Kosrae Christmas marching in Kolonia

Being as Christmas fell on a Sunday, the Kolonia Kosrae Congregational Church marched on Christmas eve Saturday.

The day starts with food preparation at the house. Marching is not until the afternoon.

Joseph and Mary star in the Sunday School skit. Baby Jesus is no plastic doll either, a real live baby starred in the lead role.

Mary was very skilled - singing and marching while carrying a bag of candy and the baby Jesus. Joseph is very fortunate to have such a skilled wife.

First she removed her angelic hair band, then she proceeded to rip off those wings. She was clearly fed up with being type cast once again as the angel.

A family star bearer on the left.

The front line of Yonkumi choir.

Joseph also joined Yonkumi.

This was the last shot I got off before being strangled by that same towed.

Three sisters and a distant cousin as star bearers on the front line of Ichikumi. Shrue, Elterina, and Hanna take a turn on the front row.

Inac Sra Ioanis is the dot in the letter "i" for isuslac en Bethlehem.

"...look like an angel, walk like an angel, talk like an angel..." time to get wise!

Pualani, a more likely candidate for Ichikumi angel!

Christmas gift distribution at the church - a Kosrae church tradition casting the Deacons in the role of Santa Claus.

His mother forbade the consumption of soda, so he hid behind a car with a purloined can of fizzy pop and attempted to down it all before getting caught. His girlfriend did not want to be photographed...

All hopped up on sugar, this sugaroid-raging young lady takes her first and last swing at mom.

An Ichikumi star gets to take Jesus home.

SDA Christmas Concert

The Christmas concert, an event where parents dive into a photographic mosh pit with the latest in digital technology to get that blurry, unbalanced photo of their angel or little prince.

A shepherd out watching their flock and singing.

A singing shepherd is a happy shepherd.

Was also a shepherd, here standing with his instructor.

Statistics performance across the terms

The following chart depicts the average success rate on the MS 150 Statistics final examination fall terms only. The average success rate is based on an item analysis of the final, and the average is the average of the percentage of items answered correctly aggregated across the student learning outcomes. The standard deviation is based also on the aggregated student learning outcomes. The sample size n is the number of students.

Thunderbird grade book mail merge on Lubuntu 11.10

Attempts to perform a mail merge to email using LibreOffice.org 3.4.4 on a Lubuntu system led only to LibreOffice.org crashing. In searching for another way to perform a mail merge, I looked into what might be possible using Thunderbird 8.0.

I rather quickly found Alexander Bergmann's Mail Merge 2.5.0. The add-on page however, and even the web site left me somewhat perplexed as to how to actually perform the mail merge. The directions were spartan and minimalist.

Fortunately a video by PleaBargain provided me the visual information I needed. Once I saw the draft email with the fields, everything clicked into place.

I pulled the specific columns I needed from my grade book and did a special paste (values only) into a blank temporary spreadsheet. I cleaned up the field names so they had no spaces, and then saved the file as a CSV file.

first,Gr,perc,cperc,max,fxp,sum,fx,mail
Nolynn,D,0.666,0.666,383,0.55,255.2,24,nolynn@wacngin.fm
Maybelynn,B,0.806,0.806,383,0.66,308.65,29,maybelynn@wacngin.fm
Yeslynn,A,0.904,0.904,383,0.84,346.2,37,yeslynn@wacngin.fm

I then composed a new email. In the To: line I put {{mail}} and the subject line was End of term update for {{first}}. Then I composed the body, inserting fields by name where appropriate.

Once done I chose Mail merge from the file menu in the composition window.

I selected the CSV file using the Browse button and the add-on performed the 74 student mail merge flawlessly, putting each individual email in my out box. I could now individually edit specific messages if I chose, or even delete a message that I did not want to send out.

As my list includes students who have not dropped the class but have stopped attending the course, I deleted those emails. The a "Send Unsent Messages" from the main file menu, and Thunderbird began sending the individual emails.

