Year: 2009 Page 14 of 15

My ACT essay is on Saturday and I’m afraid I am feeling quite unprepared.  Today I spent a good chunk of the afternoon reading and re-reading the big fat ACT prep book and taking a couple of the sample tests. Right after this post I’m going to write down another practice essay.  I have also been reviewing the relevant chapters in all four books on studying and test taking that Dad got. All of the books are different, but they do agree on one thing.

Cramming is a no-no.

So apparently I’m doomed.  Therefore I’m telling myself that I should just plunge into it Betty Blonde style with a smile on my face, a Black Warrior #2 pencil in my hand, and a song of hope in my heart. Easier said than done. In reality I feel like I’m wading barefoot into a dragon infested swamp with only a 10 year old calculator and a fading memory of pre-algebra and elementary grammar to help me pull through. Bleh.

In other, happier news, this one book that Dad bought, How to Become a Straight A Student (I forget, do you italicize, underline, or quote book titles?) by Cal Newport, is really interesting and fun to read.  Basically it’s about the title.  It tells you how to schedule your day, find good places to study, write a really good reasearch paper, and it gives you lots of tips on making good use of your worktime so you can have more time for fun activities.  It’s actually made me really excited about going to college!  That sort of balances out all my bad feelings about the ACT.

I gotta go finish up that essay… I’ll write more later this week.

Well, we are only days away from the ACT.  We are headed over to St. Augustine College in Raleigh on Saturday, armed with our Black Warrior #2 pencils (thanks for the great tip, Troy – I hope we can find some in time!) to do battle with the great Nationally Normed Standardized Test of all tests.  We got a bunch of “how to take a test” books in from Amazon yesterday.  Kelly is devouring them.  I will try to write about what I think about them after I look at them a little more.  They do not include Adler’s How to Read a Book, but we plan to get that one, too (thanks Ruthie).

I am going to have some short posts for a few days due to time constraints associated with work.

I was laying in bed at about 4:00 this morning and an idea came to me. It was an idea about how to solve a hard technical problem. I love that. It might be the best part about being an engineer. The idea, if implemented well, might solve the problem. It might not; the problem is hard. Still it will be very interesting, even fun to try it out. I was invigorated enough by the idea that I got out of bed and went in to work to try it out. It will take me several days to do it, but before now, I did not even have a plan. It was like I was an author with writer’s block. At any rate, now I have something to try and it makes me happy.

My CLEP psychology book is actually really interesting.  I wouldn’t want to be a psychologist, partly because psychology seems so cold and God-rejecting, and partly (well, mostly) because Dad won’t let me. 😉  But I have learned quite a bit these past two months. For example, my mother and my Mexican grandfather both have mild cases of OCD. I’m afraid that the older Mom gets, the worse her obsessive cleaning and scrubbing will get.  I’m also fairly sure that my dad has a psychological disorder too, but it’s yet to be discovered. It probably has something to do with having a bunch of energy at all hours of the day.  That’s just not natural in my opinion.  My little brother’s psychological disorder will most likely emerge when he is older. You see, he’s had quite the traumatic childhood. At the age of seven, he knew more about changing screensavers than anyone in the household. That’s not natural either. I am in the 12-18 year old stage. I’m supposed to have a crisis of Identity versus Role Confusion.  In other words, I’m a troubled teenager. I’m probably really messed up by now though. According to CLEP, the only way I can grow up to be a ‘good’ person is by being around others who are empathic, accepting, genuine, offer me ‘unconditional positive regard’ and don’t impose ‘conditions of worth’ on me. That way I can be self-actualized and feel great about who I am. Because after all, everyone knows it’s all about me.

Yeah. I’ve really been enjoying this. But it’s not all bad. I was reading the book the other day and it says that when we’re conforming to a norm (even one that is blatantly wrong) it’s because we don’t want to be rejected by the group that has set that norm. Obviously.  THEN I read my Bible and it said:

Romans 12:2: And be not conformed to this world: but be ye
transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is
that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

So I thought, I shouldn’t be conforming to this world or the people in it, I should be transformed by God and then conform to God! It was cool to read because it sort of (not exactly, but still) went along with what I had been studying in my CLEP and it made me think.

All for now!

I was a little disconcerted by recent events at work (a big layoff) so we talked about it over the weekend and considered what to do.  The reality is that my job is not in jeopardy, nor will it change my day to day work.  I just will not be doing it with some of the people on whom I depended.  We decided that, while it is important to plan, it is also important to continue to live life.  We have some big and very cool stuff going on right now.  Kelly is in the middle of a great story with her Betty Blonde comic.  Christian and I continue to work on the ham radio, although we are kind of stuck until I get a specific kind of wire.  Lorena is getting all her ducks in a row to get back into school.  Kelly and Christian are scheduled to take the ACT college entrance exam on Saturday.  I program on my special projects almost daily.  Sometimes I forget life is good even when the immediate future is a little uncertain.

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.