2015 Ford Mustang Preview

One of the secretaries at a school I used to work at has a brother who works for Ford Motor Company in Michigan.  Even after 8 years, knowing what a Ford fanatic I am, she still sends me any cool updates or previews she gets from her brother.

I got an email from her, with a picture, that simply said:

“First picture of much anticipated 2015 Mustang is now released.”

So, for you Ford enthusiasts, I’m passing on this information.

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Oh, and happy spring break for all the students and employees of Granite School District!  I know I’m going to enjoy it.

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Split Screen Explained

As you know, this picture was taken as a single shot, it looks this way without any photoshopping at all, except for the frame and copyright.

Here’s how it was taken.  I was up in Logan at a math conference, and the building we were in had a lot of mirrored glass.

When I stood right outside the door, at just the right spot looking in just the right direction, the glass was at a 45° angle and reflected the building to the right of me as if it were directly in front of me. 

The building on the left side of the picture is actually a reflection, the greenhouse on the right side is what was really right in front of me.

So, that’s the trick.  And like any good magic trick, it simply took framing the picture so that you couldn’t see any clues to what was really happening.

Split Screen

I was up in Logan this weekend at a Math conference and I took this picture.  I did no editing to it other than to add the frame and copyright.

White

My 1^st period students got hold of some of my small whiteboards and here are some of the works of art they came up with.

Nothing you could do about it.

We spent hours setting up the light cues and backing up the program, triple-checked the mikes, shored up the props and sets and patched and re-sewed any problems with the costumes.  But there’s one thing about doing a Junior High School play that no amount of planning is going to prevent.  If it’s going to happen, it will.  It’s caused by a force no one can control.

It was during the final performance tonight, in the scene where King Titan gets mad at Ariel for going up to the surface and interacting with humans.  In a deep baritone King Titan yells at Ariel “That is the last time you’re ever swimming up to the surface”.

Except, as will happen to 13 year old boys, his voice cracked when he said “surface”.

Unintended comedic moment.  Everyone laughed, but to his credit it didn’t phase him at all.  The play went on without missing a beat.

“Parting is such sweet sorrow.”  I’m beat, I’m glad it’s over.  At the same time, it was a lot of fun and it was nice to be a part of something so many people enjoyed.  We had 4 shows, not including the one for our students, and they were all sold out.

Now, I’m going to go sleep the sleep of the exhausted.  G’nite.

Irony.

The biology classes were doing a lab last week, and one of the teachers told their students to bring an extra shirt to wear so they wouldn’t have to walk around the rest of the day smelling like formaldehyde.  This is the shirt one of the students chose to wear for dissecting pigs:

I also saw this on iFunny sometime last week:

Which made me laugh because my brother and I stumbled upon it, and a bunch of other weird art, in a ghost town in Nevada.

And, finally, to prove that humans remain more alike than different through the generations, I found this on iFunny also:

Happy Pi Day

Pi in yer face day that is!

Ad-lib adolescent.

My school is putting on the play “Little Mermaid”.  My part involves setting up the lights, programming the cues into the light board and being there for all the plays (6 of them, not including 2 dress rehearsals) to help make sure everything goes smoothly.

Today we put the play on for our feeder elementary schools.  One entire elementary school showed up for the performance, as did groups from the other schools.

At the part where the prince and Ariel are having dinner and start to dance, we had a big snafu.  The music wouldn’t play.  The kid playing the prince decided to just start singing and dancing anyway, then stopped, looked offstage and commanded “Servants, how about a little music so I can dance with Ariel?”

He paused, just long enough, put his hands out in a questioning gesture and said “No?”

Two seconds later the music started and the play went on.  I don’t know if the elementary kids caught that this wasn’t a planned part of the play, but I was on the floor laughing.

Another moment.

I'm walking down the stairs and one of my students from last year comes up beside me. he says to me "You know, you taught me skills last year that I use every day."

"What skills do you mean?" I asked him.

"Well, you taught me math, but you also taught me how to shut up."

New iPad app.

This is my first attempt at posting to my blog with my new Blogger app. Here are a few this I found on another app - iFunny.

One of those moments…

Some people think I’m crazy because I voluntarily do lunch duty quite often.  I originally got in the habit when I taught at a school with a severely fractured faculty and I simply got tired of eating lunch in the middle of a battle zone.  Since then I have parlayed this habit into a whole bunch of perks, one of which is getting to know my students in a more relaxed atmosphere.

The other day one of my students from last year called me over to the table he and his friends were eating at to ask me a question.  I don’t remember the question, but after I answered it another student commented that she didn’t understand why she now had to learn how to measure angles in Radians, rather than just continuing to use the old 360° in a circle system.  I sat down and started to explain how 360 is an arbitrary number that someone just made up, but since the circumference of a circle is naturally 2πr, then (using a radius of 1) 2π is a natural measurement around a circle.

Details aside, this sparked a 10 minute conversation where the five of us discussed the benefits of a natural method of measuring angles versus the old random one.

There was not going to be a test on it.   They were free to get up and leave at any time, or even to ask me to leave.  Yet they were interested, engaged, curious and appreciative of my time.  And this wasn’t even your standard Math-nerd group, one of them is this year’s 9^th grade district wrestling champion.

Like the title says:  that was one of those moments.

Fun filled weekend.

It finally was warm enough to work in the garage, so I decided this was the weekend to get the hardtop hoist set up so I can single-handedly remove and replace the Jeep’s hardtop.

First, I had to get the Fords out of the garage, which turned out to be a major production.  Alphonse, the ‘78 Marquis, no trouble.  I got it out, took it down to the car was to get the winter’s grime off it and parked it out of the way without any problem.  Old Blue, the ‘69 LTD, wasn’t as cooperative.  It got stuck on the ice, which I found out was 5” thick in some spots.

This was Friday afternoon, right about dusk, and as it got darker and colder, and the melted ice started to freeze up again, I had to leave Old Blue sitting across the whole driveway overnight.  Fortunately, I had thought ahead and the Jeep was parked on the street and not blocked in the driveway.

Saturday afternoon, when it got warm again, after a lot of salting, chipping, digging and tire wear, I finally got Old Blue out, to the car wash and in it’s pre-determined spot out of the way.

The the real fun started.  I had to move all the stuff stored at the back of the garage on the north side into the south side.  Believe it or not, all that stuff fit, stacked about 3’ deep, along the back wall of half the garage.

Anyway, after 4 trips to Home Depot and most of the afternoon, I finally have the hoist all hooked up, and a beam in the middle of the garage to help support the weight.

Finis.  And I found some funny stuff while moving the crap from one side of the garage to the other.  Such as this letter from the Salt Lake Bureau of Air Pollution Control which sped up the replacing of the engine in my convertible LTD.  (Click to read)

I’m sure I’ll find a lot more interesting things as I go through everything this summer.

Finally, this optical illusion shirt that a student wore to school on Crazy Pattern Day.