Appointment Slots in Google Calendar

Wouldn't it be great if you could send out, or publish a link that people could click, and be taken to a view of your calendar, where they could see available appointment slots, and all they had to do to make an appointment with you is click an available slot, and then the event appears on both your and their calendar? Welcome to Appointment Slots!

1. Important: Make sure you are in Week or Day view. Click into any date/time area on your Google Calendar, and a popup will appear. Click "Appointment slots" at the top of the popup, and then "Edit details" at the bottom:

2. This is where you will do all (and it's not much) of the heavy lifting:

3. Make sure you put something into the "Title" field that will make sense to both you and your end user. For example, if you are setting up advising appointments with students, rather than "Appointment," consider "Advising Appointment."

4. You are likely using Appointment Slots in a repeating fashion. If so, click the "Does not repeat…" checkbox (I usually need to choose "Custom…":

I set this series of Appointment Slots to repeat weekly on Mondays and Wednesdays until the end of the term:

Also be sure to indicate a meeting duration time, and a meeting location in the "Add location" field.

5. Consider something like this in the "Description" field:

Bring your education plan, degree audit documents from DegreeRunner (if you have access) and/or any documents pertaining to your college course of study.

6. Right-click and copy the long, blue URL:

That's what you can send to your students and/or place in your Moodle course and/or email message, etc.

NOTE: The Appointment Slot URL is the URL for ALL appointment slots for the Google Calendar in which you are creating the appointment slot. If you need/want a unique URL, make a different calendar for that.

7. Click the blue "SAVE" button in the upper left:

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Here is what it looks like when I access someone else's Appointment slots link:

Check out all of those appointment slots - I can seem them in context with my other appointments!

When someone clicks to reserve a time slot with you, here is what they will see:

Note that they can customize the details of the event after they save it.

Pretty nifty, huh? I think you've got enough to go on, so go ahead and tinker with your own Appointment Slots. And share your impressions and experience in the comments section below!

For more info, see Google's Help Center page on Appointment Slots.

GPS Routing Vs. Tracking

A dear friend sent this screenshot to me.

It is important to understand the difference between using GPS to ASSIST with navigation, but not TAKE OVER your navigation. I almost never use routing (and NEVER in the backcountry), but rather stay on the map screen to keep my planned track visible. Then I make my own routing decisions based on what the roads, trails, terrain, and general risk potential looks like. If I need to deviate from the route I originally had in mind, it is because I made the decision, not a set of algorithms computing and plotting my route for me from thousands of miles away from the real-life situation I am in. I have had countless times when this approach has worked well for me, when a GPS routing technique may well have ended in disaster.

If you don't understand the difference between GPS routing and tracking, I would be happy to help with that. That knowledge could actually save your life.

Let's Focus On Our Commonalities

For every person who feels the last 4 years have been a shit show, there is one person who believes the same will come with Biden. The powers-that-be have us in constant turmoil and angst toward each other, and we had better start focusing on what we have in common, rather than picking and poking at our differences.

Normalizing Fascists

Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler in Munich, Germany. National Archives Collection of Foreign Records Seized, 1675 - 1958

John Broich, Case Western Reserve University
How to report on a fascist?
How to cover the rise of a political leader who’s left a paper trail of anti-constitutionalism, racism and the encouragement of violence? Does the press take the position that its subject acts outside the norms of society? Or does it take the position that someone who wins a fair election is by definition “normal,” because his leadership reflects the will of the people?
These are the questions that confronted the U.S. press after the ascendance of fascist leaders in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s.

A leader for life

Benito Mussolini secured Italy’s premiership by marching on Rome with 30,000 blackshirts in 1922. By 1925 he had declared himself leader for life. While this hardly reflected American values, Mussolini was a darling of the American press, appearing in at least 150 articles from 1925-1932, most neutral, bemused or positive in tone.

Benito Mussolini speaks at the dedication ceremonies of Sabaudia on Sept. 24, 1934. AP Photo

The Saturday Evening Post even serialized Il Duce’s autobiography in 1928. Acknowledging that the new “Fascisti movement” was a bit “rough in its methods,” papers ranging from the New York Tribune to the Cleveland Plain Dealer to the Chicago Tribune credited it with saving Italy from the far left and revitalizing its economy. From their perspective, the post-WWI surge of anti-capitalism in Europe was a vastly worse threat than Fascism.
Ironically, while the media acknowledged that Fascism was a new “experiment,” papers like The New York Times commonly credited it with returning turbulent Italy to what it called “normalcy.”
Yet some journalists like Hemingway and journals like the New Yorker rejected the normalization of anti-democratic Mussolini. John Gunther of Harper’s, meanwhile, wrote a razor-sharp account of Mussolini’s masterful manipulation of a U.S. press that couldn’t resist him.

