Year: 2009 Page 7 of 15

I just called Lorena to tell her to pick up some carpet glue when she goes to Costco.  We need it to finish the cat tower.  Even though one of our computers broke, it is not going to slow me down much in terms of our computer project, it is only going to cause me to have to do more work.  Nevertheless, the computer breaking and all these comments about what to do with the time gained from not programming for two hours per night has gotten me to thinking about what it would be cool to try to accomplish this summer OFF the computer.  The FIRST thing that came to mind was the cat tower.  Of course we read our book every night, too, and that counts, but I was thinking more about manual projects.  So, one of my bride’s biggest complaints is that we have a massive number of books on the floor in the bonus room from six years of homeschool.  Now, the thing we have to decide is whether to buy something old and nasty from Craig’s list to refinish or to try to do something from scratch.  I am inclined to try to find something to refinish because I have done that before and very much enjoyed it.  I will negotiate with the boss on that idea this weekend.

I went right to work on the Oregon USGS water particle inspection program right after I read aloud to the kids when I got home yesterday afternoon.  I fixed a few problems, added a little functionality to the program, and then sat down for dinner with the family.  I left the computer running while we ate and during a long talk with the one of the scientists in the USGS lab.  When I returned to my computer, it was completely locked up.  The computer is a nice Dell laptop that is only two years, so I was at a little bit of a loss as to why this happened.  I fooled around with it for quite a long time, but could never really get it going right, so I switched over to the home computer to scan in Betty Blonde and send it up to our server.  I found that our scanner was so old, it did not work with the new computer, so I had to get out our old printer-scanner with the printer that no longer works (an ugly sight that takes up too much room on the desk) so I could scan in a comic.  After that, I had to download Python, GIMP, and the BleAX (Betty Blonde Accumlator of Comix) program I had written and get that running, too.

By the time I had that all finished, it was after 11:00.  Then I had to start trying to figure out what to do about the broken computer.  All my water inspection (the Oregon part) programming work is performed with that computer.  Fortunately, Christian had figured out that there is a defective graphics chip/motherboard in that particular computer for which Dell extended the warranty.  It is something that has happened to lots of people.  So, even though I have a good backup, it is a day old and I will have to rewrite the code again if I cannot get it off the system before it gets fixed.  I did not get much sleep last night, but maybe this is a sign that I should just stay off the computer through the Fourth of July holiday.  It is a pretty good excuse to concentrate on eating hot dogs and watching fireworks, so I am going to take it as a sign even if it is not.

The lesson I learned is KEEP DOING MY BACKUPS!

Last night was another night of programming on my water projects after Christian spent the day working at NCSU to get our experimental camera running in the Ag Engineering lab there.  Troy made some slow progress and believe they now have the camera in a state where they will be able to access it from the internet sometime today.  If that happens, I will try to put an image up here.  We are all looking forward to the long Fourth of July weekend.

Even though I worked (programmed) most of the the time, we had quite a nice weekend.  The kids went to their swim meet on Saturday and played with the neighbor kids some yesterday.  Kelly also got some time in on some craft, reading, and drawing projects while Christian worked on putting a new hard drive in his laptop and getting all his software installed.  My posting will continue to be a little bit light here for another week or two, but expect Kelly will have an interesting post or two in the meantime.

As I mentioned yesterday, I have a TON of side programming work to do over the next little while.  So, when I got home from work yesterday, after reading aloud to the kids, I got right to work.  I had been at it for about an hour, the doorbell rang.  Kelly answered the door and then hollered that there was someone here to see me.  I could not believe.  My old roommate from my freshman year in college was standing at the door.  He looked great and it was great to see him.  He was here to discuss some work he was doing with a professor in the EE department at NCSU.  He is the roommate with whom I spent an afternoon jumping out of the third story of the building where we lived onto a pile of matresses.  Loren missed and ended up in the hospital, but I have to admit it was fun while it lasted.  Loren has worked as an engineer with the Bonneville Power Administration since he got out of college and has quite an interesting position there now that takes him to many parts of the U.S. and even the world.  It was great to get a chance to get caught up with him for awhile.  If he does not plan to bring his wife and stay with us next time he comes, I think I will probably just shoot him!

