By my count, I’ve quit jobs at Yukon College twice before. So the fact that I start teaching a class this afternoon must mean that I’m a very bad quitter.

“Poor quitting skills,” it reads on my permanent file. “Shows a marked inability to resign, abdicate, decamp, vacate, withdraw, knock off, terminate, desist, or just plain give over already. Criminy.”

My yo-yo relationship with the College makes it a little unnerving to enter the building. Fortunately, I have a course to absorb all of my attention. It’s well within my competency to teach one or two courses. Beyond that, the Peter Principle takes effect.

So, while it is true that I am wholly and singularly to blame for any and all mistakes made before and because I quit, I take heart that I am not to blame for the many more mistakes that would’ve surely been made had I not quit. I mean, had I not quit that second time, after that first time I quit but before I unquit the time before this. Or something.

For one final time, I will be teaching the COMP210: Database Design course this fall at Yukon College. The curriculum changes the following year; database courses will still be offered, but more likely in an online format.

So now is your best chance to learn about relational database design and the SQL query language in a conveniently located (if you happen to reside in Whitehorse) cozy classroom with an exceptional student-to-teacher ratio.

Who should take the course? Simple: anyone with a problem involving data. You can bring your problem to class and we’ll convert it into a living, breathing database that you can manipulate and query with abandon. Each student completes a term-long project (ignore the course outline page that mentions five projects), and real-world projects are the most satisfying to complete.

I also build a small database project each term to give students a feel for how their own projects will evolve.

You should be comfortable using a computer to take the course. You don’t need a programming or math background, although familiarity with things like Excel functions or filling out income tax forms is of definite benefit.

All of the notes for the course are available online. Previous years’ notes as well: 2006, 2004, 2003, and 2002.

The course is scheduled for Monday mornings 10am to noon, and Tuesday mornings 9am to noon. If the students all agree, we may be able to change that to be more accommodating.

The first class will be on Monday, September 8th, and you can register up until the 5th.

If you have any questions, please contact me at the College: drogers at yukoncollege dot why-kay dot see-ay (those last two groups are letters, not Pig Latin — sheesh, the hoops we jump through to avoid spam).

As of today, Carole has completed all of the requirements for the Yukon Native Teacher Education Program (YNTEP). On her way home from school — a four-month student-teacher internship at Hidden Valley — she picked up a letter from the department asserting that the University of Regina, in conjunction with Yukon College, will confer upon her a Bachelor’s degree in Education. The formal ceremony will be in June, but she can begin teaching right away in the territory (and Saskatchewan, for that matter) at the full BEd rate.

Carole’s the first person in her family to earn a university degree, and we couldn’t be more proud of her.

As befits the approach of mid-life, I’m starting something new this fall. Thing is, I don’t exactly know what that will be. What it won’t be is something at Yukon College: neither teaching nor computing.

There are a number of reasons for my leaving the College, paramount of which is the answer to this question:

When I look back in five years time, will I be glad that I chose well-paying system maintenance in a windowless basement?

Teaching is a separate issue. Unfortunately, there just aren’t enough students. Not for what I teach, anyhow. While I could keep my hand in for one course per term, that’s too low a job-satisfaction-per-unit-union-nonsense ratio for my tastes.

No, it’s to be a clean break from the College for me. That is, after one more month of part-time contract work in the aforementioned basement. Then begins a German course I’ve had my eye on. Perhaps even a spot of welding next spring.

My “something new” may just be a career as a Mercedes mechanic. I know of at least one in the Territory — and wouldn’t you know it — it’s usually parked at the College.

It took me a while to thumbnail-ify it, but this is the poster that I submitted as the major assignment in last term’s SOCI209: Society, Technology, and Values (PDF) course.

Click to see the full-size ~380KB version. I don’t think I’ll link to the 8MB PNG original.

My goal in creating the poster was to show that the value we place on privacy is in a steady state of decline since the advent of digitized persistent storage — the Network — and increases only transiently through public shocks of violation.

I was never entirely satisfied that the poster’s narrative was sufficiently persuasive, and visually it’s too wordy, but I still think it looks pretty sweet. The glossy 2′ x 3′ version hangs over my desk at the College and never fails to impress…me.

I created it using Macromedia Adobe Fireworks, the only graphics program I’ve ever even partly glommed. Probably the trickiest bit was drawing the green circuit-board-ey border.

Of course, the day after I dropped it off at Staples to be printed, Google announced their acquisition of DoubleClick. One more slight upward blip in our value of privacy before the bottom drops out.