an understatement.

As most of you know Gina & I are moving forward with ending our marriage. Its been hard. She and I have been together as a couple for 20 years and married for 15 of those. We were friends for years before we got romantic. We agree on almost everything, from kids to politics to values. We just can’t continue as a couple. That feels like a huge failure because I vowed never to repeat the mistakes of my parents. Its the best for the kids, and Gina & I. Since we pulled the trigger and got the lawyers involved, even though its been difficult, I’ve been happier.

I’ve worked hard to spend more quality time with the kids, both to support them in this process, and to set a new pattern as we change. Our bi-weekly D&D game with them and our friends has been amazing. Working to be more than the guy that makes them do their chores and gets on them about grades. Overall they seem to appreciate it.

I’ve also started working out again. I’m feeling really good about it. I missed feeling fit. I didn’t start doing it because I’d be dating, since it predated our decision, but it hasn’t hurt. I feel more confident and better mentally overall.

Despite all of the hard parts I am pretty fortunate. It has been good to find out who my friends really are, and to meet a lot of new people. I have a great family, amazing children, and the dissolution has been pretty amicable. Gina and I do like each other, we just can’t live together any more. She will always be my partner because of what we’ve made together. I’m healthy, I don’t need to worry about a roof over my head, and I never fear that I’ll miss a meal. You really can’t ask for more than that.

I’m still waiting for my flying cars, moon base, replicants, etc. but I still have all of that to look forward to.

2020 is going to be better. Plans are already being made to have an amazing year.

On being a father

noreply@blogger.com (DBrenner) — Tue, 05 Nov 2019 18:19:00 +0000

I’ve done a lot of really hard things in my life. Sometimes I do them just because they are hard. You only grow through challenging yourself.

I know its trite, but being a father is by far the hardest thing I have ever done. It is also extremely rewarding. It's funny, that like most things, what I thought was going to be hard was the easy part, and things I didn’t even really consider are the really hard bits.

When our first was born we were completely unprepared. She was 4 weeks early and we were still getting it all together. Sitting in the hospital with a newborn we were terrified that we wouldn’t keep her safe and alive. She spit up and my immediate reaction was to roll her on her side like I would a drunk friend… figured out that wasn’t the appropriate action pretty quickly. I don’t think you can ever be prepared for having a new human being that you are 100% responsible for.

It turns out that newborns are the easiest part. They don’t really move around on their own. They sleep a lot. Really they eat, sleep a lot, and poop. Simple stuff to deal with really. Its when they become mobile, start to have their own motivations, and start to express themselves that it becomes a challenge, but also super fun. Every day is a new adventure, and you get to see them experience everything for the first time. How fast they learn is unreal.

Now I have new terrifying things to deal with. Dating, driving, high school, college, independence and letting go, etc. Plus, dealing with the fallout of the divorce.

I feel like I fail them regularly. Am I only the guy that makes them do their chores and homework? Do I let them have enough time to just relax? Do I let them watch too much TV, play on their phones excessively, not pay attention to them on video games? Is letting them leave their rooms a disaster area good or bad? Do I say “no” too much? Am I giving them enough attention?

Our job is to prepare them to be able to take care of themselves. Try to help them avoid the really permanent mistakes but allow them to fail, as hard as it is to let them do so. Sometimes its really painful to watch them make the same mistakes you did, or that you can see failure coming because of experience. Honestly, that is the hardest part for me.

I’m over protective. I really do try to keep anything bad from happening. One part of my job is looking ahead to all the ways things can go wrong, then working to avoid or mitigate the possibilities. Unfortunately, doing that with the kids often results in me sheltering them too much and that is counter productive to making sure they are prepared to deal with things.

I want the best for them and sometimes I push too hard.I sometimes struggle with letting them be themselves… they aren’t me, they are their own person. Sometimes I see them do something amazing and they constantly surprise me. I see a glimmer of what great people they really are and how they are each unique. I’m always proud of them and they are a never ending source of new things to be proud of them for.

