Category: General Page 60 of 116

We have gotten off to a roaring start in our homeschool this year! We are in our third week of homeschool. The structure of the work we do has changed a little from previous years. Partly this is because the kids are older, but partly it is because we know a little more about what we are doing and how the kids learn.

For Kelly, that means she is now posting three days per week on this blog. Her topics will vary from week to week, but as a general framework, we have decided she will comment on a news or opinion topic on Mondays, a homeschool topic on Wednesdays, and a fashion/culture/society (girly) thing on Fridays. We will not be too restrictive on topic selection and reserve the right to change the order of things as we learn more about how to do this. I have mentioned previously that Kelly is studying hard for a good number of CLEP tests she wants to pass this year. The first two are Spanish and U.S. History II. She will read all her Sonlight literature books, but there will be less emphasis on that part of the program. Kelly finished Intermediate Algebra (II) this. The plan is for her to take geometry at a little faster pace than we have in the past, but to back down to our regular pass when she gets to pre-algebra about half way through the year.

Christian follows a plan similar to what we have done in the past. The exception is that he will try to take two or three CLEP tests this year. His first test will be the Freshman English Composition test. He took the first test exam in the program we got for him and got a high enough score to pass for college credit, but we will continue all the way through the program to try to get him as ready as possible for the test. Christian is currently in Algebra II. We want him to be very thorough in his studies for a special reason this year. Algebra II is the level to which people who take the ACT college entrance exam are tested. The ACT is one of the nationally normed standardized tests accepted by the state of North Carolina for their required annual testing. Both of the kids will take that test toward the end of the year.

Weight loss death match note: It is good to see Lyle is back in the fight after returning from convention!

June 8, 2004 – Last piano lesson
June 9, 2004 – Remote camera

Last night Mom, Dad, Christian and I sat down to watch the Republican National Convention speeches. It is awesome what they can do with technology these days! The speeches were streaming live online for our viewing pleasure. I am very interested in politics (more than I should be at times I think) but I don’t know too much about them because I’m just a freshman. So don’t expect any profound or original thoughts from me, and if I say anything incredibly ignorant, just remember that it isn’t me. It’s hormones*. 🙂 However, here is my humble opinion of the matter:

I thought the whole thing was simply fantastic. The real highlight of the evening for me was Fred Thompson, one of the few people who didn’t seem to be highly dependent on the teleprompters. He told the story of John McCain’s POW experience marvelously. Some people may think that Senator McCain is playing the Vietnam card too much, but it is my belief that his war experience shows a lot of good things about his character.

Of course it was a treat to get to hear President Bush and the first lady speak. Because of the potential emergency of Hurricane Gustav, the president was not able to come to the convention. He gave his speech over some video talking doohickey. Technology is marvelous. There were also plenty of inspiring stories of bravery, strength, and selflessness. It was really great to watch.

What I really can’t wait to hear is Governor Sarah Palin’s speech. I am so psyched about her!!! I sincerely hope that she and McCain win.

*One of the advantages to being a teenager: everything can be blamed on hormones.

I am letting the kids sleep in until 7:30 this morning because we stayed up last night to watch the speeches at the Republican National Convention on the internet. We very much enjoyed, not only the speeches, but the whole ambiance of the convention with its theme of service. We made it through Fred Thompson, before we sent the kids off to bed. It was neat this morning to find that the very next of the posts from my old blog was about Christian’s famous second grade speech. It really was an awesome thing for a second grader. You can read about it here.

Yesterday, Kelly called me from the Trader Joe’s grocery store in Cary. She had gotten talking to a girl who works their as a cashier to help pay for her college education. The girl asked Kelly and Christian whether or not they had started back to school. When she found they were homeschooled she told Kelly she had been homeschooled through junior high school, but returned to government school for high school. She said is was so bad she only lasted a week. She begged her parents to take her out, so they put her into a private Christian high school. She went on to say that she started taking classes at the community college so that she earned an associate degree there at the same time she got her high school diploma. We were all inspired by the story. Kelly is looking forward to talking to her again when they go back to Trader Joe’s.

