Category: General Page 52 of 116

Well, the waiting is over sooner than expected.  I checked the ACT website for Kelly’s scores yesterday afternoon.  All her scores were there except the writing score.  I tried to get Christian’s scores from the web, too, but did not have the right access ID.  Lorena handed them to me when she and the kids got home from their workout.  Both of them did very well.  I really did not know how to judge their scores so I talked to Evan at work.  He knew that, for some reason or another, most of the schools publish the range of scores the middle 50% of admitted students received on their ACT.  For example, 25% of the students admitted to North Carolina State University had an ACT composite score below 21 and 25% had a composite score above 26.  Oregon State had 25% below 20 and 25% above 26 on the ACT composite score.  Kelly’s composite score was well above the higher score for both colleges.  There is certainly room for improvement.  There were materials in both math and science that we had not yet covered.  We are excited to see how she did on the writing test.

Christian did very well, too.  He was took the test as a participant in the Duke TIP program.  A participant must receive a 20 or above in English, a 20 or above in Math, a 21 or above in reading, or a 21 or above in Science to qualify for state-wide honors.  He met that criteria in virtually evey category.  There are two sets of programs offered to students who receive high enough scores on the test.  They are called Academy and Center.  Christian qualified for the higher of the two called Center.  When I was going through the material, I saw that Kelly had actually qualified to attend the programs, too.  All in all, we were very happy with the results.  Best of all, it showed us some areas where we can focus for the rest of this year and the next and invigorated us to keep on going.

THANKS FOR THE HELP!  I fixed the blog header image a little.  Lorena tells me it needs more work.  I am glad there are artists in the family with an eye for that sort of thing.  Ruthie and Lynn were both gracious enough to let me know the theme was not displaying correctly on their computers.  I am really glad they took the time to pop me a comment.  It took longer to work that out than I originally figured.  I would be greatly appreciative if you let me know whether I actually fixed anything.  For that matter, if there is anyone else out there who sees a problem with the format, please let me know.

I think I have finally gotten the web theme to the point where it is not completely embarrassing.  Troy helped me find a bug last night that I think I fixed this morning.  I want to make more changes, but they will have to wait until I get some other things out of the way.  This is one of those times when the time available for self reflection is at a minimum.  That is why I very much appreciate Kelly’s post from yesterday.  I am glad she thinks about topics like “Social Graces”.  It is interesting that the book we are reading aloud in the evening about how to make the best use of your voice, even in tense or intimidating situations.  Those situations do not seem unlike the social situations Kelly describes in her post.  If things get tense, people start acting weird.  Some people are better at dealing with that than others.  I am sure practice really helps, but practice without some way of knowing what it is you need to change to maximize graciousness can actually exacerbate the problem.  Thinking, talking, and reading about how others deal with these issues is a good thing.  I certainly am excited that I might learn something about how to be more gracious.  Or at least, learn how to be less of a clod.

Being yourself is more easily said (or typed) than done.  I always believed that I was pretty good at being myself.  Or maybe I deluded myself into believing that I was pretty good at being myself.  Either way, being ‘me’ has proved to be not as straight-forward as I thought.  For example: I want people to like me.  Who honestly doesn’t?  So, when I’m talking to someone that I don’t know very well or haven’t talked with in a long time, I will begin to imitate them. I will mimic their way of speaking, I will use their slang, I will point out every little thing we have in common.  It’s always very awkward. And after the conversation is over, I will come out of my silly state of mind, psychoanalyze the conversation, and berate myself. I promise myself I will be real next time, so people will like me for who I am.  Like I wrote in the beginning of this paragraph, easier said than done. I also might go on and on about me and my life and how wonderful I am.  I know that’s got to be grating to all but the most patient and kind-hearted of people. Truth be told, it’s a sad cycle.

What about group situations? There I have a totally different problem.  I still want other people to like me, but it’s harder to act like just one person because (obviously) it’s a group.  So now I will tug and pull and push and shove the spotlight in my direction, until I am standing right in the center of it.  And then I’ll put on a ridiculous show.  But I’m working on it!  It’s the sort of thing that requires the help of God and a personal choice I suppose.

Oh the insecurities!

