It's Over, Sort of

The latest round of TAKS tests are over. YES!!!

It has been quite a week for us at school. In order to maintain a quiet, orderly environment for the older students to take their test, at our campus we did not have "specials" or recess on testing days. "Specials" are better known as Music and PE. Testing days this week were Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Rather than go to "specials" the counselor and aides kept the students in the classrooms to give the teachers a break. (At least they did it for Kindergarten.) Do you know what it is like to keep 18 5 and 6 year old's in the classroom all day with no break to run off energy or play? It's not easy but we did it. The kids made it through OK but you could tell that it was beginning to wear on them, just as it was on the teachers.

The magic time came and it was announced that all testing had been completed. HALLELUJAH!! We immediately went outside to celebrate and run, and celebrate, and play, and celebrate, and shout. We were tired of being quiet. Goodness, that is hard to do when you are 5 and 6 years old and full of energy.

With all the excitement of TAKS testing being over we do have to come back to earth. It seems that our campus has a special visit today. It is from the Texas Institute for Measurement, Evaluation, and Statistics (TIMES at the University of Houston). This is the group that comes to each Texas Reading First campus and collects data related to implementation of the Texas Reading First Initiative (TRFI). Just the thing we need the day after 3 days of TAKS testing. We will make it through though. We always do.Now we start the Texas Primary Reading Inventory (TPRI). It's all never ending.

© 2008 Barry T Horst

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When Spell Check Doesn't Work

It's amazing the things you find when you're not looking for it. I was scanning some of my picture files and lo and behold I came across the image of an e-mail that I saved some months ago. Actually the United States Mint sent this out as a mass e-mailing in August 2007. As I was reading the e-mail I had a word jump out at me. See if it does the same for you.The same type of thing popped off the page for me when I was preparing for our Kindergarten field trip to the zoo a couple of weeks ago. As some of you may know, we went to the Cameron Park Zoo. It is in Cameron Park which is just a few blocks away from our school. I was doing some research at the zoo web-site on their "General Information" page. If you go down to the section of the page titled "The Weather Factor" and then go to the sub-heading "Finally-....". In the heading the word "lightning" is misspelled. It is incorrectly spelled "lightening". The same misspelling is repeated in the text of the paragraph. Apparently the zoo puts the animals away when there is a storm threatening to cause them "to lose weight or become lighter in color".

Hmmmm!

Again, I guess this affliction that I have is all due to having been in education for 20+ years.

Did you find the problem in the US Mint e-mail? It is the word "configuration".

© 2008 Barry T Horst


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Please visit the Giveaway of the Day at the bottom of the page for free software downloads daily.

Songs and the Sound of Splat!

I spent most of last night working with and learning the eccentricities of the new program. The program is Sound Editor Deluxe version 3.9. After many trial and error (mostly errors) attempts I was able to get 2 mp3's recorded and then uploaded to my phone.

I know that it sounds like that is probably not much to show for the evening, but I was also trying to watch American Idol and then my daughter started playing her Wii on our TV. She likes the big screen for her gaming enjoyment. She is engrossed in the latest Lara Croft-Tomb Raider game. She has the part of falling off the ledges and splatting on the floor down pretty good from what I saw.

Check out my "Easily Amused" link on the bottom of the page. Julie called me at school this afternoon and told me about this web-site. A couple in Cleveland, Ohio put on a display every year at Easter by taking brightly colored egg shells and making a themed display. This year the theme was "Zoo's Who" . However, due to weather conditions the display was scaled back and "Zoo'z Who" has been rescheduled for 2009. They were supposed to use 42,650 egg shells for the original but ended up using 6,223. It is still awesome and they have been doing it for 50 years. Check out CabanOnline.com for a look at Eggshell Land 2007.

Once again, the link is on the bottom of the page in the "Easily Amused" section.

Check it out. I know you will enjoy it!© 2008 Barry T Horst This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Please visit the Giveaway of the Day at the bottom of the page for free software downloads daily.

Meet Some of My Old Friends

I am trying a new image hosting service so this particular blog is intended to test this service. That being said, I was wading through some pictures last night. I came across some old friends that I dearly miss. The pictures were taken in 2003 and 2004. I hope you enjoy them. i know they brought back many pleasant memories for me.

These are the Easter ducks we got in 2003 when we lived in De Leon. We went to the Tractor Supply in Stephenville and picked them out. Then we went to Wal-Mart and bought a pool for them. The yellow duckling was Ferdy, the brown duckling was Ducky. I can't remember the black ducklings name.

This another shot from a low angle that shows the world from their vantage point.