This all reminded me of why we decided to leave the government schools again and return to homeschool. We were living in Albany, Oregon at the time. We are still very grateful to the school system there because if they would not have been so monumentally bad, both academically and in the way they hardened the spirits of their students, we might never have left. I keep many, many pages of handwritten notes in our files that describe my conversations with the principal and with Kelly’s teacher with regard to all this. Some day, I plan to write those up and post them here. It has been over four years since that happened and I still get exercised over the whole thing, so I probably should wait a couple more years before I do that.

June 4, 2004 – Tony and Martha visit
June 7, 2004 – A quiet weekend

My buddy Brett was right again. He recommended that we not miss seeing the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. The exhibit tied right into the reading Kelly, Christian, and I are doing on worldviews. In fact, one of the scholars we heard quoted in the exhibit (William F. Albright) was quoted in our worldview reading for the day of our visit. The exhibit was very well done. It was truly an incredible opportunity to have access to them. After all those years reading Biblical Archaeological Review, it was very gratifying to see some of the objects about which so much has been written. In addition to the scrolls themselves, we were especially fascinated by the textiles, the ossuaries, oil lamps, an ink well, and many other artifacts.

We found that the museum is will exhibit a history of chocolate next – with samples! We bought a year membership in the museum and plan to go back often. We took a couple other pictures at the museum along with a third of Lorena, Christian, and Kelly standing in front of the North Carolina Museum of History that is right across the street. The history museum looks great, too and we plan to go there soon. The middle picture does not do justice to the beauty of the butterflies we saw in the Museum of Natural Sciences, but we liked the picture anyway. This was the highlight of the weekend.

You can click on the images to make them larger

On another topic, I made great progress on my Python program to take the images I scan for each of the four panels of Kelly’s comic, resize them, add drop shadows and titles, create a thumbnail and save all of that to the disk. I used it for the last three comics she did and it worked great. It is still a command line program, but it saved me a ton of time. The next step is to create a GUI for it and then add scanner/webcam support. I have some additional ideas I would like to add, but I they are too far off in the future to mention right now.

June 2, 2004 – Back to work
June 3, 2004 – A job opportunity in Seattle

You’ll notice in the post below this one that there is a picture of me holding my ipod (with it’s new pink cover, thank you very much Yuting!) in front of a very pink wall. That pink wall happens to be located in my bedroom where there are located many other pink accessories and oddities as my father has already explained.

Why so much pink?

One would think that the modern 14 year old girl would turn against this radiant color because of it’s symbolic association with traditional and oppressing femininity . But I embrace the girliness. For me, pink is not just a color. Pink is a lifestyle.

Way back when I was 7 or 8 I liked the color blue very much. Pink was for little girls. I was not a little girl. I was in the third grade! Unfortunately my grandmother liked to think that I still was a tiny baby, so for Christmas she got me all sorts of nice things like hello kitty sweatshirts and plastic horses. Why I did not appreciate them I do not know. Anyway, one Christmas she gave me something pink (I believe it was underpants or socks) “because I liked pink so much”. Little did she know. I smiled graciously and said thank you like the mature child I was, and then I did some thinking.

I didn’t like pink… did I? Of course not. Pink was a juvenile sort of color. Or was it? Maybe I did like pink. A little bit. Not much but. . .

I decided right then and there that PINK was to be my favorite color to the end of my days. I don’t know what got into me, but I’ve stayed true to my promise, and my obsession with that fabulous color has grown over the years. My real friends have learned not to laugh or groan at my color preference. And I think that the ones who do laugh are simply ignorant. 🙂

Well, we solved our big, technically challenging problem at work, I finally got the ipod cover Yuting gave to Kelly home, and have decided to put up a couple of pictures to celebrate. The first one is of Kelly holding her ipod with its new cover. Please notice the color of the walls and know that the rest of the room, the stuff you cannot see–bedspread, pillows, knick-knacks, furniture, etc.– is of that same subtle pink tone. It was such an appropriate, thoughtful gift. Kelly appreciated it very much.

Kelly’s new ipod cover from Yuting

The next picture is of Christian studying up in the bonus room. Lorena and the kids cleaned out the bonus room and are hard at their studies. We have gotten off to a great start. Both of the kids have made a big effort to stay organized and work hard. Kelly makes a game plan for each day then attacks it with vigor. The material is getting harder and the work required to learn it can be more trying, yet it is very interesting material and they are learning a lot.