Thank goodness some people do see past that. And I know it’s not always as bad as I say it is. Otherwise I wouldn’t have all the lovely friends I have now. I do not know why they’ve stuck with me, but I am very glad that they have. 🙂

After the frustration of the superficial coverage provided by Sound and Look Professional on TV and the Internet, we are quite happy to report that a book by one of the collaborators on that book appears very promising. The name of the book is  Broadcast Voice Handbook.  We read through it and wondered why the author was willing to collaborate on such an obviously inferior work.  At any rate, we are enjoying this second book and looking forward to the arrival of the third:  On Camera: How To Report, Anchor & Interview.

Christian wound his first transformer last night for the ham radio.  Only two to go and then we get to start putting it in its case.

Last night we settled in to read aloud for a half an hour or so in the usual way.  Kelly, Christian, and I sit on the big sofa to the side of the fireplace in the kitchen.  Kelly inks a Betty Blonde comic–I don’t let her do the initial drawing while we are reading because she has to think too hard and misses what is being read.  Christian knits.  I read.  Lorena usually takes a nap over on the small sofa across from the fireplace.  It is all very nice, but yesterday it dawned on me that there is no way I wanted to subject my kids to any more of the inane nonsense in Sound and Look Professional on TV and the Internet.  So we are going to quit reading that until On Camera: How To Report, Anchor & Interview gets here from Amazon.  I really hope that is a little less grating and has a LOT more substance.  No wonder all the television networks and stations are in the tank.

On the bright side, Christian was able to wind a toroid last night for the ham radio.  It looks like we are back on track to getting it assemble in the next couple of weeks.  Of course we will not be able to get it tuned up and ready to go until we start the radio theory book, but it is great to see it come together.  Christian does not need me so much to do the assembly, but we like to do it together.  Now, I usually scan in one of Kelly’s Betty Blonde comics while he works on the radio.

Random story up ahead! :

Every Tuesday morning we go to my piano teacher’s house. It’s way up high on a very steep hill. I have no clue how they got it up there.  But every week mom pushes the minivan up the hill somehow, and we head in to my lesson. At least two minutes before we have to get out of the car and go inside, I start frantically cutting my nails.  My piano teacher is very much opposed to long nails. She says (and I’m paraphrasing here) that we can all afford to give up a little vanity in our lives. I get the feeling that she thinks I keep them long because it’s the fashion or something, but the truth is that I’m lazy, and it’s very hard for me to cut the nails on my right hand. Sad.  Anyway, she has threatened to cut my nails for me several times in the past, and two weeks ago she did it. Yes, you read that right.  She got her fancy-schmansy little leather nail-kit, opened it, and took out a fancy-schmansy little pair of nail-scissors. And she cut my nails.  It was embarrassing to say the least, but I lived. Thank goodness it’s my own fault and that she’s my friend, or else I’m afraid would’ve been rather mad.

Ah yes. My piano teacher is the source of many entertaining stories… 

I actually don’t know why I shared that particular story with you all.  I think it’s because I feel like I don’t have very much to write about right now. The ACT is over, Gospel meetings ended temporarily yesterday 🙁 , the Nosey-book fiasco is done with… things are really calm right now!! Well relatively calm…

I am amazed that we did most of the stuff on our list this weekend.  Lorena shopped at Costco after we had breakfast at Mcdonalds on Saturday morning.  We went to Borders and looked for a book on how to write for broadcast video.  They had nothing, so I ordered On Camera: How To Report, Anchor & Interview from Amazon. I think that book will be OK, but I really need to get a couple on how to do a documentary and how to do new writing, too. There is a Radio Shack right beside the Borders so we were able to find one of the wire gauges we needed, but we are still looking for the other. Kelly finished up a Betty Blonde and has some good ideas about some others.  I worked a little bit on all the things on my programming list, but the new WordPress theme for this blog is going to take more effort than I had originally anticipated.  We had Donnie, Rosemary, and Riley L., and Courtney and Caroline E. over for dinner between meetings on Sunday.  That was great.  Lorena cooked up a fabulous dinner (spiral cut ham, rice, asparagus, chocolate cake, etc.).  We met at Courtney and Caroline’s home for Sunday morning meeting in Florida just after we got married for a couple of years, so we consider them to be close family!  We have to do that more often.

