The challenge of teaching with Powerpoint

Generally when I teach a class, I try to tell a story, and use the slides as a background, rather than use the slides to tell a story.  Sometimes, when I'm relatively new to teaching a specific class I will use the slides as more of a crutch than I prefer however.  I also think that using a whiteboard, demoing, and engaging the students in a discussion is more effective than a simple slideshow.  It turns out a lot of people agree with me.  Here is a slideshow explaining why slideshows are not the best way to teach.  My favorite comment is ""Your slideshow by itself should be incomprehensible, because the most important part is what is not on the slides."  If the slides stand completely on their own, then instructors aren't necessary, and the students might as well be reading a book.

Digital slides are the scourge of higher education

Minor bug in vSphere Web Client autofilling the VLAN when creating portgroup.

While adding a new host in my home lab this week, I discovered a minor bug in the web client related to VLANs.  The VLAN dropdown will remember previous VLANs that you used, and try to autofill them.  Generally autofill isn't a problem, you just type a space to indicate you want a shorter version.  However this doesn't work as typing a space isn't an option for a VLAN.  So there is no way to indicate for instance that you want VLAN 30 instead of 300.  After some experimenting, I discovered that you can type in 030 and it will take it, and it'll work correctly.  That is however a workaround and not an ideal fix.