Cracks

It started with the cracks in the driveway.  I was thinking about the theme for this week, “branched”, trying to avoid trees, and that was the first thing I thought of.  But you can only get so many pictures of cracks in the cement, and none of them struck me as particularly awesome, so I went around the house looking for more cracks.  Happily, I didn’t find many.  Really happily, none of the ones I did find were in the foundation.  So I’m down in the basement I so cleverly describe as “the dungeon”, not finding many cracks, but I did find many things that branched out.  Electrical.  Phone.  Plumbing.  So, here’s the branches of my house.

Cracks in my driveway.  Looking at the cracks from a different perspective.  More cracks in the driveway.  No doubt I need to get a new driveway, needed it since I moved in 17 years ago, but I’m not ready for that project yet.Old and the new.  The duct work for my heater.  Some of it is new, some of it is from the original furnace installed sometime in the 30’s.  (It worked up until I put in the new one about 5 years ago.)  Some of the old wiring.  Don’t worry, there is no longer any electricity flowing through this stuff. Water pipes.  Since the house was built before indoor plumbing and electricity were common in homes, the dungeon is a hodgepodge of wires and pipes. This, at one point, routed the phone lines in the house.  And finally, the sewer pipes.  I thought about cleaning off the cobwebs and dust, but decided against it.

So there you go, a quick tour through the bowels of my house.  Thanks for coming, and be sure to tell your friends.

Conneckshuns-r-me

As Math teachers we’re encouraged to make connections between the math we teach and real life.  This is good.

But not always.  As Math teachers we really should make sure we understand the connections we are making.  As shown in this picture from failblog.org (sent to me by Mr. Gearhead). So, the math is right but the interpretation is wrong.  Proportionally speaking, if 2 of something takes 2 minutes then 3 of that same thing takes 15 minutes.

What the student realized, and the teacher didn’t, is that to saw a board into two pieces, it takes one cut.  To saw a board into three pieces it takes only two cuts.  So, 1 cut = 10 minutes, 2 cuts = 20 minutes.  The student is correct.

Taking it one step further (or back) according to the teacher’s math, it would take 5 minutes to not cut a board at all (1 piece).

Some people may think “Stupid teacher doesn’t even know their own subject.”  But they do know math, they just are clueless when it comes to carpentry.

I can only hope the student took the time to explain their thinking to the teacher, and that the teacher was willing to accept and admit their mistake.

One of these things is not like the others,

One of these things just doesn’t belong.

I was cruising through the library, going from the office to my classroom, because that’s the way to get there in the maze of a school I work at.  I glanced at the magazine rack and noticed one that just seemed out of place in a middle school library.  I laughed, pointed it out to the secretary and we laughed together.

So, can you tell me what seems out of place here: Click on the picture if you need (or just want) to see a larger version.

The answer will come in a later post.

Sunday Funday

Winter is in the air.  At least it is supposed to be tomorrow.  You can feel it a little tonight, but according to the weather people (who are correct 87.6% of the time – hahahahaha) we are going to from record highs to 5 to 10 degrees (F) below average.  Last week the overnight lows were in the mid 60’s, the highs this week will be in the high 60’s.

So, it’s time to winterize the house.  Close up the swamp cooler, shut all the windows and, ta-da, insulate the back porch.  That’s been my plan for the last 2 winters, but thanks to Newton’s First Law of Motion (”An object at rest stays at rest … unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.”), I just got to it today.  I had all the supplies, it wasn’t that.  I had all the tools, t’weren’t that either.  I do think the unbalanced force that acted on me was the new back door I installed this summer.  Even though it’s solid wood, it’s really an inside door which I decided would work fine since I was planning on insulating the porch outside it. 

So this morning I got out all the supplies and tools and spent a couple hours playing with black tar paper and pink R13 fiberglass insulation.  It actually went pretty smoothly, I think I only swore a half a dozen times.  I don’t think I broke skin at all, but I did get a bit of that expanding foam insulation you spray into the cracks on my hands.  If you’ve worked with that stuff, you know that it sticks to things real goodly.  I still have some on my hands, even after scrubbing them with brillo.

Anyway, it went up quite easily, and looks good.  I’m going to put cedar over it eventually, so the room won’t always look as unfinished as it does in the pictures.

The walls were originally like this, just 2x4 frame with 3/8” thick cedar planks nailed to the side.  Not much of a barrier to the weather, especially after the wood dried and shrank. The first step was to put up the tar paper.  That would protect the insulation from the weather. The 2x4 frame was not as wide as the insulation, so it kind of bulges out right now, but when I put up the cedar planks inside, they will hold the insulation in nicely.Maybe some unbalanced force will get me going to put up the inside cedar next weekend.  Maybe.

Hey! There’s a car show at Dan’s Food.

