Month: January 2009 Page 1 of 2

We had a big layoff at work today.  I survived.  The company is viable and I am an integral part of that.  Some very good friends lost their jobs.  It is going to be a long day.

In case you haven’t noticed, this week’s Betty Blonde is about Facebook. For those of you who don’t know, Facebook is a very addicting social-networking site where you post up photos and talk to your friends. People of all ages and backgrounds log on to it, making it a very interesting place to be. I’ve had an account since late August, and let me tell you, it is not easy to drag myself away from the computer when I’m adding more friends or looking at a new photo album. Facebook is not healthy in large doses I am sure, but there is much humor to be found within it’s blue and white pixelized walls.

For example, the ’25 Random Things about me’ craze. Like I said the other day, it’s spread like a wildfire since it requires you to tag 25 other people to do the same thing. They’ve been really fun to read, especially since a few of them are hilarious. Christian’s list being one of them. I may be biased, but I thought that his list was the most underappreciated one in the entire bunch. I just had to share it here. I didn’t understand some of the ‘segments’, but I’m sure that smart people like Troy or Catherine will.

25 Palatable Segments
by Christian

1. Our kitty’s vet told us that one of our cats was 6 pounds overweight, while I read off the scale that she was actually 6.2 pounds off. We’re getting a new vet.
2. I am totally confused by he rune-scape ‘assist’ system.
3. I haven’t snail-mailed a letter to the free software foundation asking for my own copy of the GNU GPL, even though all of the software I install says I should.
4. I am a Google conspiracy theorist only when I want to be. Sometimes. ~(0_o)~
5. I am 1/5th of the way done with this crummy excuse of a post.
6. My real name is not Klaus Fiedler. (Who knew!??)
7. My bedtime is 9:00 but I usually get into bed by 9:30 because it take time to get ready for bed. Setting bedtime earlier is totally out of the question.
8. My favorite color switches between heliotrope and flurple depending on what day of the month it is.
9. The only Apple product I own is a firewire cable. ( Not counting Kelly’s iPod. )
10. I laugh every time I hear the ‘In soviet Russia…’ meme even though I know it’s at least 10 years older than me.
11. Same with Chuck Norris jokes.
12. I can’t think of any more, so I will just stop at half and do the rest later.
13. This is only half a fact, so if I leave this as an incomplete sentence
14. I was the first person to operate the coffee grinder at the ‘Rays Foods’ grocery store in Albany, OR. Unfortunately, it broke down after 15 seconds of normal usage.
15. Every time I drink out of an aluminum pop can I always attempt to drown the small amount of soda trapped inside by the ridge on the mouthpiece. I have never succeeded.
16. I still cringe when I recall an embarrassing incident that happened 8 years ago involving me and some guy who is now long dead.
17. I don’t always get a new toothbrush every 3 months.
18. According to the Runescape community, ‘I died last Tuesday’
19. I once thought that a less than proper word was a substitutable word for ‘the sound scissors make when they are cutting’
20. I got a 99.9 % score on a math test once, but there were only 25 problems.
21. I have only just realized (as of a few months ago) that the words ‘ghetto’ ‘holla’ and ‘chill’ have colloquial English meanings.
22. Contrary to popular belief, I CAN-NOT out-cuss the Mexican on the street corner. Please stop asking me to recite Spanish swear words.
23. I have only one pair of sage-colored pants.
24. When someone IM’s me a texting acronym I am not familiar with, I quickly scamper away to look it up on the urban dictionary, and then go on with the conversation as if I already knew it.
25. I have made several unpublished Betty Blonde comic strips deemed ‘too political to show publicly’
26. When I went to a ball game with Dad once, I heard him use some simple baseball jargon in a conversation. I thought that ‘HR’ stood for ‘Human resources’

Oh, my mom just got a Facebook. If you have an account, then do add her as soon as possible. I don’t know how long it will last seeing that Dad is vehemently opposed to the whole social-networking thing. (And he’s the one with the almost-6 year old blog 😉 ) Everyone says that he should get a Facebook too, but being the Luddite that he is, he refuses. Ah well…

I have not provided an update on my programming projects for quite awhile, so I thought I would use today’s blog post to describe where I am on the things I have started.

The volcano computer:  This project is still in process with a little bit of a diminished sense of urgency because Mount Saint Helens has not been to active lately and there is so much snow in it right now that it would not be possible to helicopter the thing down in there anyway.  Nevertheless, progress continues.  I stole the camera from Evan for another project, so he is working on integration of the GPS time data capture capability until I send him back the camera.  We hope this will be ready by late March or early April.