On another note, Christian has set up the camera we bought for our research project to transmit images from our house to the server he has installed in the  NCSU Ag Engineering lab.  We are going to have to do some work on image quality, but we are now ready to install the camera in the lab.  Here is one of images:

My side projects are starting to catch up with me.  Right now, I have two volunteer programming projects on which I am working that have need of my efforts before the they can move forward.  My long term project with the USGS in Vancouver, Washington is making great progress, but I need to make some program tweaks so the research can move forward more smoothly.  My new project with the Ag Engineering Department at NCSU now has most of the mechanical and computer hardware in place, so now they need a program to run all the stuff so their project can move forward.  Christian has his work cut out for him, too.  So, I will be light on blog posting and heavy on programming for, at least, through the Fourth of July holiday.  Of course, I will try to put some pictures up and post every day, but a lot of my time will be spent banging away at the computer while the kids are swimming, crafting, playing with other kids, and, hopefully, helping out around the house.

I almost forgot to write about the fact that we went to see a play called Charlie’s Aunt at Raleigh’s Theatre in the Park last Saturday with the Steppes.  The play was first performed in 1892 and is absolutely hilarious.  We had actually seen it before at the Albany Civic Theater, th little community theater in Albany, a few years back.  I think that is about a good a play as you can get for those kinds of venues.  The next candidate for a return is a play about the writing of the screen play for Gone With the Wind, but it is not until February, so we were a little disappointed that we will have to wait so long.  After the play we went to a fabulous little Mexican restaurant named Dos Taquitos in Raleigh.  It is owned by a Columbian lady and we were waited on by a nice Basque girl.  The food was dissimilar to anything to any of the other Mexican food we have had in the area, but was very, very good.  We highly recommend it.

I finished a couple of crafty things this weekend. Herb being one of them:

This is Herb. Herb is a fire breathing dragon.

This bulletin board being another. I made it Sunday afternoon just for fun. It’s in my closet now

This is the bulletin board.

Martha-Stewart-rhinestone-enhanced pushpins

Right now I’m working on finishing a little amigurumi elephant (legs and tail), I’m starting another amigurumi pig (halfway through the head), and I NEED to finish the ears and the right arm on my amigurumi monkey. I’m also hoping to start an awesome tote bag knitting project soon. And I’ve just got to learn how to sew sometime. I should probably be learning how to drive instead but… 😀

I’ve also found some AMAZING crafting websites. I got to them off of Gourmet Amigurumi which is like…. crazy amazingly awesome. I need to look at some of the other sites, but I’ve been so engrossed in these three that I haven’t had the time

Inside a Black Apple
I really admire her work. It’s so artsy and unique and cute! Plus I think she’s from Oregon. She has a really cool fashion blog too.

Wee Wonderfuls
SO CUTE!!! And so talented!!!! It’s not fair how adorable everything here is! I adore all the little dolls. When I learn how to sew, that’s what I’m going to make.

Roxy Craft
This is also an amazing amigurumi blog. She has some really helpful ami tutorials on here too that I definitely could have used like 3 months ago. I mean, I could definitely use them NOW, but I could have used them way more a while ago because I was just starting. Also for inspiring and cute!

Oh and:
Threadbanger, the hipster website is also pretty cool. They have lots of videos and such about crafters and crafts and DIY stuff and all that. Thanks to Youngin for the site!

One thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of the best crafters out there are tree-hugging, Obama-craft-making, Starbucks drinking hippies. Don’t get me wrong, I love nature as much as the next person, and Starbucks protein-chocolate-banana shakes are to die for, but FOR ONCE I’d like to see someone make a Sarah Palin t-shirt or amigurumi or tea cozy or something. I take it upon myself to be that person. Where do you find flesh colored yarn though?