Christian studying in the bonus room

May 27, 2004 – Linux up and running
June 1, 2004 – Memorial Day weekend

The hard work we have done over the last couple of days has started to pay off. We have a three layer problem. We fixed the bottom two layers and identified the potential source of the problem on the top layer. This was one of the best team efforts I have seen in a long time. There is a different owner of each of the layers–me being the bottom one–so it truly was a team effort to solve a very difficult technical problem. We have not yet put the problem bed, but we are very, very close. This is another part of my job that I enjoy very much.

This has inspired me to think about my own little programming projects. The main active ones are the volcano project and the comic aggregator. A ton of work is complete on both of them so we just have to push through to the end. Both of the projects are only a month or two away from completion if it were possible to spend all my time on them, but intermixed with my current schedule, realistically, I am at least six months off.

I often forget how long it takes to do homeschool well everyday. The kids work hard and are more independent than every. My job is way more hands off than it was in the past. Still, at the very minimum, it takes an hour to do our reading and correct the math. Then it takes another half hour or so to read through book reports, science experiements, etc. I absolutely love doing this, but it takes at least two hours per day, not including the time I spend on homeschool topics on the phone and computer during the day. That is down from three and a half to four hours per day when the kids were in elementary school. All it means is that I have to give myself a reality check when it comes to planning other projects.

May 25, 2004 – Around the World
May 26, 2004 – Hay fever

I love going to the library. I always have. I love the process of picking out books, the comfy chairs where I can sit and read comics and magazines. Saturday mornings at the library are one of the highlights of my week.

But lately, my love for the library has waned a little. The library I go to has a “children’s” section and a “young adult (read: teenager)” section. Having presumably outgrown the children’s section, I have moved on to the cozy little corner of the library that contains books about dragons, vampires, predictable teenage romances and. . . nothing else. I don’t mind the occasional romance, and I’m certainly not against fantasy, but when the entire library is filled with books that have titles like these:

• Mates, Dates and Sleepover Secrets
• Gossip Girl
• The Clique: Best Friends for Never
• Here, there be Dragons
• Operation Red Jericho

It’s tiresome. Oh there are certainly a few gems among the rubble, but every week it gets increasingly harder to find them. I can tell if they’re worth a try if their covers aren’t pink and don’t have a mystical creature on the cover.

I have ventured into the adult section of the library before, but too many of the books that I have found there are adulterated by salty language and things that would make my Mexican grandmother blush (and that’s a tricky feat) I sometimes wonder why some people enjoy those books, but there it is! I have asked my wise and well-read father for book suggestions countless times, but his idea of light reading is stories that involve lawyers, cowboys, or uncureable diseases. I’ve read every Agatha Christie that they have. I’ve ready every Arthur Conan Doyle that they have. I’ve read the Lord of the Rings at least five times. I need help! Please?

It is going to a little bit of a small post today, because we are only half way there in the resolution of the problem we are trying to solve at work. We made good progress yesterday, though, and I expect it we will have our head above water again by today or tomorrow.

There are a couple of fun things going on at home. First, since the summer is over and Kelly is on a regular schedule again, she is much more consistent on her piano practice. The teacher noticed at her lesson yesterday and gave her a new, much more difficult book of Bach pieces. Lorena and I are very musically challenged, so we have quite a struggle when it comes to finding a good piano teacher for Kelly and a good guitar teacher for Christian. Kelly’s old teacher, Jill Hickenlooper, from Oregon is the one who found Mrs. Bruce for us via internet forums and email. We very much appreciated her help and believe Mrs. Bruce is a magnificent teacher. It took a year for Kelly to get into the system–Mrs. Bruce wanted to fix a few things with Kelly’s technique before she had her do hard pieces. That was frustrating for Kelly, but now that she is well into the process she understands the need to establish the right technical base so she can play hard things well as opposed to just play hard things.