The ‘German Mussolini’

Mussolini’s success in Italy normalized Hitler’s success in the eyes of the American press who, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, routinely called him “the German Mussolini.” Given Mussolini’s positive press reception in that period, it was a good place from which to start. Hitler also had the advantage that his Nazi party enjoyed stunning leaps at the polls from the mid ‘20’s to early ‘30’s, going from a fringe party to winning a dominant share of parliamentary seats in free elections in 1932.
But the main way that the press defanged Hitler was by portraying him as something of a joke. He was a “nonsensical” screecher of “wild words” whose appearance, according to Newsweek, “suggests Charlie Chaplin.” His “countenance is a caricature.” He was as “voluble” as he was “insecure,” stated Cosmopolitan.
When Hitler’s party won influence in Parliament, and even after he was made chancellor of Germany in 1933 – about a year and a half before seizing dictatorial power – many American press outlets judged that he would either be outplayed by more traditional politicians or that he would have to become more moderate. Sure, he had a following, but his followers were “impressionable voters” duped by “radical doctrines and quack remedies,” claimed the Washington Post. Now that Hitler actually had to operate within a government the “sober” politicians would “submerge” this movement, according to The New York Times and Christian Science Monitor. A “keen sense of dramatic instinct” was not enough. When it came to time to govern, his lack of “gravity” and “profundity of thought” would be exposed.
In fact, The New York Times wrote after Hitler’s appointment to the chancellorship that success would only “let him expose to the German public his own futility.” Journalists wondered whether Hitler now regretted leaving the rally for the cabinet meeting, where he would have to assume some responsibility.
Yes, the American press tended to condemn Hitler’s well-documented anti-Semitism in the early 1930s. But there were plenty of exceptions. Some papers downplayed reports of violence against Germany’s Jewish citizens as propaganda like that which proliferated during the foregoing World War. Many, even those who categorically condemned the violence, repeatedly declared it to be at an end, showing a tendency to look for a return to normalcy.
Journalists were aware that they could only criticize the German regime so much and maintain their access. When a CBS broadcaster’s son was beaten up by brownshirts for not saluting the Führer, he didn’t report it. When the Chicago Daily News’ Edgar Mowrer wrote that Germany was becoming “an insane asylum” in 1933, the Germans pressured the State Department to rein in American reporters. Allen Dulles, who eventually became director of the CIA, told Mowrer he was “taking the German situation too seriously.” Mowrer’s publisher then transferred him out of Germany in fear of his life.
By the later 1930s, most U.S. journalists realized their mistake in underestimating Hitler or failing to imagine just how bad things could get. (Though there remained infamous exceptions, like Douglas Chandler, who wrote a loving paean to “Changing Berlin” for National Geographic in 1937.) Dorothy Thompson, who judged Hitler a man of “startling insignificance” in 1928, realized her mistake by mid-decade when she, like Mowrer, began raising the alarm.
“No people ever recognize their dictator in advance,” she reflected in 1935. “He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship. He always represents himself as the instrument [of] the Incorporated National Will.” Applying the lesson to the U.S., she wrote, “When our dictator turns up you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American.”
John Broich, Associate Professor, Case Western Reserve University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Banning Semiautomatic Weapons

Since the vast majority of firearms in this nation have never, and will never be used in any type of crime, maybe the solutions aren't as closely related to "gun control" measures as one might think. It's time to think outside the box, and rise above kneejerk reactionary tactics such as blaming and banning inanimate objects.

Some are in favor of an outright ban on semiautomatic weapons, and I wish they would take a hard and serious look at what an outright ban on semiautomatic weapons in the US would look like. It might help to research percentages of firearms surrendered in those other countries, and compare those numbers with similar actions here. That will still leave you with huge numbers of weapons owned by people who, until the ban, were as law-abiding as anyone in this group, but they just so happen to hold the Second Amendment near and dear. Now visualize the scene at the millions and millions of door-to-door confiscation actions. THAT would be more gun violence than we have ever seen before. And bad people with banned guns will have a much larger victim pool to play with.

If you are truly in favor of banning semiautomatic weapons, I challenge you to commit to serving as a doorknocker on a confiscation squad.