*Amigurumi Dragon pattern by Ana Paula Rimoli as seen in the Knit1 Magazine Winter 2009 issue

Woo-hoo!  Troy took Christian into one of the Ag Engineering labs at NCSU to set up a server to which we plan to send images from a remote camera.  Incidentally, I STOLE the picture from Troy’s Water Blog, a very cool blog about all things water where he will be talking about this project as we move along.  He was able to get the computer installed and on the network so we can access it remotely from our home computers.  Next he needs to get the camera going so it sends it pictures to the server.  Even though Christian is currently studying C++ as part of his homeschool, we have pretty much decided that we want to do the file management for this project in Python.  For stuff like this, it is really hard to beat.  So I am going to continue working on the image processing parts of the project while Troy gets the mechanical system together and Christian works on learning Python so he can do the file management tasks.

P.S.  Lynn has requested, and I concur, that Kelly put up some pictures of her Amigurumi dragon and Martha Stewartesque push-pins.  It would be a shame not to share such craft geniusness with the world!

Yesterday, we had lunch with Troy, Youngin, Troy’s dad, mom, sister, and brother-in-law after meeting.  The food and conversation were great, but two things kind of went south on me.  First, Lorena saw the leather recliner Youngin bought for their living room and now she wants one.  I can see that topic subtly making its way into conversations until I weaken and buy her one, too.  It is VERY hard to keep us with the Gilmores.  Second, I found out that I have an indicator of high cholesterol, so Lorena is me stuffing me with oatmeal, olive oil, and omega-3 fatty acids.  The three O’s.  While I like all that stuff, it is a hard thing to know you are cut off from biscuits and gravy, possibly forever.

While we were there, we made plans for Christian to go to NCSU today with Troy.  That is actually, very exciting.  They plan to install the Linux computer Christian put together to act as a server to receive the water level images for our research project at the Ag Engineering department.  We hope they can finish that today so Christian and I can start sending images to it later this week.  The plan is for Christian to set up the system so we can access images and run programs on the computer from anywhere we can get an internet connection.  I am writing a program to analyze the images.  I hope to have something complete to do that by mid-August.  I am writing it on my Windows computer, but was very happy to hear Troy still has Ubuntu Linux running on his laptop, so I will plan to convert the image analysis program to run on Linux, too.  I hope Troy will put up some images on his water blog as soon as some are available.

This weekend, Kelly completed a fabulous new amigurumi dragon and a cool new bulletin board with push pins that would make Martha Stewart proud.  She also completely reorganized her room.  We marvelled at her good energy and motivation.  I hope she will put a picture of the amigurumi dragon up here and expain it all to us.

Lorena and I both got new telephones earlier in the month.  We were very impressed with their shininess.  Now I am beginning to wonder if something else is going on with them.  A little after we got them, I started getting more calls then usual about on subjects that are not so common for me and from people I had not expected to call.  Some of them have been great, but the sum of them all has put me on a schedule where I do not get much sleep and I am getting older, so I need all the rest I can get.

I have been working on a big project for the United States Geological Survey for about four years.  It is a very interesting project that involves some new and innovative methods to test water quality in streams.  I do the machine vision part of the system and actually had the bulk of the code written about four years ago.  A couple of weeks back, I got a call from Dan, the USGS guy telling me they had finished the device that feed the water to the cameras, they had hired an intern to start taking images, and could I work with her to make sure the numbers were coming out right.  Ever since then, I have spent probably two (very interesting) hours per night on average to make adjustments to the program and add functionality so it will analyze the images properly.