The other thing that is happening at home, is that we have ordered a new computer for Christian for his birthday. We needed to get another one because the old one is just worn out. Christian invested a hundred dollars of his own money into the computer. We bought one toward the inexpensive end of the spectrum, but still very, very nice. It is a computer for both of the kids so they can do their school work on the way to lessons, the store, the YMCA, etc. Kelly pretty much just uses the laptop for reports as she checks her email and blog on the desktop computers at home. Christian uses it for his experiments and programming lessons. It came to the house yesterday, but no one was there to receive it, so he is suffering through another day of waiting. I have told him he cannot even open the box until he has finished all of his homeschool, which is very painful. It is also very necessary. The temptation is just too great.

May 21, 2004 – More yardwork
May 24, 2004 – Big weekend

How was that I have been able to survive so long with out this knowledge. Click here.

One of the most satisfying parts of the kind of work that I do is solving hard problems to get a product to market. It is satisfying, but can be very nerve racking when you know you are the bottle neck on a given project. If you are an engineer, that will happen. I am sure that is true in a lot of other fields, too. Right now, we are in the middle of a very difficult technical issue with a product on which I am working. I worked 16 hours on it and expect to work at least that much today if we do not get it resolved. Having been through this before, it is way less emotional than it was when I just started in the field. The problem is solvable and life will go on, even if this problem does not get solved. It is hard to think that way when in the middle of a problem and people’s hopes and desires are tied to the resolution of the problem.

The funny deal is that I actually enjoy the opportunity to work really hard on something for a period of time. If it extends out beyond a month, it is way less fun, but some of the best work in engineer, or probably anything else, gets done under the pressure of time and economic constraints. This is one of the reasons that test taking is probably a pretty good model for some parts of the real world. You have to be ready for something that is difficult at a specific time and place. You do not want to be under that kind of pressure all the time, but it surely feels good when you perform well under those circumstances.

Sorry for the short post today, but I have to get to work to try to fix a tough problem.

Update: One of my co-workers, Yuting, had an extra pink ipod cover. She wanted me to give it to Kelly for her ipod. Thanks Yuting!

May 18, 2004 – Lawn work and exercise
May 19, 2004 – Working in the yard

I have always loved the start of the school year and have written about it a number of times on this blog. It is good to know that others have the same trials and tribulations as us. Audrey and Ruthie wrote some great comments about how hard it is to get back on schedule after having spent the summer sleeping in, swimming, and playing. We had exactly the same problem at the start of the school year as the Gabharts. We had a hard and fast rule that none of the boxes of homeschool books and materials could be opened, nor could they be read–not even the back cover, nor could they even be touched until the school year started. Why did we have a rule about touching and/or read the books or their covers if the boxes were to remain sealed? Christian was very literally about everything and always looking for loopholes. Kelly just loved to read so much that she would use anything as an excuse to get her hands on the books. We worked hard on getting them to understand how the spirit of the law is just as important (if not more so) as the letter of the law. Still, better safe than sorry.

The corollary to the “no looking at the homeschool books until the school year starts” rule was the “you can only read as much as is in the lesson plan for those books that are part of the program” rule. If we did not have that rule, there would have been nothing to do the second month of the year but math, science, Spanish, and grammar.

There were also some comments on how to prepare for a CLEP test. I really did not have a great answer for that. Kelly has taken Freshman English Composition and the first of two U.S. History tests. We have a method she uses that she will explain in a blog post here. It works for her, but any ideas others might have will be appreciated. I think CLEP preparation is not a one size fits all kind of thing. I can see that preparation for the first two tests Kelly took required different approaches. I am not even sure that Kelly’s study methods will work well for Christian. It turned out that the history test was must more difficult than the composition test, but that might have been because Kelly had a better foundation in composition than history. On the other hand, because the history test required the rote memorization of a lot of facts, it might have just required more time. I will try to post my thoughts on how to prepare for the different tests they take as we go along. Again, any comments from anyone else who is going through the same process will be appreciated.

Special note: Lorena has started a Flickr account to which I have linked in the list on the left side of the blog. If you would like to be added to the list, send us an email, and we will invite you so you can view her photos.
Special note 2: Betty Blonde switches from color to black and white today. Kelly does not have time to do all her schoolwork if she draws Betty Blonde in color. She will do an occasional color comic when time permits.