Bleax (Betty Blonde Accumulator of Comix):  I continue to make a little progress every week with this program.  Lately I have worked on preparation of the GUI to control the scanner.  I found a Python scanner library for both Linux and Windows that will be perfect to both control the scanner and keep the cross platform functionality of the program.  I use this program every day.  We really could not do the Betty Blonde comic without it.  I have cut the amount of time it takes to convert one of Kelly’s drawings from the raw, inked panels to a finished strip up on the website from about a half an hour per strip to less than ten minutes.  The scanner program will cut that down to about a couple of minutes per strip for those strips for which I do not have to make modifications in GIMP.  This is hobby stuff now, so I do not anticipate I will be able to finish this until sometime this summer.

KamVu:  This is my standalone machine vision library.  I have actually been working on this pretty heavily.  The main infrastructure of the program is under the LGPL license, but I have been adding some proprietary, application specific functionality to the program to allow some friends to use the libraries in their commercial applications.  I have actually been working on this pretty heavily.  It is amazing how many opportunities popped up after this got started.  It works great, I have started adding some OpenCV based functionality, as much for the opportunity to learn as for any need.  KamVu can still be found here.

C++/KDevelop:  Christian now has KDevelop loaded on his computer.  I need to get him started back into his C++ Primer Plus book.  He has really started to grasp the theory and it is way over due that he start using the C++/OOD stuff that he has learned.  The reason we just load KDevelop is because Nokia bought the QT libraries and converted their license to the LGPL license.  They are a great set of libraries and now that the license is right, it will be a super way to get programming experience that is valued by industry in a world class Integrated Development Environment.  Still, we cannot let this distract us from our completion of the ham radio.  We will start as soon as we can, but really jump into this hard in the summer.

We have spent so much time doing special things since Thanksgiving, we have started to think of get-togethers, trips, special dinners, and other events as the norm.  Our children brought to our attention that life was getting a little boring with nothing to which to look forward for many weeks.  I cannot believe that I sat my kids down and gave them the same lecture my folks gave me about how the daily work/school routine is life, not the other special, big events. I went on to explain that life will be a serious let-down if we do not embrace and find joy in the mundane routines that fill our days.  There is as much joy in the accomplishing as the accomplishment.  I too get caught up in the desire to find something exciting to plan or do, but realize that we get a LOT more good homeschool work done when there are not so many distractions.

Christian had about his best math day ever yesterday.  All of his problems were worked in great detail without sparing any paper.  That is a huge help when it comes to correcting the work, both in determining if the answer is right, the methodology is right, and the understanding of the concepts are there.  The concepts are increasingly more difficult as Christian finishes up his Algebra II so he can move on to Geometry.  Kelly only has three more weeks of Geometry before she moves on to pre-calculus.  There is a lot of minutiae in Geometry.  That minutiae is critical for those who will work as theoretical mathematicians.  For us applied mathematicians (in my humble opinion), the minutiae of geometry is only just very important.  That is not true, though, for pre-calculus, so Kelly will be returning to painstaking detailed problem working again sometime in February.

The only parts we have left to assemble on the ham radio are one toroid and some transformers.  All we have after that is knobs, the case, and that kind of thing.

Kelly is drawing a very fun story line in Betty Blonde right now that will run for a week or two.  It is about the Facebook/My Space phenomena.  Check it out.

Update:  More doubt about the education establishment.

Interesting YouTube video:  Mathematically defining functional information in molecular biology

This is a great story.

Math is hard.  I believe the only way to really “get it” is by doing all the steps of many problems.  I have had this discussion with Ph.D. physicists and mathematicians with whom I have worked over the years.  Some “got it” more quickly than others, but all of them had to work their way through a significant number of problems to get a real understanding of the material. It does not really matter what level of math we are talking about either. From Algebra through Geometry, Calculus, and Real and Complex Analysis, if you have never visited the material before, it is not that easy to get the concepts with out working the problems. Math is one of those subjects where it helps to have read through the material for a given day and try to work a few problems before going to the class.  It helps because the material gets presented in both a textbook and a lecture format.  You cannot get feedback from a textbook.  That is why it is helpful to read the material first, so that when the lecture comes along you can ask the professor better questions about what you do not know.  Many believe that day to day usage or teaching of math are what is required to really get it.  That was certainly true in my case.