There are some nice upsides to this. In the past, OpenOffice.org did not use IMAP to put sent copies in my sent mail folder on the server, Thunderbird does. That Thunderbird is the email merge agent also means that I am no longer wed to the LibreOffice.org Calc and Writer duo to accomplish mail merges.

LibreOffice.org is a powerful package, but resource hungry on an older system. LibreOffice.org invariably eventually crashes the lxpanel. LibreOffice, however, has been a necessary evil to date as I use mail merges to provide students with updates on their grades.

With Bergmann's add-on I am free to shift to lighter footprint (in GTK) packages such as Gnumeric.

Pohnpei Women's Advisory Council fun run

On Saturday 10 December 2011 the Pohnpei Women's Advisory Council , the US Embassy, the Australian embassy, and sponsored a "Healthy LifeStyle Fun Walk/Run" with a 7:00 A.M. start from Spanish Wall. The route was out to the airport and back to Spanish wall.

My son headed up the hill to Spanish wall from the causeway. 

Most the group chose to walk, only about seven chose to run the route. Walking and juggling remains harder than running and juggling, so I joined the runners.

The event was a double header with the run followed by a march to capitol hill at 9:00 A.M. As noted by the Australian embassy (http://www.fsm.embassy.gov.au/phpi/home.html accessed on 12 December), "the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence is a global campaign to raise awareness about violence against women and its impact on a woman's physical, psychological, social and spiritual well-being."

"The 16 Days of Activism began on 25 November on International Day for the Elimination of violence Against Women (White Ribbon Day) and ended on December 10th, the International Human Rights Day.  These two dates highlight that violence against women is a human rights abuse."

Bernolina on the causeway

The two Saturday events mark the end of 16 days of white ribbon activities focused on ending gender violence, with the themes "Against Family Violence", "Against Gender Violence", and "Break the silence, end the violence." Activities were coordinated under the aegis of the Pohnpei Women's Advisory Council.

Participating and sponsoring agencies included the U.S. embassy in Kolonia, the Australian embassy, the Pohnpei Office of Social Affairs, and Pacific Prevention of Domestic Violence Programme. Affiliations include the White Ribbon Campaign.

The marchers brought proposed domestic violence legislation to capitol hill and presented the proposed legislation to a member of the state legislature.

Participating groups included the Pohnpei Ladies Club, Lien Madolenihmw (Pwihn en minimin en lien Madolenihmw), Lien Dolonier, Lielehle Pohnsapw, Lien Kolonia Town, UCWA (U Council of Women in Action), the Development Skilled Organization of Women (DSOW), and many others.

KBP 5k

The Katilingbang Bisaya sa Pohnpei 5k fun run is unusual in the Pohnpei 5k calender, being one of the few runs that is held on a Sunday.

Temperatures were cool under cloudy skies for Pohnpei, at least from a local perspective.

Given that the same sign can hit 102° by late afternoon, 86° Fahrenheit is nice and cool. The heat is not usually the issue. Pohnpei's year round high humidity is what makes running here challenging.

Turn-out was strong for a Sunday morning. The route is also unique in the running calendar. The run starts at the movie theater and then heads up into town to the intersection of Kaselehlie and Elenieng. A quick left and then a right at Namiki and the run heads up through Mapusi towards Palm Terrace.

A right turn brings one onto the main circumferential road. At Blue Nile the run heads up into Dolihner and then makes a left back down to the state track.

When asked if I can take a picture, this gen FBer immediately struck a pose. "All right Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my profile picture!"

The route passed by the new Medpharm location in the former US Embassy building. In the background is Seven Stars Inn in the former location of the Penny Hotel.

The route took a right at the College of Micronesia Pohnpei upper campus and went down Dainy street. Helena Yamada was moving at a steady clip.

Deaconess Notwe was preparing for Sunday morning service.

Rendy Geminaro took first place in 21 minutes. I was ten minutes back at 31 minutes. I then tagged on a 45 minute photo shoot jog.

Dinner the night before was not the usual carbo load of pasta, but then carbo loading for a 5k will only lead to obesity. The gang enjoyed fluffernutter sandwiches courtesey of the Wisconsin wing of the family.