Month: January 2008

We currently have some major homeschool projects we want to start.

• The radio construction and theory project
• The new world view study material
• Setting the kids up to Roth-IRA mutual fund investing
• Starting Rosetta Stone II Spanish
• Find a gym and get started in new workout programs
• Start a new and bigger hovercraft project
• Schedule and take the annual, nationally normed, standardized tests

Before we can get to any of that, we need to finish some other stuff.

• Put the house back together after the move (a week or two)
• Get caught up on the homeschool work schedule after the move and vacation (two or three days)
• Finish Rosetta Stone I Spanish (Kelly just needs a few more days)
• Finish reading Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace
• Finish reading the first Fallacy Detective book
• Finishing construction of the cat tower

In looking at it, it is dawning on me that the list is not so big.   Even when we add our spring break trip we have a pretty good shot at starting some cool new projects within the next month or two.  We are running out of excuses for not inviting over lots of the people who have been so kind to us since we arrived here in North Carolina about half a year ago, so we need to do some entertaining.  I have a big project coming due at work within the next month to month and a half.  I am still working on my KamVu open source and other side machine vision projects, so it looks like we will have quite a busy spring and summer.

Last night, we spent most of the night working on math.  There are two ways to use the Teaching Textbooks to go through a lesson.  It is possible to just read the material in the book or to listen to a video lecture of the exact same material.  Previously, the kids were able to get by just reading the textbook before working the problems, but now that we are moving into more difficult material.  They are doing fine, but it really seems to help them understand the material better when they see someone explain and work the problems.  It is not like any of this is that easy.  As we move forward, I think it will be necessary to both watch the lectures and then review the fine points in the textbook to be able to do the problems.  I know that in my work, it always seems to help to go to a seminar or lecture on new materials even if a book written on the subject is more thorough and has more depth.  The thing about math is that it feels so good when you finally get it.

When we got here to North Carolina we met a family who had moved out here (via several other places) from Washington (state).  We knew a lot of the same people because all of our families have lived in the Pacific Northwest for at least a couple of generations.  There is another couple we knew in South Florida from when both we and they had just gotten married.  They also moved to this area after leaving Florida for Georgia for a few years.  I think they are originally from Minnesota.  At any rate, those two families live at the north end of the Research Triangle area while we live well to the south of it, probably about a forth or fifty minute drive–not impossible but a hassle.  It is kind of too bad it worked out that way, because the women in that family are the kind that like to get the “girls” together for coffee, breakfast, shopping, and all that kind of stuff.  Nevertheless, the one from Florida called Lorena yesterday and wanted to schedule breakfast or something, so I think they are all going to meet at our house on Friday morning.  Very cool!  We all have young kids, so the plan is to get all of them to come over for dinner on a Friday night in the next couple of weeks.  The house is so empty, that it will be great for the kids to blast around.  There is another young couple who are getting married next week that will live closer to our end of town.  The wife should fit right in to this group.  Now is Lorena’s chance to be quite the social butterfly!

I put crafts in the title of this post because that is what the kids did during a lot of the weekend.  Christian spent a lot of time working on a model of a Spitfire airplane while Kelly continued to knit on her first sweater.  Both of them did a great job.  I will try to put a photo of Kelly wearing the sweater as soon as she finishes it.  Christian and I went to the rental house to get the last load of big stuff to bring to the new house and then ran over to the Holly Springs Library to meet with my buddy John S. from work.  Most of the day we did not do much other than drive around and hang out.  The big find of the weekend was a big shopping center with lots of the major outlets within ten minutes of the new house.  It has a Michaels, a Best Buy, a Target, lots of restaurants, etc., etc.  It was really an uneventful and relaxing weekend.

I put “exercise” in the title because I did not get any, but I should!