I talked about all that because it feels like we have moved into a new stage in our homeschool.  The material we cover in Math, Science, and Worldviews is much more complex than in previous years.  It is time to start down the path of study methods that are different in delivery, but redundant in content for math and science.  The kids perform their own, relatively ad hoc daily planning, given a set of daily learning objectives.  I think it is time to do study some different study methods.  How to study was something I had to learn by osmosis.  There is a better way to go about it.  I will look for a book to help me with this, then dive into it, probably as a read aloud in the next month or so.

The sleepover went well. Jenna, Kasey and I stayed up and talked and talked mostly. We also googled camel spiders per Jenna’s request. Not a good idea if you’re looking for a good night’s sleep. Other than that, we had a fantastic time. I really can’t wait to do something like that again.

On Saturday morning we went to the library. I found a new Agatha book there! Thank goodness! I had gone through all of the ones that our library had so I am quite thankful for Death on the Nile. I also picked up a couple of fantasy stories and a historical fiction book. Also on Sunday afternoon we went to Gospel meeting! It was so nice. Tomorrow I go to my piano lesson. I haven’t gone in two weeks because of all the snow, so we’ll see how that goes. I’m pretty sure I have my song memorized. I hope.

On Facebook lately everyone’s been posting a ’25 Random Things About Me’ post. It’s been really fun and interesting to read all the random interesting things about people. Speaking of Facebook, y’all should really be watching Betty Blonde this week. I’m quite excited about her upcoming storyline. Many people will be able to relate to it. I know I do. 😀

Well I guess that’s about it. Just the normal every-day happenings have been happening around here. School, piano practice, more school, gym, school again… but I’ll letcha know when something exciting happens. 🙂

It was a very good weekend even though we did not get to do all the things we wanted to do.  We had lots of plans to work on the ham radio, work with KDevelop, and catch up on homeschool corrections, but it was not to happen.  We did not even buy our volt/ohm/amp meter.  I worked almost every spare moment on software for my United States Geological Survey friend.  I made great progress on the program.  Nevertheless, I was able to put together and print out the schedules for the next two weeks of homeschool and to scan in a several Betty Blonde comic strips.  The highlight of the weekend was that we met Lynn (and her husband) of the A Mother’s Journal blog last night at gospel meeting.  I even saw the Princess of the Universe, but I did not get to meet her yet.

I noticed that we start the second half of the school year today.  We have made great progress.  Like always, we have made some adjustments for unforseen events that mucked with our schedule.  Still most of them lead to additional opportunities to learn.  We are still on schedule to take the ACT in a little under two weeks from today.  That is the next big event, but homeschool is not about big events.  It is about a love for day-to-day learning.  I am so happy that we homeschool.  I know other families do great in other settings, too, but this is what seems to work best for us.  For us, it is a source of great joy to be able to see progress and learn new things.

This weekend I was reminded, by example, of the importance of doing the right thing no matter what.  That is especially true when the right thing is something that is not that comfortable.  It made me think of why the Lord of the Rings books are so great.  Frodo and Sam were going to do the right thing no matter what.  It did not matter that they were wimpy little hobbits.  It did not matter that they thought they would probably die.  Regular people doing special things is completely different from the Harry Potter and Twilight series that feature special people doing special things.  Nothing in my life rises to that level of difficult.  Some of the things I know that are right to do, rise to the level of nothing more than discomfort.  I need to do them anyway.  I was thankful for the reminder.

Rubix, the white nosed cat sister, really does not want to have anything to do with anyone at our house except Christian.  Well, that is not entirely true.  She is willing to suffer great indignities at the hands of virtually anyone if they have food to offer.  For anything else, she only has eyes for Christian.  I took the following pictures late last night and this morning:

Computer work	Sleeping

Posted from the Holly Springs Public Library with a cup of coffee in my hand.

Lyle is the first to put up the our special link on his blog.  You can see it here. You too can post a link to Betty Blonde on your blog or web page that looks like this:

All you have to do is copy the following html snippet and add it to your sidebar or wherever else you want it on your web page:

<a href=”http://www.bettyblonde.net”><img src=”http://www.chapmankids.net/BettyBlonde/bettyblonde.gif” border=”0″ alt=”Link to Betty Blonde comic strip” /></a>

THANKS, Lyle!