We have a very full weekend ahead of us.  We LOVE to spend Friday nights together as a family just to hang out.  We plan to do that.  Then on Saturday we have a lot of things to accomplish:

1. Go to the MacDonalds by the Costco to have breakfast.
2. Mom will wildly enjoying her shopping at Costco.
3. Christian, Kelly, and I have to find a book on writing for video documentaries, news, or some other similar title at the Borders by the Costco.
4. Read some books, drink some hot cocoa (coffee for Dad), also at Borders.
5. Drop off the almost due books at the Cameron Village library.
6. When we get home (or on the way home), stop by a Radio Shack to pick up some #26 and #24 epoxy covered wire for the ham radio.
7. Work on the ham radio.
8. Do several Betty Blondes for next week.
9. Read aloud about video production.
10. Get ready for company to come over between meetings on Sunday.
11. Go through the “rest of the year” plan for homeschool now that the big test is over.
12. Program:

• BleAx program improvements for scanner integration and Christian’s graphic novel
• Water project programming
• Program for work
• Rework the truly pathetic theme I am currently using for this blog (probably not going to happen this weekend, but I can always hope)

It should be an awesome weekend.  I think I might even get off from work a little early to get started.

Last night we started reading the book Sound and Look Professional on TV and the Internet. It seems like it might have a lot of interesting information in it, but I suspect that it was not written for rocket scientist. It irritatingly uses the word “talent” to describe people who stand in front of the camera and talk. Even if that is the word comely used in the industry to describe people who stand in front of the camera and talk, we are pretty much unwilling to use it to describe the likes of Katie Couric, Peter Jennings, Walter Conkrite and Dan Rather. Still, it is not too good to speak pejoratively about anyone, so we use the word “talkers” instead. The good news is that the book appears to be a good introduction to the basics of video broadcast performance. The bad news is that I do not think we have a good book about video content preparation, so I am on the outlook for that. We do have a book on voice, but I think we will wait on that until after we finish our current book and one on writing for news or commentary broadcasts. I will keep you posted on whatever book we find for that.

About the same time Kelly started drawing her daily comic strip, Christian started work on a Betty Blonde graphic novel.  He filled an entire sketch book with his story, but it was pretty rough in terms of how it was drawn.  Since then, he took a little bit of a hiatus to work on our ham radio, study C++ programming, and knit his Ubuntu scarf.  A couple of days ago, he decided to start the big effort to draw and ink the story in preparation for publishing it in PDF form as a graphic novel.  He only has about a third of the story written so far, all of which needs to be redrawn and inked, but it is coming out great.  It has a completely different feel to it than Kelly’s comic that is just as fun, but equally as crazy.

The whole concept of a comic featuring Betty Blonde, Spike, Big Wilma, and Mr. Nobody started with a magazine the kids started all on their own.  They got the idea they would like to make a magazine, so they started writing articles, drawing pictures, and putting it all together with Microsoft Publisher.  They called their magazine Kaktus Kids.  I had absolutely nothing to do with it.  So, Betty Blonde is not just Kelly’s invention, but a joint venture.  Here are the three issues we put up on the web in PDF format:

February 2007

May 2007

March 2008

The layout of the comic will be quite a bit different from Kelly’s daily strip.  I scanned in the first four panels and used the program I used to format Kelly’s comic so I could put together an example of Christian’s work.  The Graphic Novel format will feature nine panels per page laid out in a 3×3 grid.  The panels will be larger, to print out nicely on 8½x11 inch paper.  I will have to add some functionality to my BleAx comic strip accumulation program to be able to automatically put Christian’s comic panels together in the format we like.  We think this might be a project that will take about a year to complete because we have so many other things we need to do in parallel, but it is starting our very nicely, so we are very excited about it. 

We have agreed to try the two read alouds along for awhile to see how it goes.  We will do a week or two of only the broadcast book first, though, to give Christian and I a chance to finish assembling the radio.

The days leading up to the big test were manic days for the whole family.  We all worked hard to get ready, the kids took the test, and now we are back to what passes for normal in our household.  I worked out the homeschool schedules for the next couple of weeks on Sunday evening, but I have never included our read aloud books in those schedules.  We are on the verge of finishing our Intelligent Design book, and I am in a little bit of a dilemma about what to read next.  The choice is between radio theory and broadcast techniques.  I would really like to do both, because in some senses these subjects go together.  We could turn it into kind of a unit studies kind of thing.