Lately, I have been trying think about how we can get some of our projects completed.  Our half-finished cat tower is still over at the rental house.  This weekend, Christian and I plan to load it into the pickup and bring it to the new house so we can start working on it again, but that is not the only project we have in the wings.  We are in the middle of our “Financial Peace” project.  It is going along well, but we are getting to the end of the reading phase and will need to jump right into the doing phase before we forget what we have read.  We have three radio and radio license projects in the works:  The radio assembly and theory of electronics class, the General Class Ham radio license test preparation, and the commercial General Radio Operators License test preparation.  We have a new book on world views that we are going to read together and we really have been slacking quite a bit in the art department (although Kelly and Christian are both working on knitting projects).  In addition to that, I am continuing work on my open source vision libraries project.  It is dawning on me that I need to put a hold on finding new projects until we complete a few of the ones that are already on our plate.  That is not even mentioning that we will have some quite big projects associated with our new back yard and how to get it into a usable state.

Update:  I cannot believe I have forgotten our cooking projects.  I have always wanted to try to make ravioli from scratch.  I think we ought to try that this weekend.  Here is the recipe (with Portobello Mushrooms!).  Lorena, Kelly, and Christian, could you make sure we have all the ingredients?

Kelly has a piano competition coming up in the next month or so.  The work she does in preparing for the competition is repetitive.  She is also in the process of finishing up here first year of Spanish on Rosetta Stone.  That is also repetitive.  We had a talk about it yesterday.  Many of the things that are worth doing require lots of repetition which can be very boring, but repetition with attention and vigor is often the only antidote for mediocrity.  Kelly has not given a public performance for quite some time now.  We are very much looking forward to hearing her play.  We are thinking that, if we can afford it, it would be nice if she could go to a piano camp this year.  It would also be nice to get Kelly some voice lessons this summer.  Kelly truly loves to sing, so it would be a nice way to both get a little bit of a change from the piano routine while still keeping her hand in on developing her musical skills.  I would like to get both of them into a choir sometime, but as a totally non-musical engineer, that presents me with a challenge for which I am not particularly well suited.  Maybe I can co-opt Lorena into helping me with that.

Kelly is moving forward with her CLEP test preparation.  There is a CLEP test site at Johnston Community College which is less than 30 miles from where we live, so I think that will be a good place for her to do her testing.  She will be studying for four or five weeks before she takes another practice test.  Then, after another couple of weeks, she will take her final practice test, study for a week and take the actual test.  We are very optimistic about the program, but still have not decided how extensively we will use it.

The buzz around the Chapman household over the last few days has centered on Grandma Conchita’s new refrigerator.  Tio Jorge and I have been conspiring to replace their very small, very nasty refrigerator that barely kept things below room temperature to one that actual keeps things cold, provides ice and filtered cold water in the door, has a big freezer compartment, and, believe it or not, has a microwave defroster built right in the refrigerator.  Awhile back, I called Jorge about the plan.  He went down to the local appliance store, found this amazing machine, and made arrangements to have it delivered while we were all on vacation in Puerto Vallarta.  We were hoping to have it installed an running by the time Lauro and Conchita got home, but the plumber has to run a water line for the filtered water and ice.  During the planning phase, Jorge mentioned that he would make some disparaging remarks about how bad was the refrigerator.

Jorge said, “No one knows how to irritate Mami as much as I do.”

And it was true!  When we got to Puerto Vallarta, Conchita really did not have too many good things to say about Jorge.  She was pretty exercised about Jorge’s often ungrateful attitude.  She is pretty happy now, though.  They are actually wanting to open put a wall up where there was one door, open a window into the living room over a cabinet with a nice piece of granite on it, and plan some other improvements for the kitchen.  That would be very nice for them.  She is a lot happier with Jorge now, too.

In other big news, Jorge and Mari have decided to name their new little boy Brandon.  You might remember that his cousin, Lynn and Rosalinda’s youngest, is named Marlon.  Marlon, Brandon, hmmm…

Because of our common interests, my buddy and fellow Mexico fan, Mark Bullick has recommended that I read The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (DFRE) by Edward Gibbon.  I think I mentioned earlier that he gave me a bunch of other history books that have enjoyed very much, the lasts being the Albigensian Crusades.  My problem is that I just have too many irons in the fire so I have not had much time to do any reading.  So, when my commute time increased from twenty minutes to thirty minutes, I decided to do something about it.  I found a place on the internet that had recorded the first two volumes of DFRE and put it on the internet for public download.  I have started downloading Volume 1 from there and listening to it during my commute.  The name of the site is LibriVox and it holds a ton of public domain audio books.  I want to listen to more of them when I finish DFRE.  Thanks Mark!