This is Molly, the Black Lab. She loved the water, anywhere and anytime she was in it. As you can see she chased the ducks out so she could be in. That is Ferdy and Ducky in the corner. As Ferdy grew up her yellow down gave way to beautiful white feathers.

Molly and Ferdy came to be great friends. Molly would follow Ferdy around the yard. Ferdy was always vocal whenever Molly got in the way.

In the late winter or early spring of 2004 it snowed. By this time Ferdy was the only duck left. I remember that I had to go out and break the ice in Ferdy's pool so she could get in and sit in the water awhile. She was quite hard to keep up with whenever it snowed. She tended to blend in and hide with ease.

It seemed that creatures from the back pasture dispatched the other ducks. Ferdy was a die hard though, she weathered many scrapes. Unfortunately, Molly was up in years and both passed away within a year and a half of moving back to Waco.

I miss them both and still ponder the possibility of getting a new Black Lab and more ducks in the future. But that will have to wait until we get a fence. After all, we don't want a repeat of what happened to the others.

© 2008 Barry T Horst This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Please visit the Giveaway of the Day at the bottom of the page for free software downloads daily.

Picture Monday, April 28, 2008

Searching through the photographs have turned up many photos of pets long gone. Here are a few.

This is a picture of my Dad's dog Maita and her pups. This was taken at his parents house in Robinson sometime in the late 40's or early 50's.

The picture on the left is a picture of our Maita that we got in the 60's. She was a red Dachshund. The picture on the right is of some of the kittens that we had back in the 60's. This may be the group that I named after the Beatles. That's right John, Paul, George, and Ringo.

This is a picture of Chris' dog Katrinka taking a rest from a long day of chasing cats and various other small creatures. Chris had Katrinka when we were married and Katrinka was an old lady by this time.

Not a pet from times past but a good picture. This is our Trinky taking a snooze after a long, tiring day of chasing small creatures. It must run in the family.

© 2008 Barry T Horst

This work is licensed under aCreative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Please visit the Giveaway of the Day at the bottom of the page for free software downloads daily.
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Send Me a Tree. You Can Grow Another!

In this "New Day & Age" we are all supposed to be more environmentally responsible, stewards of our world and such. It would be so much easier if I didn't get so much junk mail. I go to the mailbox, or more precisely, Chris goes to the mailbox because I'm at work. She leaves it for me on the desk and I get home to go through it.

I get bills. I can do without them but I understand why I get them.

I get ads. Some good, most are a waste of paper. Sometimes I get a circular that has that promising look of "good stuff'. then I open it and what falls out? The ad to order checks, the ad for Senior Citizens to get prescriptions cheap, the ad for the little motorized chairs, the ad to buy a burial plot. Wait a minute. Am I getting that old now?

Please say all you get this stuff too!

Anyway, I have to stuff my trashcan with it. Then I open the other mail. there's ads in there too. I throw 75% of the contents away before I find the bill. Then the magazines stick all the little cards and inserts in the magazines. I spend another 5 minutes having to rip this stuff out. And let me tell, it seems that Reader's Digest is the worst one. I hate to pick up a magazine and try to look at it with all that inside.

Here is where I give a marriage hint. If you can't live with all the inserts and cards in a magazine make sure you tear all of it out BEFORE bedtime. I cannot tell the number of times I have been "stared at" for tending to this little job of mine prior to laying down while Chris is trying to sleep. Not good!All of this waste doesn't include all the store circulars and other stuff that I get and wonder,"Why did I get this??? I don't $5000 for a mattress!" or "Why did I get a catalog for industrial tools" I don't even use the Craftsmen hand tools I have."

Then there are credit card offers. I must get 10 of them each week, not to mention the ones for my wife and daughter, and offers for business credit cards. If I took advantage of every offer I would only get more paper in the mail to throw away.

And that is the point of all of this verbiage. I have to throw away too much paper. I must have a good size tree flow through the house here every week. This is crazy. Not because someone killed a tree. We can grow more trees. It all the extra work that I have to do, sorting, opening, looking, tearing, shredding, throwing, dumping, carrying. You get the idea. But if the quit this I suppose that this would put many people out of a job; ad people, designers, delivery people, mail delivery, drivers, etc.

You know, I would hate to be the cause of this country going into a recession and possibly millions losing their livelihoods, homes, nice cars, and whatever else is important to them. Go ahead, bring that mail on and I'll by golly keep the trash man busy.

© 2008 Barry T Horst This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Please visit the Giveaway of the Day at the bottom of the page for free software downloads daily.