Writing about this has given me a little bit of a plan to run by the kids.  Christian and I are well into building the radio.  All we need is some epoxy wire to finish winding the transformers (we did it wrong the first time and wrecked the wire, so we have to start over), then we can finish putting the thing together in just a few more days.  Kelly did not work on this because she has too many projects already and was less interested.  Nevertheless, the information in the radio theory book would be beneficial to both of them.  At the same time, it is a lot more fun to actually broadcast stuff and not just study the technicalities of broadcasting electronics.  So, here is what I am going to propose.

Now that the ACT is over, we have a little more time on our hands.  We might use that time to read through The Electronics of Radio together just one day per week.  We will all work on tuning, adjusting, and testing the radio we built (and about which the book is written) one other day of the week in place of reading aloud.  Then, we could start reading through Sound and Look Professional on TV and the Internet the other two days per week that are available for reading.  When we get far enough into the that material, we could go to one day per week of reading aloud about broadcast subjects and spend one day actually preparing and performing a broadcast.

I will talk to the kids to see what they think.  If they like it, that is what we will try for awhile to see if we can make it work.  They might have some thoughts on ways to improve this plan.

Note to Christian:  There is still time for this.

We got up at an insanely early hour on Saturday, got our stuff together, ate a banana and some Cheerios and headed out the door to the testing center.  I had a good time. I wasn’t too nervous when I got there and my pencils were sharp, so there wasn’t really anything to worry about.  They put me in a classroom with 15 older kids.  The girl on my left was perfect. She looked super prepared, like she did history and science homework for fun.  And she actually dressed nicely for the exam. If you’ll look at the picture below (on Dad’s post) you’ll see that I went for the ‘casual-casual’ look… black pants, t-shirt and running shoes. 😉

Anyway, I did better than I thought I would. Or at least that’s how it feels right now. We’ll see how I actually did when the scores come in in a few weeks.  The English exam was the easiest of all, then reading comprehension, then science, then math. Science was OK. It was basically analyzing graphs, but it helped to know the subjects that the graphs were dealing with. Fortunately I had studied most of the material that was on the science test before, but a couple of them really stumped me and I had to guess.  Math was nightmare-ish. It was simple at first. Then it got harder and harder. Soon I was dealing with things that I had only studied briefly or that I hadn’t studied at all! I’m pretty sure that I’ll be able to ace it next year though. By that time I’ll have all the math that I need for the test. 

The essay was amazing.  The topic was perfect! I mean, what can be easier for a fourteen year old girl to write about than ‘nice clothing’ and ‘dressing to impress’?  I honestly think that it was my best ACT essay ever. I don’t think my outfit helped my brainstorming much, but my mind was in the right place. 🙂

Troy and I sat in the Wake County Regional Library at Cameron Village and studied on Saturday while Lorena and Youngin went shopping in Cameron Village.  The kids were over at St. Augustine College to take their ACT.  I do not know how much studying Troy got accomplished, I was pretty manic almost all day and had lots of interesting things to say (at least they were interesting to me, I am not sure about Troy).  It was a beautiful sunny day.  The kids enjoyed the test.  Lorena and I enjoyed hanging out with Troy and Youngin.  We ate some GREAT food at a noodle place in Cameron Village after the test.  I was a little bit saddened because I know we will probably not be going to the Holly Springs library too much any more.  You can drink coffee in the stacks at the Cameron Village library, they have a McDonalds (for breakfast) right around the corner, Lorena can go shopping while Kelly, Christian, and I read books, it is on the way to Costco.  How much better does it get than that?  Still, I LOVED the Holly Springs Library.  We will have to go back there sometime soon for nostalgia’s sake.

St. Augustine College has a neat campus which seems to be right in the center of Raleigh.  While I was waiting for the kids to complete their tests, I noticed that they had won a ton of Division II NCAA National Track and Field Championships.  I think it would be kind of fun to go to a track meet there.  It will not be the Olympic Trials or even a UCLA-Oregon dual meet at Hayward Field, but I bet it would be pretty fun.  I am not sure how well the kids did on the test, but they seemed to think they did OK.  They felt like the math part was the hardest, the science next, and then the English and reading comprehension.  Kelly felt pretty good about the essay portion of her test, too.  We will have to wait and see how it comes out.