Secondly, I have been looking at the book we got to study for the General Radio Operators License.  It might be possible to study that book and get the license, but it would be a pretty ugly study without first getting some theory of operation.  I talked with my buddies, Brett and Jim at work.  Both of the recommended that we first get or HAM General Class license.  So we revised our plan a little.  Brett suggested that we put a radio kit together and study a book on radio theory at the same time.  After that, we can get a book that is specifically for getting ready to take the General Class license.  At any rate, I bought a Norcal 40a radio kit and the book that goes with it titled The Electronics of Radio.  Brett says that it is a college level radio theory class.  The comments on the book at Amazon say that it is “somewhat less math-intensive” than other books of this nature.  I think we can handle it.  If he had his way, Christian would build the whole thing, but Kelly and I are going to get our hand in on the soldering, too.  More fun stuff to build!!!

I have a lot on my plate for the next couple of days to get caught back up after being off on vacation for a week.  Thanks to all for the birthday wishes for Lorena.  We had a great little party for her in Puerto Vallarta.  I read a GREAT book and will try to report on that a little as I have time.  The weather was great, so we spent a good deal of time at the beach.  Mostly though, we just ate WAY too much food.

Click on the photos for a bigger view:

I am at a mall in Puerto Vallarta connected to an ad hoc network.  We are having a great time.  Lorena’s birthday party was a great success last night.  Minita had all kinds of decorations and a cake.  Grandpa Milo cooked a fabulous dinner.  Aunt Julia is going to take Kelly and Christian sea kayaking on Thursday.  I do not know whether I will be able to post again until we are back in the states, probably on Monday.

The whole family ran down to the Barnes and Noble bookstore last weekend to buy books to read on our trip to and from Mexico.  Aunt Julia had given Kelly and Christian $15 gift cards that were burning a hole in their pocket.  Christian went off to find a puzzle, Lorena grabbed a bunch of fashion (home and clothes) magazines and sat down to read, and Kelly and I started looking for books.  Kelly was sad because she had run out of authors in whom she had confidence.  She was not in the mood to use primary book selection method of making the choice based solely on what is on the cover (“It ALWAYS works!”).  So after floundering for a half an hour or so, we decided it would be a great idea to spend the $15 on authors she had never previously read with the hope that one of them would be from an author that she could mine in future.  To that end, she picked a book titled Knit One, Kill Two (A Knitting Mystery) by Maggie Sefton that she had read about somewhere that I do not remember.  It meets all the criteria and more:  It is a mystery, the author has written several other books, and it is about knitting!  Then, I recommended that Kelly try a Nero Wolfe mystery by Rex Stout book.  She got Fer-de-Lance because it was the first one.  They say it is not his best novel, but it is a good one and one should really start at the beginning.  Another option might have been to get Before Midnight because it was written in 1955.  Rex Stout wrote something like 72 of those books, so Kelly will be in good shape if she likes them.  I do not remember the third book.  We were looking at the first book in Tony Hillerman’s Navajo Tribal detective series, but I do not think that was it.

As for myself, I am taking a book on comparative religion by Rodney Stark, an Agatha Christie novel that Kelly read and liked from the library, and the Financial Peace book by Dave Ramsey.  Christian is taking a model of a Spitfire airplane to assemble along with a Firefox cartoon collection.  Both of the kids are taking their knitting materials.  I think Lorena’s plan is to spend as much time as possible gossiping with her mother.  That is always a very good thing.  My mother-in-law, Conchita, is awesome.

Update:  Christian just called me.  He just finished his first year of Rosetta Stone Spanish!!!  That is huge step in the homeschool process.  Kelly should finish very soon, too.  Sonlight and others claim it is equivalent to two years of high school Spanish or one year of college Spanish, so it is quite an accomplishment for them.  We will start in on Spanish Level 2 next.  As soon as that is complete, we will start getting them ready to take the Spanish CLEP test, then jump into French.