Over the last couple of weeks, I have received calls from four serious recruiters or companies that would like to determine whether it would be a good match if I went to work for them.  I say serious because I differentiate them from the kicking tires types of head hunter calls I receive two or three times per month.  I am really planning to stay where I am, but the work they have at the places that need someone like me is very interesting so I actually got to the point where I had technical discussions about the work they were doing and the problems they had with all three.  I found out that, if I were ever to move to California, I would need to make about double the amount of money I now make just to break even at just about any of the places where I could get a job.  I cannot imagine what it must have been like before the downturn.

Bryan, one of my best buddies in the whole world (he stood up for me at my wedding) called with a GREAT idea for a product that uses machine vision.  I hope that all works out, but there goes another two or three hours per night if it happens.  That is in addition to Troy’s water inspection project that Christian and I work on at North Carolina State University.  Surprisingly, my phone has not rung so much for that project, but I think that is only because Troy is buried with too many classes during a short summer semester.  His classes are scheduled to come to an end in less than a week.

Of course, I get my normal calls from Lorena, the kids, Dad and Mom, etc.  If my phone keeps ringing like this, I am either going to give up sleeping or just go back to using my less shiny, but quieter flip phone.

Update for Bryan and Lyle:  I am back down to 200 and on a roll!

Luke over at the Sonlight blog has a very interesting post that comments on another post and some comments from another blog about educational freedom.  It is all a very interesting read on a topic of great interest to many of us homeschoolers.  There are many fairly partisan factions within the homeschool community.  Sometimes, about the only thing we have in common is our desire to have ownership of the way we raise and educate our children.  Some people want to abdicate that responsibility and give it to the state or the church.  Some, apparently want to abdicate that responsibility and let the child decide what they need to learn for themselves.  The writer of the original post stated that “…It’s not real education freedom when church, state or even the parent-teacher controls what the child learns, knows and believes.”  The writer later commented that such control actually offended her.  The conversation started out as a discussion of the face the homeschool community shows to the world and the growing acceptance of homeschooling by the community at large.

Some want to fit their kids into a rigid classical (these seem to be the lawyerly and political types) or theistic (the fundamentalists) setting.  Some are only doing it because their government school alternative is bad and they cannot afford to send their kids to a private school.  Some are even doing it so their kids can concentrate more heavily on sports, spelling bees, art, music, horses, or some other such thing.  Some want to give their child “educational freedom”.  The reality is that there are many reasons homeschoolers do what they do.  If there was only one reason when they started, there are probably many reasons after they have done it for a year.  We all have our reasons, but on some level we are kind of on the same side in putting the best face forward for homeschooling as a whole.

I was disabused of that notion to a certain extent yesterday due to this very engaging conversation.  After getting pretty exercised by the different comments flying back and forth I realized that there were at least two competing worldviews represented in the discussion and that there was really no common ground to be had.  It seemed peculiar that the side that advocated for control and guidance of their children during their growing up years was the one that appeared to take the “live and let live” position.  Meanwhile the side that was for what they called “educational freedom” was offended because of what she felt might be someone trying to exercise any control over the education of her charges even though they argued, quite thoughtfully, just the opposite.  AND it might look bad to onlookers.

I have been brought up to call adults by their last names.  Mr. Smith, Mrs.Jones, Mr. Pedraza.  All that.  Through the years there have been numerous adults who urge me to call them by:

Exceptions:

• Miss Turbone, who is really Mr. Bone, is called Miss Turbone because of an unfortunate read aloud in the second grade.
• Young adults, or those of you who are within ten years of my age.
• Troy and Youngin are more than ten years older than me, but it doesn’t feel like they are so I’m very conflicted about that.
• Blog commenters… Ruthie, can I call you Mrs. R?
• Workers (our preachers).  When we were little we used to call them Uncle and Aunt, but it feels kind of strange now. I’m kind of unsure about everyone but Lyle. Lyle is Lyle.

Random things:

So there you go!