Kelly had such a good time staying up half the night talking with her new friends in Tennessee, she decided she wanted some more.  Wednesday, on the way to meeting, she called her friend, Casey, our old next door neighbor from Apex.  She will come over right after her tennis lesson.  Jenna, our new, homeschooled next door neighbor her in Raleigh, will come over, too.  Three fourteen year old girls and Lorena.  That means, Christian and I will need to make ourselves scarce.  I think we will probably work on the ham radio in the bonus room, get Christian’s computer set up with KDevelop to do C++ programming, go buy a volt/ohm/amp meter at Walmart, and anything else we can think of to protect ourselves from squealing girls.

As often as we get the chance, we go to McDonalds and then on to the Holly Springs Public library where they let us drink coffee in the stacks while the kids look for books.  We plan to do that tomorrow as part of returning Casey to Apex, but this is going to a mostly programming weekend for me.  Along with the KDevelop stuff I am doing with Christian, I need to work on a programming project I am doing with a friend at the United States Geological Survey in Oregon.  He is the guy for whom we are making the Mount St. Helens volcano camera computer.  I am writing a bunch of code for a science project about which I will talk in much more depth later.  In the meantime, we continue work on the volcano camera.  It is slow, but we are getting it closer and closer to completion all the time.

We are just two weeks away from the ACT.  I will check today on when Christian will take his first CLEP test (Freshman Composition).

I wrote this silly little poem for my blog’s bi-weekly writing challenge. This week’s topic was ‘your least favorite food and why you like it’ but it basically got shortened to ‘your least favorite food’. Which is fine, because who can write good things about their least favorite food?  Not me. I shoulda known better. 😉

Ode to an Olive
By Kelly Chapman

Oh round little veggie
thy blackness so deep
utterly entrances
with nauseating mystique

So supple, yet hard
thy firm shiny shell
giveth an odor
that does not bode well-

-with my fragile proboscis
Ah what a shame
I’d eat you in bushels
if it weren’t for the pain-

-of enduring your
succulent salty sweet taste
But alas my poor taste-buds
are simply disgraced-

-at the mere thought of seeing you
now isn’t that sad?
It’s not your fault poor olive
that you taste so bad

Fabulous, isn’t it? Anyway I am quite proud of that. Got to scoot off to guitar lessons, but I didn’t want to leave my dear readers hanging!

Toodles!

We are great fans of World Magazine in general and Marvin Olasky in particular.  Olasky wrote an article in the most recent issue (January 31, 2009) titled Deeper into sin about what he calls his misguided search for meaning that led him to the Communist party.  Kelly almost always wins the fight to be the first person to get her hands on the magazine.  When she read through the article, she found that Olasky had spent a stint in the early seventies as a reporter for the Bend Bulletin.  He quit his job out of an urge to indulge a misplaced desire to remain pure in his solidarity with the proletariat and not sell out to the bourgeoisie.  That was all going on while I was struggling through the last two years of my government high school education.  Almost everyone around me seemed to be a hippie or a hippie wannabe.  Those of us with conservative leanings were in for a long haul through the seventies, not seeing any real relief until Ronald Regan was elected in the 1980’s.

That, along with our recent trip to Tennessee and a comment made by Ruthie about some of her homeschool trips, got me to thinking about Bend.  We have wonderful memories of Bend.  They mostly have to do with the trips we made there with our wonderful friends, the Rizos.  We got together, ostensibly to ski at Mt. Bachelor, but really that was just an excuse to get together with great homeschool and church friends.  We always invited my folks and one year we had Dave and Glad C. come, too.  Dave and Glad are contemporaries of Grandpa Milo and Grandma Sarah.  Dad and Dave were in business together for over twenty years–they had the largest doll house kit manufacturing company in the world (Dura-Craft), but that is for another post.  We stayed for a week at a time, but only went skiing three or four days of the week.  We had bible studies in the morning, visited the High Desert Museum, went to a Gospel meeting on Wednesday night, hung out, and talked, and talked, and ate, and ate, and ate.

I guess there is no real point I wanted to make with this post.  It was just a nice memory.

We got a message from work last night telling us not to come into work until 10:00 this morning.  It is currently 15 degrees with a lot of ice on the roads.  I am thankful not to have to go until things thaw out a little.  The kids are going full bore back on their homeschool after about a half day of real work yesterday.  They had a great time in the snow with the neighbor kids and on our three-day weekend in Tennessee, but we got behind on a number of things.