Big Changes

noreply@blogger.com (DBrenner) — Tue, 29 Oct 2019 14:13:00 +0000

You meet someone, you move in together, you get married, have kids. You think you are going to be together forever. You know that its going to be hard but you’re willing to put in the work to make it succeed. Then it falls off the rails.

My chosen partner and I knew each other for years before we started dating and were great friends when we got together. She is one of few people that challenges me in a positive way and makes me better in all the things I do. Unfortunately, as a couple we didn’t have staying power. We agree on all of the big decisions, we are a great team when something needs to be accomplished. But we are no longer happy being together.

All of my life I have worked to not be a statistic and get divorced. 20 years ago I thought that I was done dating. As a child of divorce, I know how hard it is to be a kid whose parents aren’t together. I think that is one reason I had so much trouble finding a relationship I wanted to stay in, and was willing to commit to “forever”. I believe that she was willing to commit as well. We are both sad about how this part of lives has closed.

She and I are working hard to split amicably. We want to remain friends. We know that we need to be a team to raise our children. We will always be in each others lives because of what we created together. I will always love her like no one else. But things will not be the same. It kills me.

It’s really hard to break 20 years of habits. I still want to take care of my ex, I reflexively step in to try to fix things and most of them are no longer mine to do. Its getting better but well ingrained habits are hard to break. I am really glad I have a therapist that I like and trust. She has been invaluable in helping me work through all of the things.

I’m worried about how this impacts the kids. They will have 2 different homes. They will need to deal with their parents not being together. They are going to have drama that isn’t of their making. In the long term it will be better than the tension that’s been going on in the house for a long time, but in the short term they are going to have challenges. How will this impact their views on relationships going forward?

Things are much different from when I was a kid. My mom had full custody and we visited my dad on the weekends. That was the way it was done. I still have issues that I’m dealing with because of that experience. I’m not going to make the same mistakes as my parents. I’ll find all new ways to screw up. LOL.

Now I’m dating again. It’s hard. It is so different from 20 years ago. The good thing is most people are more mature, get relationships, have been burned and we all recognize that everyone has their baggage. It is refreshing to have real conversations about things that we want.

The one thing with dating that I’m most concerned about is how it impacts my children. No one is going to meet the kids for quite a while. I remember meeting a lot of people my dad was seeing and then they disappeared when he got bored. You learned not to get attached. I don’t want that for them. This is hard enough anyway. If they meet someone I’m dating I fully intend that it is someone that I plan on continuing to see. Luckily their mother and I are on the same page with this.

I’m still trying to figure out what I want. I know I am going to be guarded for along time because of how things played out with my marriage. And I know that I can’t get into anything approaching serious because I’m still working through all of my emotions related to my marriage ending. I’m already seeing that. That’s going to take time. On the upside, I get to figure out a lot about myself and where I want the next chapter of my life to be.

my journey with depression

noreply@blogger.com (DBrenner) — Mon, 14 Oct 2019 14:00:00 +0000

I’ve struggled with depression & anxiety for a while. It was definitely longer than I’ve been willing to admit. I used to view it as a sign of weakness that I couldn’t just will my way out of it. I avoided therapy, medical intervention, etc because of the stigma associated with it.

For a while I’ve been in and out of therapy while I tried to find someone that worked for me. My latest therapist is great and she’s really helping. Working through my issues and figuring out how to address the things that make my depression worse is valuable. There are definitely some things I’m grappling with and having a safe environment to discuss them is invaluable.

We’ve been trying different anti-depressants. We couldn’t find anything really great until after we did a genetic test and found that many of the things we’ve tried aren’t metabolized by my body well based on the gene polymorphisms I have. We also found that I’m predisposed to a vitamin deficiency that we are addressing. Modern medicine is great. There are definitely side effects with any of these meds and we need to do a benefits vs. side effects assessment to make sure the benefits are worth the downside. Until we switched up my meds I didn’t realize how bad I felt on the old ones. The new meds side effects also appear to be less severe so the benefit vs. side effects decision is easy.

Until I got over my hangups about going to therapy and medications I couldn’t get the help I needed. As a society we need to figure out how to get rid of the stigma of mental illness. its a medical issue like high blood pressure, diabetes, etc. People resist getting help because of the way it is perceived in our society. Many of us need help and aren’t getting it. Therapy really does help.