I got pretty well hammered, maybe justifiably, in the comments yesterday on the post about the evils of Facebook and Twitter.  I got more when I got home and talked to my family about it.  I was sticking to my guns, but then the mail came and it had a FREE T-SHIRT from something Christian signed up for on Hobomodo.  Wearable free stuff.  It does not get any better than that.  I was wavering a little, but then Ruthie knocked me back to my senses with a quote from an Henry David Thoreau.  He said, “We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.”  What a great quote.  Ruthie got the quote from a book titled Amusing Ourselves to Death:  Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman.  So I thought I was back where I started, but with a new great book that I have to read (or preferably get on CD via inter-library loan at the Holly Springs Library)–thanks, Ruthie.  After I gave it a little more thought, though, I realized that I would not have had any of these thoughts if it would not have been for time spent on the internet.  Well, at least it did not happen on Facebook or Twitter.

I received an email note this morning with a request that I join Facebook so that I could be someone’s “friend”, post on their wall, and share photos and pithy comments with them.  I have watched this whole Facebook thing up close and personal for about a year or so as my wife and daughter communicate with friends and family literally around the world.  It seems to be quite addicting.  You look at your friend’s page, they have some photo or video or comment or friend who looks interesting, so you jump to that.  You see someone who is a friend of a friend who you request to be your friend.  It is easy to stay on those pages for hours every day.  The thing that jumps out at me, though, is that use of Facebook is an impediment to direct interaction with other people.  We were at a get together the other day with a whole bunch of kids.  A couple of those kids spent more time in Facebook on their laptops or other mobile devices than they did playing volleyball, paintball, board games, singing, and all that other good stuff.

Blogs, Wikipedia, Google, Youtube, and all those other very interesting sites rarely give me as much long term benefit as a good book.  I am beginning to think about the internet the same way I think about television.  There are a few good things on it.  We could not live without Skype to talk to Grandma Conchita in Mexico.  When you need a map or are in an argument about the amount of rainfall in Bolivia in 1923, it is indespensible. Still, it is a time sink.  I am still trying to figure out how to manage our household use of Facebook in particular and the internet in general.  I would much rather the kids worked on art projects, the cat tower, book reading, swimming, practicing their instruments, designing Betty Blonde giveaways, and playing with the neighborhood kids then wasting their time on the internet.  And don’t get me started on the total uselessness of Twitter.

Update:  This article explains, maybe, why Facebook and Twitter have their place.

We had a great weekend.  We just did our regular hang-out thing on Friday night, but then we had a VERY full Saturday.  We got up at 6:30 in the morning so we could drive up to the Wake Forest area for a swim meet.  Both Kelly and Christian started the swim season with a bang by winning some ribbons and making some personal best times.  Right after the meet, we ran Christian over to his friend, Hunter’s house (a great setting) so he could go fishing.  While we were there, Lorena, Kelly, and I picked up Hunter’s little sister Emma and went to the Holly Springs Library where I was able to pick up the book on CD’s that I had ordered via inter-library loan.  Now I have some more stuff for my mp3 player that I use during my running workouts.  After that, we went home, changed clothes and went to an absolutely fabulous evening to celebrate Hunter’s birthday.

We were pretty burnt out by Sunday afternoon, after lunch we stopped at the bookstore for a bit, then went home so Kelly could work on her Betty Blonde’s for next week.  We have to get way ahead now so we will have enough comics for when we all go to Oregon in August.  She and Rubix worked really hard.  I think she finished five comics, but then we realized that she needed some new inking pens so we ran down to Target to get some.  While we were there, Christian and I ran over to Home Depot to get the last few things we need to finish the main structure of the way over due Cat Tower.  We cut some stuff and drilled some holes when we got home.  Now all we need to finish the thing off is some glue, carpet, staples, and a little more rope.  We will put some pictures up as soon as we have the structure together.

This was too good to pass up Thanks for passing this on Kathy Carpenter!!!  I hope Christian achieves such elegance and joy in his guitar efforts!