May 14, 2008 – More yard and robot work
May 17, 2008 – An opportunity for Rigo

I drew a comic strip about Betty Blonde and blueberry muffins a few days ago. That comic strip was not drawn on some random whim. Oh no, no, no. That comic strip was based on my recent experiences with making the most scrumptious blueberry muffin ever.

About two weeks ago, I discovered this “Blueberry Cream Muffin” recipe on Taste of Home magazine’s marvelous website. I measured, mixed, and added several large spoonfuls of sour cream and sugar to the batter. Needless to say, the muffins came out moist, rich, and delightfully dangerous to Dad’s diet.

I thought they could use a little improvement though, so I chose a different recipe. This one was entitled “Nutmeg Blueberry Muffins”. Now there’s nothing wrong with a bit of nutmeg in a muffin, right? Right. Unfortunately, I didn’t follow the recipe correctly and added a half teaspoon of powdered nutmeg directly to the batter when I should have sprinkled a little on top of each muffin while it was baking. A whole half teaspoon of powdered nutmeg does not do wonders to baked goods.

I want a blueberry muffin akin to Panera’s Wild Blueberry muffin. Sweet and chock full of berries inside, and crunchy on top. I suppose my muffins are not destined to be a culinary masterpiece, but there is still a ray of hope! Third time’s the charm they say! Right?

Right.

This weekend looks like it is going to be a programming weekend. We have gotten a good start on school, but we have too many upcoming events (read expenses) to stray too far from home, so we have decided to just stick close to home for the whole weekend, go to the library, cook something interesting (Kelly and Christian, you be thinking about that), and just be together. I want to get Christian set up to start programming in C++. At the same time, I want to continue work on a couple of my programming projects. The most pressing project now is the one I am writing in python to help me manage Kelly’s Betty Blonde comic strip a little more automatically. In addition to that, I have need to get some code written to automatically read the data coming in from the Garmin GPS to the volcano computer. Both of them are pretty fun. I would like to take a long walk this weekend, too. I have started to plateau again on the diet thing which is not any fun at all. Still, when I hear those bagels calling my name, it is hard to resist, so my strategy this weekend is to keep as busy as possible, drink some of the great coffee Lorena makes for me and stay away from those evil, simple carbohydrates.

Last night, I sat with Lorena and showed her how to scan an image into our Linux computer from the HP Printer/Copier/Scanner using GIMP and XSane. It was a lot of fun. I am going to give her some more lessons on how to work with GIMP. We decided it would be great if I could help her to learn how to do some other stuff, too. We are paying a lot of attention to budgeting these days, so I think it might be a great thing for the entire family to spend some time learning OpenOffice.org calc. I had talked with Ruthie about this earlier and have decided it might be a good idea to walk through the excellent tutorials at LearnOpenOffice.org. We will probably start that this weekend, too.

Special note: Betty Blonde is going to black and white next week. I had mentioned this earlier, but the day has now come. The reason is that Kelly’s homeschool is taking too much time for her to be able to get everything done. Something had to be dropped. She is getting faster at drawing the comic and our hope is that she will be able to add a colored weekend strip after we are sure she has her schoolwork under control. Right now, there are now weekend strips.

May 12, 2004 – Flatland
May 12, 2004 – Working on the yard

There must be something in the water up there in Canada that turns conservative journalists into humorous, intelligent, writing machines. Or maybe it is just that they work really hard at it. Denyse O’Leary is joining Mark Steyn as one of our very favorite writers. She is prolific, funny, and a grandma to boot. I do not know how she finds all the stuff she finds, but it is interesting and written with such good humor that it is sometimes hard to tell that she is at war with the materialist left. Mindful Hack and Post-Darwinist are two of her blogs that we read. She is also a contributor at Uncommon Descent and she writes books.

I think she wrote this recent post on Mindful Hack with our little family in mind. We work very hard, sometimes successfully, at avoiding some of the pitfalls common to many homeschoolers. Some of us tend to believe our children are smarter than other children, but we think it is OK to believe that because we are so humble about it. It turns out that ability to perform well on those things that measure academic success are probably more attributable to hard work than to raw intelligence. Grandma was right all along, smart may help, but hard work and discipline are essential.