I still struggle but I know that I have the means to make things better. Knowing I’m not alone with the challenges helps. Being able to admit that I have difficulties and not resisting getting help is amazing. It saddens me that people don’t realize they can make things better.

D&D revival

noreply@blogger.com (DBrenner) — Mon, 13 May 2019 12:31:00 +0000

As a kid I got into D&D. I started with the basic (red) box and got the expert (blue) box next. Those were nice but I quickly decided I wanted to play AD&D. I worked my butt off shoveling snow to earn the money to get the books. One of my good friends and I would get together and try to figure out how we wanted to play. I spent the better part of a year taking my D&D books everywhere I might have time to read. Yes, I was that nerd.

Back in the day, only nerds played D&D. Often you were ridiculed for playing or talking about it. Add it to the long list of nerd activities we participated in. mostly we didn’t care and liked being nerds. But you knew you were an outsider.

As I got older and had more friends, we moved into other role-playing systems because of what the group wanted to do. Once we all got jobs and started actually hanging out with girls we were dating, we played less and less frequently. We stopped all together in our late 20s. I missed revs 2 through 4. From what I’ve heard it wasn’t a big loss.

When the new 5th edition came out I conveniently started to have more time. The new rules are much simpler than AD&D and clarify a lot of things. The modules are soooo much better than the old classics. Those still hold a bit of nostalgic fondness but the new ones introduce a whole world and fleshed out scenarios to save time. The old ones really were just dungeon crawls for the most part.

Today it seems that its cool to play. Big Bang Theory, Stranger Things and the number of celebrities coming out that say they play has helped. The marketing has been great. The game stores hosting games makes it easier than ever to find a group to play with. More people playing means that WoTC has more money and incentive to build great content. You can get all kinds of new material on the Internet. You can even find troves of videos on YouTube that teach you to play and you can even watch people play to get a feel for the game.

Every year we go to GenCon and maybe Origins; the big game fairs. We get to see the new stuff coming out and hang out in a community of people that all love gaming. Its still a big nerd-fest but the attendance by “non-nerds" is off the charts. More and more people know about it and some are actually jealous when I tell them we are going. The kids love it and I love sharing that with them.

Its easier to let your geek flag fly now than it ever was for me growing up. Even in a school of smart, often nerdy, kids it was hard to really let it fly. I spent a lot of time as a kid hanging by myself because it was easier than being the socially awkward kid that got picked on. Its different now. I’m glad that my kids don’t need to work to hide who they are.

D&D with the kids

noreply@blogger.com (DBrenner) — Mon, 06 May 2019 14:34:00 +0000

When I was a kid I loved AD&D. I’m glad that the kids are now old enough to play and they asked to be able to play.

I started a group with my 3 oldest, a couple of their friends and a couple of parents. We get together every other week to play. It’s awesome. Everyone is having a good time and we just hang out, eat pizza and have a blast for a couple of hours. They are really starting to get it and gradually working into actually role playing their characters.

As a kid someone else was always the DM. Now its my turn. Its way more fun than I had thought as a kid. Having a bit of maturity and experience definitely helps.

We are running into a point in our campaign where we are going to get to choose a couple of different ways to go. I can’t wait to see what they do next.

my 40s

noreply@blogger.com (DBrenner) — Wed, 01 May 2019 12:00:00 +0000

When I turned 40 I wrote about all of the things that happened during my 30s. It was a great way to look back on the decade. So much happened; not the least of which was getting married and becoming a father.
As I turn 49 and look back over my 40s, there is arguably more that happened:

became a father for the 4th time
became an uncle 5 times
ran a 1/2 marathon
cycling

rode 1000s of miles
rode on the Indy 500 track
started racing bikes
wrecked my bike at 40mph and spent 18 months dealing with a single tiny broken bone
stoped racing bikes

had surgery 4 times for various sports related injuries
started wearing bi-focals
changed jobs a couple of times
went to India
was best man for my friend
presented at a conference
had multiple op-eds published
became much more involved with the kids school
became a scout leader
became disillusioned about the state of politics, then

ran for office and learned a ton
became an activist
was offered a position on the board of a non-profit
spoke at a protest
knocked 1000s of doors for various causes
became a precinct executive
ran a voter registration drive

marched in a bunch of parades
started going to GenCon again
started playing D&D with my kids
sold a house and bought a new one
went to Disney World twice
got to give Chewbacca a bro-hug
attended my 30 year high school reunion
kids started moving from elementary school into their high school
reconnected with a lot of old classmates and friends
accepted that I need to deal with my depression and sought professional help

