JimHatten.com

I shot this video from my sister’s front porch using my Blackberry Bold smartphone. The house across the street caught fire around 4 p.m. on January 21, 2011, and the video begins at 4:12, before any emergency vehicles arrive.

Champlin House Fire 1.21.11 from Jim Hatten on Vimeo.

Minutes before I went out to look to see what was causing all the smoke in her neighborhood, three neighborhood men checked to make sure there wasnt’ anyone in the house, pounded on doors and called the fire department. It was terribly sad to watch as we all helplessly waited for the fire trucks to arrive.

Spring Semester began for me today at the U. I’m six days ahead of the regular beginning to the semester since I’m taking a super-interesting and intense set of full-day (eight-hour) classes focusing on conducting Focus Group research methodology. The class is taught by Dr. Richard Krueger and I’m taking the class on the St. Paul campus, which is cool since I haven’t ever had a class near the cow barns before. The classroom is just down the hall from Learning Technologies’ new center, the LT Media Lab and I got my first glance at the construction of that space.

This will be the heaviest class load I’ve ever taken — four classes — but if today is an indication, the learning should be exponential and strong in preparing me for dissertation time next winter.

Now, back to two chapters and a paper I need to write before 8 a.m. tomorrow ….

Wife™ bought me a sweet CycleOps trainer for the Trek 7.1 I got last summer. Theoretically, I’ll be able to ride my bike in the house until thaw. I’m a little amazed how much I like to ride my bike. I was a runner for 20 years, but the reconstructive knee surgery took that away and as an added bonus tagged on 40 pounds. I used to like running and thought biking was just a wimpy excuse not to run. After all, you can glide while biking, right?

So here I am with a bike that I love and a spinning thing that allows me to ride in the house for the winter.  I guess I’m a convert.