Last night, I attended the Dream It, Code It, Win It awards. I'd actually write up the event but Fred Wilson's already done a better job at that than I could: http://avc.com/2014/05/dream-it-and-code-it/ As Fred stated on his blog, it's a real shame that the high schooler's didn't get to show off their work but it was great to see that there were entries from a variety of schools including The Academy for Software Engineering and The Young Women's Leadership Academy.

Spent the past few days at the Tapia Conference in Seattle. The Tapia conference is billed as a “Celebration of Diversity in Computing.” The bulk of the attendees seemed to be students. Undergrads and grads. The undergrads were mostly juniors and seniors, but a bunch of freshmen and sophomores were there as well. Of course there were faculty members to join them as well as people from industry. What was I doing there?

This past Monday I, like may woke to hear about the passing of Pete Seeger. Ten days earlier we were up at Symphony Space for the “Woody’s Children” 45th Anniversary Concert. Pete was supposed to perform but was ill. At 94 years of age, I wondered if the end was near. I was at the concert with my family as well as with my buddy Ben. Fitting since Ben and I grew up on Pete’s music while many of our peers did not.

I’ve never been one for New Year’s resolutions. If I’m working on something specific, I might set a goal to finish it, but the idea of goals for a year never struck a chord with me. It’s one of the things that I find absurd about the current teacher rating system - I have to decided on my three goals for the year. I always have one goal with respect to my profession - to be better at it.

We’re practically at the close of 2013 and it’s high time I wished everyone wonderful things for the year to come. It’s also time for a new look to this blog. Why the rewrite? Partly because I was tired of the look, but mostly because, when I put it together, it was the first time I used that toolset and was just figuring things out. I’m still no expert, but I thought it was time to clean things up.

So, the Citibike program has been running for a bit. I like the idea, but I have some reservations – it’s great for getting around in the zone - I’ve been using it for short shopping trips - run cross town to Fairway or take a quick trip from work to Porto Rico Importers or Rocco’s Pastries. On the other hand, the zone doesn’t get to the residential neighborhoods of upper Manhattan or the boroughs and the price per day is way too expensive for regular working class joes, particularly on top of a subway trip.

One week ago today was Stuyvesant's graduation. I usually know a number of seniors pretty well but, since I like to cycle through classes, every couple of years I have a group that I've been with from 10th grade to 12th. This was one of those years It was extra special because it was also my daughter Batya's graduating class. It's been an amazing gift to be able to work at her school for the past four years and she's been amazingly tolerant.