This will be a very busy weekend.  We have the first swim meet of the season at a YMCA summer camp well north of Raleigh on Saturday morning.  My first audio CD’s arrived via inter-library loan at the Holly Springs so we have to go pick them up. There is a party for Christian after the swim meet.  I have a ton of (very cool) programs to write for a water inspection project I am working on in Oregon.  We really wanted to go to a play this weekend with Lester and Esther, but it is just not going to happen.  Normally, we go to the Library on Saturday, but that is out because of the swim meet and party, so we will try to do that this afternoon when I get home from work.  It REALLY feels like summer now.  There are no more tests looming over our heads, the kids have moved to morning swim practices, it is too hot to sleep.  It is light outside when I leave for work a little before six o’clock every morning.  Now the only thing we need to not forget to do is GO PICK BLUEBERRIES!!!

Note: This post is one in a series on how we prepared our homeschooled children to take various College Level Examination Program tests. The introductory post for this series explains why we take these tests, what parts of the preparation worked for us, and what parts of the preparation did not work.

The CLEP test: Biology

Primary study materials:

• CLEP Biology (REA) with CD-ROM
• Apologia Biology (w/Sonlight supplemental materials)

Secondary study materials:

• Explore Evolution
• Understanding Intelligent Design: Everything You Need to Know in Plain Language

Discussion:

We had read in a number of homeschool forums that Apologia Biology by itself was not sufficient to prepare a student to take the CLEP Biology exam.  We always use the REA books to supplement our test preparation, but were a little bit worried.  We read from a number of people that, since we use Apologia, even their Advanced Biology was barely adequate to prepare someone for the test.  We found that to be totally bogus.  Kelly had a great year of Biology study using the regular Apologia Biology program in conjunction with the Sonlight Biology lesson plan and supplemental materials.  She got a good foundation in everything required to take the test.  She needed to learn some of the material with more specificity, but that was very well covered in the REA book.  We read two additional books aloud together that were not only informative, but also very inspiring.  The first, Explore Evolution, gave a very balanced explanation of the current state of the evolution controversy at a level that is very well suited for highschool readers.  The second, Understanding Intelligent Design, did the same thing for the rapidly advancing field of ID research.  Other than hitting the REA book a little harder for a week or two before the test, we would not change a thing in the way preparation.

Results:

Kelly was fifteen years old at the end of the ninth grade when she took this test and had a scaled score that, according to the REA book, would give her a high B if the course were graded. Christian is scheduled to take the test next year (at the end of eighth grade).

What we would do differently:

Due to a heavy, end of year schedule Kelly did not devote as much time to study of the REA book.  She feels if she would have spent even one more week of hard study in that book should could have raised her score the few points necessary to be in the A category.

Yesterday we had all kinds of drama in the neighborhood. The big dog of the neighbor in the house on one side of us attacked the little dog from the house on the other side and did a bunch of damage. The little dog’s owner is an older lady who lives by herself while her husband finishes up a stint in Iraq. She has been a good neighbor and was quite distraught. Lorena spent the morning to take her to the vet. It was one of those opportunities to do something for “the least of these” and I am proud to say Lorena came through admirably in the midst of all her running around to take the kids to their swimming lesson (more drama there involving people in difficult/sad situations), guitar lessons and shopping.

It does not slow down today. The plan is for Lorena to run Kelly over to her last CLEP test of the year (Biology) in Smithfield. This morning I used most of the time I set aside for blogging to reorganize the “How to Prepare for a CLEP test” posts. Somehow they had gotten fouled up. Tomorrow, I will write up the report on the Biology CLEP test. It seems odd to me that Kelly is half way through all of these tests. These were to be the capstone to our entire homeschool effort, not so much as goals unto themselves, but as an assurance that we covered the material. Well, we are now well into them with Kelly doing her eighth of sixteen and Christian having completed his first. There is still a lot of hard work in front of us, but it is nice to have the end in sight.