I think that’s a pretty impressive list and it doesn’t even represent everything. There is still one year left in my 40s and I need to figure out what isn’t on my list...

Once more blogging

noreply@blogger.com (DBrenner) — Wed, 13 Feb 2019 13:49:00 +0000

I’ve decided to start up my blog again, this time on another platform. We will see how long it lasts this time.

State report cards

noreply@blogger.com (DBrenner) — Sat, 21 Oct 2017 13:34:00 +0000

It’s that season again. State report cards for our schools were released. If you look at them, you would think that our children are learning nothing, all of our schools are failing and the end is nigh. Anyone that has walked into one of our schools knows this is not the case. So, how do we reconcile this difference? The fact is, these report cards aren’t an accurate measure of our schools since they don’t measure all schools the same way. Districts with low poverty, stable populations and low minority populations look better due to skewed benchmarks. Private schools that are not required to take all students look better. We don’t have a level playing field.

For many parents, this is all they have to go on. When newspapers pick the story up and tell us the schools are failing us, it’s no wonder that people are looking to private schools, charters, or moving to a suburban district. No parent wants to make a decision thinking the education for their child is going to be worse. But, if you have bad information, you can make misinformed choices for your child.

Just one example of many is “K-3 reading improvement”. It is intended to measure how many children are “on track” for reading goals and how children that are “not on track” improve. The problem with the metric is it doesn’t measure improvement accurately. At the beginning of the year the number of children “not on track” are identified. At the end of the year, a percentage is calculated based on the difference between the count at the beginning and end of the year. If you find more children that need help mid-year, you are still measured against the initial count. The score doesn’t reflect children helped, only a simple number of students that are “not on track”. Even if the teachers are doing everything right by identifying students having trouble and helping them improve, they can still be scored as failing. This is not the way to help parents make informed choices about which schools actually help their K-3 students.

These report cards also rely heavily on extensive testing. The argument is we need to measure the performance of our students, and by extension, our teachers. The schools spend valuable instruction time on testing. It also encourages treating the test as the goal instead of the minimum necessary. We want our students to learn the subject, not how to take a test.

The report card is not reflective of what makes a school effective. We can’t reduce our students and schools to over-simplified numbers. I want us to make decisions based on evidence, but how you measure things influences behavior. If you have bad measures you incentivize the wrong behaviors. This is true in business and it is true in education, but our schools aren’t a business. We shouldn’t use practices from manufacturing such as defect rates and quality scores; children aren’t interchangeable widgets. If a company gets a bad batch of raw materials, they can send it back or not use it. Private and charter schools shouldn’t be rewarded for doing essentially the same with our children.

We have the power to influence these measures. Contact your state legislators (http://ohiohouse.gov and http://ohiosenate.gov) and our State Board of Education (http://education.ohio.gov/State-Board/State-Board-Members). Defining good measures will require identifying information that is useful to parents and educators and only then developing metrics that accurately reflect what is going on in our schools. Let’s remember that we need to do what is best for our children. We need to look at the whole student, the learning environment and if we are guiding the student to a lifelong love of learning.

Sure, there are areas for improvement in our schools. However, these report cards do not point to the real opportunities. CPS has great schools, dedicated teachers and amazing children who are working hard every day. We can help them be better. Let's focus on that instead of a broken report card.