Drone Flight Over Bald Peter Mountain Oregon

My Father at the Battle of Chosin Reservoir

I watched a documentary on the Battle of Chosin Reservoir (Korea) last night, and found a clip of who I think might be my Dad. Just before that point in the documentary, I remembered I should have been watching more carefully just in case. And then a minute later, BAM. That shot was on the death march out of the Chosin, under heavy threat of Chinese attack. The guy in the clip looks older than my Dad was (22), but he also extremely fatigued, cold, and hungry, and I can’t get over the resemblance.

The Climate Change Pendulum Swings Back and Forth Again

"Climate change itself is already in the process of definitively rebutting climate alarmists who think human use of fossil fuels is causing ultimately catastrophic global warming. That is because natural climate cycles have already turned from warming to cooling, global temperatures have already been declining for more than 10 years, and global temperatures will continue to decline for another two decades or more."

Read more here.

Put an "Add to Google Calendar" Link in an Email Message

Have you ever thought it would be nice to include an "Add to Google Calendar" link in the body of an email message you are sending out to announce an event? Here is one way to make it easy for your email recipients to add YOUR event to THEIR Google Calendar.

Oregon Lookout Towers

Acker Rock (August to November)
Bald Butte (June to October)
Bald Knob (May to October)
Bolan Mountain (July to September)
Clear Lake Cabin (November to May)
Drake Peak (June to October)
Fairview Peak (temporarily closed)
Fall Mountain (May through October)
Fivemile Butte (year round)
Gold Butte (June to October)
Green Ridge (May to June, September to November)
Hager Mountain (November to May)
Indian Ridge (July to October)
Lake Of The Woods (May to October)
Pickett Butte (October to July)
Snow Camp (June to September)
Timber Butte (May to November)
Warner Mountain (November to May)

I'm Not A Plant Person

Do you think I'm watering this plant too much or too little?

Resistbot

I'm sure you have seen all kinds of posts on social media begging you to write, call, and fax your Senators about the issues that matter most to you. I discovered a tech tool that makes it easy to reach out to your Senators. It’s called “Resistbot,” and it’s by far the easiest way to send your thoughts, ideas, and opinions to your your members of Congress. Here’s how it works:

Text “resist” to 50409.

You will receive a couple of messages:

"Hi, I’m ResistBot and I’m going to help you write your officials. First, what name would you like to use to sign your letters?"

(reply with your name)

"Nice to meet you, (your first name)! What’s your zipcode? I’ll use it to identify your congresspeople."

From there, the app indicates your Senators, and prepares your personal message to them, and sends them a fax - automatically.

Fact-Checking The Fact-Checkers

"… when someone attempted to fact check the fact checker, the response was the equivalent of “it's secret.”

It is impossible to understate how antithetical this is to the fact checking world, in which absolute openness and transparency are necessary prerequisites for trust. How can fact checking organizations like Snopes expect the public to place trust in them if when they themselves are called into question, their response is that they can’t respond."


Read more here.

Good, Cheap, or Fast? Pick Two

This Is Me

No One Tell Him

GET OUT NOW

"I’m proud of the fact… we are probably the first administration in modern history that hasn't had a major scandal in the White House."

~ Barack Obama

Uhhh… no. Go. Just GO

Statism: The Most Dangerous Religion

"Humanity wasn't meant to be a domesticated species owned by a ruling class."

Self-Importance Defined

"Hollywood is, simply put, the base of the entire modern American culture. It is the foundation of the country, so to speak, the glue that’s holding it together."

~ Spokesperson for a group of Hollywood celebrities threatening a “massive, all-round Hollywood strike” unless Donald Trump resigns.

Letter to Hollywood

Dear Hollywood celebrities and actors:

You only have one job to do: to entertain me. That’s it.
 
You make your living pretending to be someone else, playing dress-up like a 6 year old in a make-believe world in front of a camera. Your entire livelihood depends on my patronage.

I’ll crank the organ grinder; you dance.

I don’t really care where you stand on issues. You see, you aren’t real. I turn off my TV or shut down my computer, and you cease to exist in my world. Once I am done with you, I can put you back in your little box until I want you to entertain me again. You need to realize that the only words of yours that matter are scripted and rehearsed, and understood to be for pretend.

In my world, you exist solely for my entertainment. And when you use your purchased influence to peddle whatever silly ideas you and your cronies have dreamed up inside your bubble, that makes me want to just keep you in the box, locked away perpetually.

So, shut your word hole and dance, monkey!