We are in the process of trying to determine whether it makes sense for the kids to take some CLEP tests to get her some credit at our local community college.  She took a preliminary practice test for Freshman College Composition to see how far away she was from being able to pass the test.  She needs to get a 50 on the actual test to get credit for the six college credit hours which is the equivalent of two semesters of English Composition.  Her score yesterday was 55.  She is going to study the material for five weeks, take another practice test, evaluate what else she needs to study, take a final practice test, study a little more based on those results, and then take the real test.  I am sure the tests vary in difficulty based on the material covered, the ability of the student in each material, and a host of other factors.  From what I can tell, there are 51 credit hours worth of CLEP exams that would help Kelly toward a degree and that the local community college will accept as credit toward an a college/university transfer associate degree.  The only classes for which she will have to actually go to the school are a math class, two biology classes, and a totally bogus, politically correct, humanities class.  The degree requires a minimum of 64 credit hours to graduate with that degree, but if she hits all the classes I described here, she will have 66 with the correct mix of classes for a Associate of Arts (A.A.) College/University Transfer degree.  We still do not know how all this will work out for us, but it is looking OK so far.

We are enjoying our new house.  It is bigger than our rental and even a little bigger than our previous house in Albany.  More than that, though, it is laid out very, very well for the way we live.  The kitchen, breakfast nook, and family room are really just one big room with a fireplace.  There is room for a couple of sofas and a big coffee table and the old dining room table that we are now using as our breakfast nook table with a ton of room left over for we do not yet know what.  The laundry room is just off the kitchen so the kids can do their homeschool there while Lorena is working in the kitchen.  It would all be quite idyllic right now if we were not going through what I suppose is the new house blues.

First the hot-water heater did not produce enough hot water.  We got that fixed, then found that no water was flowing through the new dishwasher.  The electricity worked, so we had the plumber out to check whether the water was getting to the input like it was supposed to.  The water was there.  The only thing that was left was the dishwasher itself.  It is similar to the model we had in Oregon that we really liked, but actually a little higher end model–one of those really quiet Bosch jobs.

The builder was supposed to have all this installed and working, but he obviously did not.  We called him and he pretty much washed his hands of the deal.  We could have fought with him to get it done right, but I got to thinking that it would cause less strife and be completed more quickly if I just did it myself, so I called Lowes.  They were great!  I talked to the assistant manager.  He is going to bring out a fresh dishwasher for us today and pick up the old one.  I am hoping to get that one up and running this evening.  We have not seen much else that looks like it is a problem, but it is a new house so we are expecting a thing or two as the house gets broken in.

Yesterday was Kelly’s first day of studying for the Freshman College Composition test of the College-Level Examination Program (CLEP).  She read the introductory chapter yesterday.  Tomorrow, she will take the first sample test to determine where she is and identify the areas she needs to study most.  We are not sure how well this will work for us, but we will never know until we give it a try.  We have decided to wait until we return from Mexico to start studying for the General RadioTelephone Operators License (GROL) Exam.  All of us (Christian, Kelly, and I) want to study for the GROL.  We are not sure whether Kelly is preparing for too many exams at one time, but the plan is to take a whole year to go through the GROL exam materials a couple of times before we take the test.  In the meantime, we will just have to experiment a little to see how long it takes for Kelly to feel comfortable to take the CLEP tests.  Probably each one will be be different, but test preparation should get more efficient with practice.

We are very excited about our trip to Mexico.  We have just three more days before we drive over to Charlotte to stay in a motel by the airport for the evening, then get on the plane for Mexico the next day!

Christian loves his PDA, but in a year or two he might want this:  OpenMoko FreeRunner: a win for phone freedom  It looks pretty good to me!

We met some of our new neighbors yesterday afternoon.  They seemed like very nice people.  We met members of three families:  one from New York, one from New Jersey, and one from Connecticut.  The situation is similar at my work.  Of the people in my group there is one from West Virginia, one from Alabama, one from India, and two from New York.  It is about the same throughout the company, although there is one North Carolinian amongst the technicians.  I think Charlotte and the Research Triangle Park area tend to be that way.  It seems that the further one gets from those areas, the more one encounters native sons of the state.  It seems a lot like Oregon in that sense.