In the meantime, my USGS friend called and I am back to work on the water particle inspection project.  I am hoping to send him a new program today.  It will be good to get back into our routine.

It snowed pretty hard here in Raleigh last night–two or three inches in our neighborhood.  A couple more inches are expected during the day here.  My office put an inclement weather, delayed opening message.  i expect the office will be closed for the day.  Kelly is not feeling so well.  She says she has a cold, but we are a little bit suspicious that it might have something to do with the fact that she stayed up until two or three in the morning talking during the three days we were in Pigeon Forge

We had a fabulous good time in Pigeon Forge.  I was out of my league when it came to taking photos.  Joel and Ron both had really great Canon SLR digital cameras and knew how to use them.  I usually get one good photo out of every ten that I take.  Joel put up a bunch of photos on his Picasa website.  None of them were bad and there were a lot of them.  I will put some photos of our stay there up when I get a chance to download them both from Joel’s site and from our camera.

The weekend was very, very good for us.  We met with three wonderful homeschool families.  We spent a lot of time talking about life, eating, and just having a good time.  We went for a drive through a protected forest area on Saturday.  We saw lots of deer, but the most interesting thing for me was that I saw wild turkey for the first time.  We had a great meeting Sunday morning.  The kids drove go-karts, swam in the pool, played games, and talked.  It is so encouraging to meet new families like the ones we meet in Pigeon Forge.  The people were not only nice, it was obvious they were trying to do the best they could to raise their children right.  It was actually pretty humbling.

Pictures to follow.

Update:  10:45 AM and still snowing hard.
Update:  3:15 PM and still snowing.
Update:  3:25 PM and snow stopped.

I have been told that Pigeon Forge, Tennessee is in some ways similar to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, only it is not quite as elegant, it does not have as many golf courses, and it does not have a beach.  Nevertheless, we are going there this weekend to spend some time with three other homeschool families.  It is about a six hour drive from here.  Actually, all we are planning to do while we are there is hang out with some great people, play board games, hike a little, talk, eat, and generally just have a good time.  We will take the camera and, if we have internet access, put up a few pictures while we are there.

Teaching Textbooks vs.  Singapore Math

YEARS LATER NOTE: Since using these programs, the kids described here graduated Magna Cum Laude in Statistics (Kelly) and Summa Cum Laude with Honors in Applied Mathematics (Christian) from a large state university. At the writing of this note (June 30, 2016), they are both midway through PhD programs at national research universities here in the United States. You can read more about that here.

Audrey asked why we switched from Singapore Math to Teaching Textbooks when we went from sixth grade. First, I have to give the standard homeschool caveat that this was our experience.  Different students learn and think differently.  In other words, “Mileage may vary.”  We did not switch immediately. We absolutely loved Singapore math for the years we used it. We had tried Saxon and found it too repetitive and boring. I think it is a very good program, but it took some of the joy out of math for our kids. We found Singapore Math when Christian was in the third grade and Kelly was in the Fifth. It worked perfectly for us. There were a lot of reasons:

• It kept the kids moving along.

• It had fun stuff like mental math.

• It was repetitive enough that the kids repeated the material enough to learn it without getting bored.

• It had a great history of success in Singapore and with homeschoolers we have known.

We went through the sixth grade with Kelly, then started the seventh grade with Singapore Math, too.  It seemed like I had to spend a lot more time explaining things when we got to the seventh grade than we did in the sixth.  Kelly got bored and frustrated.  She began to get a distaste for math.  It might well have been because we used the system wrongly.  It seemed like not everything was available for the kids to really understand math at this level with the materials that were provided. I got the sense that this material would have played a lot better with a stand-up teacher than for a typical homeschool learning environment.

We had heard from other homeschoolers that Teaching Textbooks was good.  I read some reviews on Teaching Textbooks.  Most, but not all of them were good.  We decided to try it, so I bought the Pre-Algebra material. We loved it.  Kelly was fired up about math again.  The program required less work on my part for correction and administration at the same time I felt I could better track whether or not she grasped the material.  Here are the reasons the system worked for us:

• Each day’s material is covered redundantly in the textbook and with a lecture on a “chalkboard” via computer disk.  Sometimes when one of the kids does not really understand a given subject, I can ask them whether they read the textbook or listened to the lecture.  Most of the time, if they just revisit the material in the other method, that will be sufficient for them to get the understanding the need to complete the problems successfully.