Neighborhoods vs. Magnets

noreply@blogger.com (DBrenner) — Sat, 16 Sep 2017 13:31:00 +0000

As a parent of four students in CPS and the chairman of the LSDMC at Sands Montessori, I’ve had a lot of questions about how our district allocates resources. After seeing and approving our school’s budget, I was surprised at how little discretion the school has in how to spend money, and I’m sure that every school has some of the same issues. Our teachers, administration and staff all do a wonderful job with what they are given.

When I was considering becoming a candidate for school board, I did a lot of digging into the information available about our district. Our magnet programs provide amazing resources for our students. Our Montessori programs are extremely popular, as is the German language program, as well as all of the other programs we have available. Families fight to get into these programs and leave neighborhood schools largely under capacity, but the question is why?

The popularity of the magnet programs and the low enrollment at our neighborhood schools are two symptoms of the same problem: a perception of weak neighborhood schools. Because of the scarcity of magnet seat, this increases their perceived value, which drives demand, and so on. Some families absolutely believe in the teaching philosophies offered at magnets, but we also have parents choosing these programs because they see them as a better choice than neighborhood schools. An anecdote I’ve heard from parents and teachers at Fairview is some families entering the school want to opt out of German language, defeating the whole purpose of that program. The next question, then, is what we should do?

With the current setup, we end up having a stratification of our children. The recent analysis of WHHS highlights this. Students come mainly from the magnet programs. Our neighborhood schools are barely represented, with the exception of Kilgore. Are the children in our magnet programs that much smarter than the other children? I think not. It comes down to expectations and resources. If you view your school as “not as good” what does that do to your motivation?

This problem was recognized by parents surveyed in the fall of 2015, and they overwhelmingly said the number one priority was strengthening our neighborhood schools. A distant second was more magnet programs. The current district plan twists this result and tries to make each of our neighborhood schools into mini-magnets. Each school will have a focus of study: STEM, Arts, Entrepreneurship, etc. These aren’t focused on ways of learning but on what is learned. As parents, we would want to pick a school for each of our children so they would thrive because of their interests. As a family with two working parents, this would present a challenge getting them to multiple schools. If that wasn’t enough, the estimates from the district are it will add $7mm in busing costs for the new “choice” programs. Is this where we want to spend money? If you send that money to the schools, what could each of them do with another 5% in their budget?

I love our magnet programs but they don’t serve the needs of everyone. The people have spoken and we need to focus on strengthening our neighborhood schools by investing in them like magnets without turning them all into magnets.

We need to keep walking to school in our own neighborhoods a viable option. There are many benefits to this, for parents, students and educators. Kids spend less time on a bus or in the car. They have the pleasure of walking to school and connecting with their neighborhoods. For the district, it's good because it reduces transportation costs, freeing up funds that can go back into our classrooms. All great things.

We also need to retain the gains we have made with our magnet programs and expand them where it makes sense. We need to be smart about where we utilize our schools limited resources, so that we can make sure we are providing the best education possible for all of our children.

thoughts on 40

noreply@blogger.com (DBrenner) — Sat, 01 May 2010 11:55:00 +0000

It is customary to evaluate things periodically, and birthdays seem as good an arbitrary date as any. This is especially true on a decade boundary, because even though it is completely arbitrary and it is "round" only as a side effect of having 10 fingers, it seems like as a good enough time as any to assess.

The last 10 years have been eventful. In my thirties, I:

met my wife
became a father (three times)
produced and directed a movie
changed jobs twice (both times for the better)
lost many friends
kept some fantastic ones
gained a few new ones
read a lot of books
admitted to myself and everyone else that I am an atheist and a secular humanist
rode thousands of miles on my bike
bought a house
wrote and delivered my first eulogy
left North America for the first time
switched to Apple
voted for a Democratic presidential candidate for the first time in my life

It's been a busy decade. Overall, I think it was my best so far. I had a lot of plans, but I also accomplished a bunch of things that were never on my list when I started the decade. Funny how life can change what is important to you and guide you to decisions that you wouldn't normally think you'd arrive at if you didn't take the journey.

I have a lot of ideas of what I want to accomplish in the next 10 years. I now need to coordinate those plans with four other people, but I don't think that will be a problem. Together I think we can make my 40s even better than my 30s!!!