When I returned home from work last night, I read some to the kids in our book on worldviews, we ate dinner, and were getting ready to go to our Wednesday night bible study when I got a call from my boss. We are getting ready for the launch of our flagship product. My work is integral to the proper function of the machine. We are in the middle of that age old battle between marketing, engineering, and the bean counters. So, I did something I really hate to do. I sent Lorena and the kids on to the bible study, then went back into work. Many on the engineering team are very tired and maybe a little discouraged, but we made a big breakthrough on my part of the equipment last night. Our product is great. This is one of those good kinds of products that will make a real contribution to society if we execute our jobs well and the product works as planned. It is of general interest, so I will describe it in some detail along with a little bit about my contribution to it when it is released. As an exercise in the modeling of responsibility and the joy of work–I really do love my job–it was probably not a bad exercise to go into work last night, but I very much hate to miss meeting.

May 10, 2004 – Depoe Bay Photos
May 11, 2004 – Pinhole cameras

Today I must write a post about an article that I have read in the past week.

Tuesday before last, my beloved piano teacher gave me an inspirational article to read. She tends to be a bit feel-good, mushy at times, so I just put it in the inside of my piano notebook and forgot about it. Yesterday I remembered it just in time, and sped-read it on the way to my lesson. Mrs. B likes to quiz her students on such things, and I had to be prepared.

It was about Billy Mills, the Native American man who famously won the 10,000 Meter Run in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. It was really quite a nice article. Mr. Mills told about a time when his father took him fishing soon after the death of his mother. Mills was angry inside, and his dad knew it, so he told Mills that he needed to have a dream, or set a goal instead of keeping all that anger inside. He also told Mills that his creator gave him his life as a gift and the way that he lived his life was a gift back to his creator. Shortly thereafter, Mills’ father died, and he took to running. At first Mills wasn’t fast, but he really enjoyed the sport so he kept at it and got faster and faster. At one point in his life, he was considering suicide, but he remembered what his father had told him, and pushed on to achieve his goal. In 1964 he qualified for the U.S. Track and Field team and the rest is history.

Mrs. B asked me what I took away from the article. I told her I really liked what Mr. Mills’ dad said to him about dreams and our life being a gift back to our creator. In the end, I didn’t think that it was mushy at all. I thought it was truly inspirational.

I have written about Marvin Olasky, the editor of World Magazine before. Well, a few weeks ago, Kelly sent him an email telling him how much we enjoy reading his articles and little bit herself and her plans. Not only did he take the time to write a very nice personal email back to her, World published part of her letter in the Letters to the Editor section of their magazine. This is the second time Kelly has gotten a letter published there. We were all quite excited. Here it is in all its glory.

Rubix defies Lorena

I read something last night that I thought was quite profound. I do not know whether it is right or not, but I do know that it did me some good to hear it. I have been thinking about it ever since. In an article written by Karl Rove in the Wall Street Journal, Congressional Medal of Honor winner Bud Day told this story about when he and John McCain were in a Vietnamese prison camp together:

Today, Mr. Day, a very active 83, still vividly recalls Mr. McCain’s sermons. “He remembered the Episcopal liturgy,” Mr. Day says, “and sounded like a bona fide preacher.” One of Mr. McCain’s first sermons took as its text Luke 20:25 and Matthew 22:21, “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s.” Mr. McCain said he and his fellow prisoners shouldn’t ask God to free them, but to help them become the best people they could be while serving as POWs. It was Caesar who put them in prison and Caesar who would get them out. Their task was to act with honor.

It was kind of a Bridge Over the River Kwai mindset. I am sure that when one is a prisoner of war, the choice to live with honor is a difficult daily choice. It reminded me very much of Victor Frankl’s beliefs about choice and dignity that were an outgrowth of his horrific experience as a Nazi prisoner in World War II. Social slights, the tedium of day to day living, ungrateful bosses seem mighty trivial, especially when we use them as excuses to act badly. No one can take from us our freedom to choose dignity.

May 4, 2004 – Waiting…
May 5, 2004 – Her braces are off!!!