We had a very busy weekend.  Everything is now in the house, but that is about all that can be said. We have lots unpacking to do.

Last night I drove home to our new house for the first time.  It was about a 35 minute drive.  Not bad.  I was expecting worse.  I think I can actually get the drive down to thirty minutes when I learn the routes a little better.  The move was not really so bad either, as moves go.  The rental house still needs to be cleaned up and the new house is littered with boxes.  We can take it slowly now and just get back into life.  It will nice to get back into the swing of things again.  Life has just been moving too fast since Thanksgiving.  Now we have vacation to which to look forward.  We can relax, enjoy the family, and get re-energized.

We finished the year 2007 well.  So far we have completed the first 16½ weeks of the 36 week school year.  During the holiday break we evaluated what we are doing and decided to make some changes.  Of course we will continue with the Sonlight literature and history programs, Teaching Textbooks math and Apologia science.  Christian is in his first year of a two year survey of world history, Algebra I and General Science.  Kelly is in her first year of a two year survey of American history, Algebra II, and Physical Science.  Kelly will stick with her Teaching Terrific writing, but we have switched Christian to Grammar Ace for awhile.  We will drop the Wordly Wise vocabulary books because they are so nauseatingly politically correct and even wrong in some of their material (an example being the material they wrote about Rachel Carson, the author of Silent Spring).  Of course, the kids will continue with their Rosetta Stone Spanish.  I think the only other things they will continue doing as in the past are their current events, memorization, and music (Kelly – piano, Christian – guitar).

The exciting news for the new year is that we added five major new programs. Two of them are common to both the kids, one unique for Kelly, and one unique for Christian.  First, the kids will go through the study program and be intimately involved in our financial plan based on Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace book.  Second, we will all (Kelly, Christian, and I) start studying through a General Radio Operators License test preparation manual.  We have been told that it might take us a year, but we can pass the test with this manual.  Third, we will start reading a textbook on different world views together as a family — we want to include Mom in this just like with the Financial Peace book.  Kelly will study some CLEP preparation manuals so she can get credit for some college classes.  The first will probably be the first of two History of the USA tests.  Christian will jump back into programming.  I think it is time for him to start programming C++.

Our short term plan is just to do four more days of school between now and when we go on vacation to Mexico.  Then, do only four days the week after we return.  That will put us right at 18 weeks or halfway through the whole year.

We had a great day on our last day of New Year’s vacation yesterday.  We used the pickup and the minivan to move about half of our stuff from the rental house to the new one over the last four days.  On the last trip to the house yesterday morning, Kelly read me an interview in World Magazine.  Marvin Olasky interviewed a sociologist named Rodney Stark who wrote a book titled Discovering God: The Origins of the Great Religions and the Evolution of Belief.  After we finished moving we went to Borders to read a little.  The kids claim that the Seattle’s Best coffee shop in our Borders makes the very best hot chocolate in the world.  To begin with, the hot chocolate is very, very good.  Then they put a ton of whipped cream on top of the hot chocolate, sprinkle chocolate powder and little pieces of chocolate on top of that.  Then they dribble chocolate syrup over that.  Finally, and in addition to a stirring straw, they add a stirring stick made of dark chocolate.  It does not get much better than that!  At any rate, I picked up Stark’s book to read while I was drinking my Seattle’s Best coffee.  It was very, very interesting so I used my Borders gift card to buy it.  It will be a great vacation read for Mexico.  I did great with my Borders cards this year.  I got two Dave Ramsey Books, the Rodney Stark book, and I have enough left on the card to get my next cup of coffee!

We went to a fabulous New Year’s Eve party, ate way more than necessary, played games, talked, and sang hymns to bring in the New Year.  Our friends, Howard and Donya worked hard and were very gracious to have received so many people in their house.  Kelly and Christian enjoyed playing with all the other kids.  Now that we are getting into our new house, we are really looking forward to having these people visit us now that we are getting into our new house!