• There seems to be just the amount of repetitiveness that my kids require to “own” the material.  Subject matter taught in previous lessons appears in subsequent lesson problem sets for several weeks.  The way the problem sets are arranged to reinforce understanding over time is one of the great strengths of this program.

• There is a set of five practice problems that go with each lesson.  The student is asked to do those problems on the completion of the lecture (or reading).  If the student cannot answer the practice problems correctly, it shows he needs to go back and listen to the lecture or reread the material before tackling the full daily 20-24 problem homework assignment.

• The answers to all the problems are worked in minute detail using the effective lecture/chalkboard system on the computer disk.  The answers are very, very clearly explained.  One of the problems with some other systems is the lack of specificity in the explanation of how to perform the homework problems.  This is another great strength of Teaching Textbooks.

• The material is broken up into 12-15 units.  There is a test after each unit.  This helps the parent keep track of how the student performs throughout the year.

There are a couple of items about which parents should take note.  First, it has been very important and helpful that I correct all the math problems for the student every night.  Second, on some of the boards, a concern was expressed that the material is covered in a different order in Teaching Textbooks than in other programs.  That includes both the fact that Algebra II comes before Geometry and several of the smaller subject areas are covered during different specific years for some programs than for other programs.  An example of that might be that some programs introduce the sine and cosine laws in Geometry and others introduce it in Pre-Calculus.  This was not a problem with us because we planned to use the Teaching Textbooks program all the way through to Pre-Calculus.

I hope that helps!

Links:

• Teaching Textbooks
• Singapore Math
• Saxon Math

Thanks to everyone who dropped Lorena a note on her birthday.  We had a good discussion about how great it is to be enjoy the age you are as opposed to pining for a different age.  We are going to celebrate a little more this weekend when we go to Tennessee.  I love this picture of Lorena that we took last night with her tulips.  I was quite excited to find the find a special prize from Bryan.  Special for Lorena anyway.  That he did it on an Apple product has to do with the fact that he wants people to think he knows something about computers, but cannot really handle a real one.  Click on the YouTube link below to see his brilliant performance. Take special notice of how skinny he looks. Good job Bryan! And thanks for the great video.

Kelly’s Pre-Calculus text books arrived in the mail yesterday.  She will not start in on them until sometime in February.  Still it is hard to imagine we have come so far.  Math can be a struggle sometimes, but we have enjoyed it very much.  We got off to a great start with the wonderful Singapore Math program developed by the Singapore Ministry of Education.  We moved on to Teaching Textbooks when the kids started Algebra I.  Pre-Calculus is the last course currently available from Teaching Textbooks, so we will have to move on to something else next year when Kelly gets to Calculus.  I have decided that I will not try to teach the kids beyond Differential and Integral Calculus.  After that I will send them to the community college for Multivariate Calculus, Linear Algebra, and Differential Equations.  Those will be good solid classes for them to take in a college setting and will provide them with enough math to get through just about any undergraduate degree they chose with the exception of stuff like math and physics.  I will write some posts here about our efforts to identify a good homeschool Calculus program.

Here is Lorena’s special birthday video from Bryan:

Something interesting for Christian: Ubuntu 9.04 Boots in 21.4 Seconds

On Saturday night we went ice skating, on Sunday night I did a bunch of push ups and ran around with a  group of kids, on Monday afternoon I ran a mile more than I usually do, and on Tuesday morning I ran a bit more than the day before.  Seriously!! It’s like all I do is work out!  Not really. My legs and feet are really sore and I sort of needed a reason to complain. 🙂

Yesterday I wrote my fourth ACT essay. It was about taking a year off in between high school and college. I wasn’t able to fully express my opinions about that subject, but I don’t think it came out too bad! I’m trying not to get my hopes up though.  Whenever I think something that I do is going to be good it turns out to be bad and vice versa.  😉 There’s probably a name for that in my psychology book. They have a name for everything in there!

On a totally different subject…  we had two of our new neighbor friends over yesterday night. We made a quadruple batch of these scrumptious and healthy whole-wheat carrot muffins together. It occurred to me today that we should have made some triple chocolate fudge brownies instead. I’m hoping they’ll still come visit me. Ah well. Not all friendships have to start with marvelous first impressions, right? 😀

I will post up the ACT essay on Friday, just like last week.  I’m getting on a little schedule now!