Sunday between the morning meeting and the gospel meeting in the afternoon, we all sat down, turned on some classical music, and did some portrait drawing.  We were a little rusty, but it was a LOT of fun.  We have decided we are going to try to do that as often as we can now on Sunday afternoons.  We did a little bit of reading, too.  While we did that, Christian knit a couple of additional rows on his Ubuntu Scarf.  It is coming out awesome.  You can see the logo now.  We can hardly wait until he finishes.  He is thinking of doing a Linux Mint scarf next.  They have a logo that would look greate on a scarf, but it might not be that easy to do.  Maybe he will be ready to try to do it on a sweater or something by the time he gets started.

Note:  I heard on the radio that we will be able to listen to Dave Ramsey on WPTF from 9-12 on weekday mornings.  I hope I will still be able to hear him on afternoons on the way home from work, too!

North Carolina law requires all homeschool students to take a nationally normed standardized test every year.  We would do that whether or not it were required.  It is just nice to get some confirmation that there is educational progress.  We actual enjoy these tests.  We have to do a few things to prepare for the test.  Each of the kids needs a couple of #2 pencils (we discussed that earlier, here), an approved calculator, some paperwork, and an eraser.  We plan for a good night sleep and a banana (for maximum synapse firing) along with breakfast.  After that, we will drive to St. Augustine College where we will check the kids in, then go find a place where Lorena can shop and I can sit and program.  The test times are 45 minutes for English, 60 minutes for math, 35 minutes for reading, 35 minutes for science, and 30 minutes to write an essay (Kelly, only).

Even though we enjoy these tests, it will be a relief to have them behind us because it will allow us to concentrate more on our day to day work.  This is generally, the most productive time of the year for us.  We will start to consider annual research report topics so we are ready to start research in March.  We are just about finished reading Understanding Intelligent Design, so we need to pick our next book.  I thought we would do something on electronics, but I am having second thoughts on that now.  Part of it has to do with reading A Mother’s Journal and feeling nostalgic about all our art (examples here, here, here, and, of course, here).  I think we will go on to books to prepare us for video blogging, but I have not made up my mind quite yet.

Christian

• Math:  Christian is poised to move on from Algebra II to Geometry in February.  He has been doing particularly good work of late, showing all his work and writing very neatly.  That is very important at this level of math.
• History and Literature:  The Sonlight curriculum works very well for us.  Christian continues on schedule in these two area.
• Science:  Apologia Physical Science is awesome, we are on course.
• English:  We are doing several things to prepare Christian for the CLEP Freshman English Composition test.  He will take that next month, after which he will start doing a lot more writing.  He will start his annual research report at that time.
• Spanish:  Second year Rosetta Stone – good progress.
• Music:  Guitar lessons continue.
• PE:  Four days per week of fitness at the YMCA.  He is also in the very beginning of a strength program and making good progress.
• Arts and Crafts:  Christian is knitting on a special scarf (we will have pictures soon) and working on his Betty Blonde graphical novel.
• Electronics:  We continue to work on our our ham radio.

Kelly

• Math:  Kelly is poised to move on from Geometry
  to Precalculus in February.  She is continuing on schedule.
• History:  Kelly is in preparation to take the U.S. History II CLEP test.
• Science:  Apologia Biology is awesome, we are on course.
• English:  Kelly, as always, writes A LOT.  She writes in this blog, her own private, girls blog (a bunch of girls, including one older “girl” who has lots of skills, training and experience in this area, write short stories and poetry, then judge each other — it really is an excellent tool), her diary, etc., etc.  She will
  start her annual research report in March.
• Spanish:  Second year Rosetta Stone – pretty good progress.
• Music:  Piano lessons continue.
• PE:  Four days per week of fitness at the YMCA.  Kelly has been studying health and nutrition and is doing a great job of assuring she gets the right kind of nutrition in the right quantities–not too much, not too little.  She has also been experimenting a lot with new recipes.
• Arts and Crafts:  Betty Blonde, knitting.

Beside all this, we have additional projects planned, not the least of which is the video blogging project that will probably not start now until this summer.  We continue to read aloud together every evening with a bowl of popcorn.

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!