As I’m coming home from a friend’s in West Valley, my friend from my first years of teaching, Adele, gives me a call.  She leaves a message that there is a car show going on in the parking lot at the Olympus Hills Mall.  I, of course, have my camera on me and, of course, must go see the cars.  There were some ( a lot of ) beautiful cars there.

Some looked like they were angry Some looked like they were depressed Some looked like, well, we’re not really sure what the designers were thinking, but according to my mother, there were rumors. And finally, an example of how companies had their own styling cues that were evident in both the top of the line and the more modest of their cars.  The yellow car is a 50’s era Thunderbird.  The blue and white car is a same era Ford Fairlane.

There were a lot of 50’s cars up there, with a few 60’s, 70’s and some older ones in the mix.  Looking over the 50’s cars, kneeling down to get pictures of the details, I came to realize something about that era.  Mind you, I love my 70’s cars.  The feel as they drive down the road, the boxy cut of the lines are something I just can’t live without.  But where my 70’s cars were designed, the 50’s cars were truly sculpted.  Take a look at the pictures I took this afternoon and see if you don’t agree.

View Full Album

Sorry I didn’t make note of the make, model and year for the pictures, I didn’t think about writing it all down and I’m not that knowledgeable when it comes to the 50’s cars.  Still, I hope you like a few of them.

1000 kids, 10 blocks (and back) in 1 hour. (or “Herding Cattle, Jr. High Style)

Fire drills are a part of life in a school.  Every school I’ve been at has been required to do several every year.  Yesterday was the first time I’ve ever been involved in a complete evacuation drill.  Where we get the entire student body and staff across the street to the amphitheater in the middle of the Community College.

At lunch afterwards, the usual suspect did a fair amount of bitching about how things went.  (Soooprise, sooooprise!)  From my perspective, having never experienced this before, things went incredibly well.  Nobody got hit crossing Redwood Road, the kids pretty much stayed on the sidewalks and did little, if no, damage to the college’s grass and other plantings.  And after the head count at the college, only one (that’s 1) student was unaccounted for, and he was found quickly when the principal called for him over the P.A. system.

As we were getting everyone seated, about a third of the students started an impromptu round of “Happy Birthday” for two teachers.  First it was for Mr.B (TV weatherman gone teacher) and the second round was for me.  I spent the rest of the day saying “Thank you, but it’s not my birthday today” to students and staff alike.  Monday I have to thank C, one of my students, for that.  (The kind of student that you have to like despite his behavior).

All in all, an interesting experience.  Of course I brought my camera, and of course I have some pictures for you all, including another addition to the “Parallel” assignment from Carmi.  Here they are, with captions even. (Can you call them captions if they are above the picture?)

In the beginning, heading along the small street in front of the school towards Redwood Road.The student body filling up the amphitheater at the community college.This is one of the two pairs of brother-sister teachers we have at our school.  She saw me with my camera and asked “Catch me trying to kiss my brother.”  I did.Our half-time intern Vice Principal.  With all the fluorescent green vests, walkie-talkies and red flags, it looked like some sort of police raid.  Or maybe a rock concert. One of the students was completely unfazed by the ruckus going on around him, lost in what must be a captivating book.  The English teacher you saw kissing her brother pointed this out to me, I think she wants to use the picture to motivate more students to read. Before heading back to the school, the Principal had the students do a few rounds of “The Wave” The red flag, signaling that all is clear and it’s time to head back to the school.The people in the green vests are our staff members, the people in the orange vests are from the Community College.  Here’s my “Parallels” picture.  The fountain was turned off when we came to the college, but, as you can see, was on for our trek back to the school.  The whole scene just jumped out at me as ‘parallel’. Information by denial.  It doesn’t tell you what it is, but defines itself by what it is not.   Crossing against the light.  Of course, having 3 police cars blocking traffic made it a lot safer than if we had just marched a slew of kids across the road. At least we didn’t back up traffic too far. Yeah, tell that to these people who were late for work.   About a third of the students took the pedestrian bridge over to the college.  It would have caused too much of a bottleneck to bring the entire student body across this way, which is why most had to go across the road.

Fun times at Ridgemont High!

September Statistics

Top Foreign Countries
	Day	Week	Month
#1	U.K.	Canada	Canada
#2	Canada	Japan	Russia
#3	Germany	Taiwan	Netherlands
#4	Japan	Russia	Luxembourg
#5	Russia	Australia	Brazil
Top Posts
Day	If it's a mine shaft, can you still call it speelu... Horrific Crash Seriously, Cop cars do not have comfortable back s...
Week	WAL-MARTIANS! Run for your life…. My buddy Max Hall My buddy Max Hall, revisited.
Month	WAL-MARTIANS! Run for your life…. My buddy Max Hall Of Kaffeeklatsches and JNCO jeans...