Today is Lorena’s birthday.  Grandma Sarah’s birthday is on the 18th.  I am truly amazed at how much Lorena and Grandma Sarah have in common personality-wise.  That is a compliment!  Lorena is now as old as I was when we got married.  The big difference is that she still has her hair.  It was one of the very best decisions of my life to ask her to marry me.

I have been thinking about business and entrepreneurship over the last little while and it made me want to study it some more.  My buddy Bryan called last night.  He is one of those serial entrepreneur guys.  He had a great idea (again) that he told me about.  Why does my mind not work like that?  I am surrounded by entrepreneurs.  I work for a venture capital start-up.  My dad started businesses at the drop of a hat his entire life–never running out of ideas.  Troy, a big fan of Warren Buffett’s ideas about value trading, is currently reading a Buffett biography.  In his blog post about the subject he brought up a book Youngin is reading called Outliers by the same author as the guy who wrote The Tipping Point.  Both those books talk about time, circumstance, personal characteristics, and all the things that contribute to exceptional achievement.  I have decided to put off starting on our The Electronics of Radio book so I can read a business book titled The Knack by Norm Brodsky and some other guy.  It is about practical entrepreneurship and I am going to read it aloud to the kids.  When I am finished, Troy and I are going to trade, so I can read the Buffett book and he can read the Brodsky book.

In all this, I think a person has to decide what they want out of life.  I do not think I would be willing to trade lifestyles with the bulk of the entrepreneurs I have known.  At the same time, during my growing up years treated entrepreneurship like sports.  I enjoyed hearing about the efforts to make a sale, a purchase, a new business idea, or a machine to make stuff than I enjoyed talking about Oregon State Beaver sports.  And, at that time, I LOVED the Beavers.  While I currently own part of a small business, I still have it in my mind to start another one.  When I am ready, maybe after the kids are in college, I will look for an idea, weigh the chances of success, decide whether I can stomach the required lifestyle changes, and then, maybe, I will jump into it.

Update:  Something huge just happened in the world of open source software!  QT’s license just got changed from GPL to LGPL.  That was the biggest impediment to it being the GUI library of choice in the Linux world.  It is a cross platform library that will make KDE the desktop of choice in the future.  Christian, that means I want you to install KDevelop (and possibly KDE) on your computer and start using that as your IDE for working through C++ Primer Plus.  Woo-hoo!

I spent a lot of time last night catching up on math correction with both Kelly and Christian.  They kept moving along while I fooled around with blogs, reading, radio construction and the like.  Through no fault of their own, they are now both stuck with a bunch of correction to do in addition to their regular homework.  The plan was to go over some of the non-obvious elements of the trig they work on to prepare for the ACT, but we did not even get to that.  Still, even though we made good progress, we did not complete everything, so we will have another fairly arduous set of tasks to complete tonight.

One thing I have found that helps a lot with big projects like building a radio or reading a book is to try to accomplish something every night even if it is only something little.  We only read about a third of a chapter in our intelligent design book last night, but it was a very interesting passage on the fossil record.  We only assembled one part onto the radio, it was a very cool looking toroid.  We hand wrapped it, burned the insulation from the leads with a match, sanded the leads to get rid of any residual insulation, and soldered the toroid onto the board in a vertical orientation.  It looked so cool we took a picture of it.  It is the vertical, doughnut-shaped thing in the middle of the image with green wire wrapped around it.

The homeschool kids from the family that moved into the house next door came over for awhile yesterday.  I felt kind of bad because we pretty much ran them off after only about an hour because we had so much work to accomplish.  They seem to be very good kids.  They are very polite and seem to be excited about life.  They have never homeschooled before, but will start tomorrow.  We are excited to hear how it goes for them.  I am sure we will see a lot of them.

We have backed off a little bit on Christian’s programming instruction.  After writing the second paragraph above, I was inspired to call Christian and tell him to start back to work on his C++ programming.  The reality is that it requires a lot of effort to learn how to program well.  It is like learning math or a new language.  The only way to do it is by investing a good amount of effort every day for quite a long time.  The book he uses is C++ Primer Plus.  It is possible to work through the examples in the book with an Integrated Development Environment (IDE), but it is better to do it with just a text editor for writing the code and a terminal window for compiling, linking, and testing the programs.  An IDE tends to obscure the workings of the compiler and linker.  Christian has a pretty good handle on object orient programming after having studied some C# and C++, but now is the time to jump into it in a lot more depth.