Crunch Time

The countdown has started and it's crunch time.

Today is Friday and the last day for school is next Wednesday. Today is our "No Referral" Incentive party. Let me tell you, there were some unhappy campers yesterday when they found out they couldn't go to the park and skating because of discipline referrals. This will be a first for me. I have never taken a class full of Kindergartners skating. I suppose it will be easier than taking Pre-Kindergartners skating; after all, Kindergartners are bigger.

Next Monday we begin practicing for our Awards/Graduation. The ceremony will be on Tuesday morning. Afterwards, we will have a reception in our classrooms.

Then the day we have been working towards all year long arrives. Wednesday, June 3, last day of school and it's an Early Release day at that. The students dismiss at 12:00 and get to take their report cards and other stuff home and then start summer vacation.

Alas, that is not the end for me though. The staff still has end of year stuff to finish and than a workday on Thursday. Since our campus will be used for summer school and then summer training we all have to make sure our rooms are in order and all supplies are secured.

Fortunately I do not change classrooms this year. I changed last year and it was a major pain. I taught Pre-K last year. Since the district took Pre-K off several campuses this year I transferred to Kindergarten. So my STUFF was moved into another Pre-K classroom whose former occupant took a job in a nearby district. This teacher left behind a lot of STUFF. I also took the place of another Kindergarten teacher who got married and moved away. Her STUFF was also moved to my new room. I spent 2 weeks last summer before school started sorting through all of this STUFF and making sense of it. So again I say, "Fortunately I do not change classrooms this year."

P.S. I sat and made Graduation Tassels for my class last night. Oh the joys of Kindergarten.© 2008 Barry T Horst


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Get 'er Done! Yeah Right!

Since we got the DVR with our cable I have found that I started to schedule my favorite shows to record and then watch them in my spare time. I also do this with new shows so I can watch them later. This is good. Especially if you need to waste your time and not be very productive.

Well, I have now found a newer and much better way to waste time and be even less productive. (Chris is not happy about this.) I have now found online streaming videos. No not YouTube or the like. This is actual TV stations with movies and cartoons and such.

Some of the links I have found are to: Beeline TV . At Beeline you can choose from bajillions of stations from around the world. Well, actually 238 stations today. There is also StreamKick TV that has a lot of links to stations to watch. Then there is FreeTube. If you go to FreeTube and click on the Entertainment tab on the left sidebar and scroll down a bit you can find some good cartoon stations streaming classic cartoons from the 40's and 50's.

Perhaps my favorite site is America Free TV. At America Free TV the have 15 channels streaming various types of entertainment. All of it clean, from what I can tell. Their cartoon channel plays a lot of Merrie Melodies and Popeye. I've seen Three Stooges on one of the movie channels and I watched "Meet John Doe" last night.

A couple of other sites worth going to are In2TV-AOL Videos, TV4U, Entertainment Magazine On-Line, and for classic commercials try Classic TV Ads. All of this is available 24 hours a day which means I can waste the entire day.

Each of these sites use one or more viewers. Some use Windows Media, Apple Quicktime, or some other embedded viewers. Depending upon the viewer and the web-site you may or may not be able to watch the program full screen. And, you may or may not be able to watch without commercials. Some have you watch an ad at the beginning, end or at various spots in the program. And then others make you watch on a small screen and they keep advertising up on the page around the viewer. None of this matters to me. I can tune out the advertising if there is a show I really want to watch.

In many cases much of what I find online is better that what I get off network television. Let's face it, most network programs stink. I'll take most programming from 50 years ago anyday. With one exception. I love to watch shows about how things are made. Enter How It's Made and other shows that are similar. That's OK. I have them covered also with Cool Stuff Being Made.

Now I need to get a larger monitor and better sound and I can just pitch my 42 inch LCD HDTV I bought recently. Won't Chris be excited???

© 2008 Barry T Horst


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WOW, What A Day!

Wow, what a day. It is May in Waco, Texas. That generally means hot and humid. Today was no exception. At least most of the day was no exception.

When I left for work this morning at 6:30 the weather forecast called for a high in the mid 90's and a small chance of rain. Before lunch time it was cloudy and warm. After lunch I took my class out for recess. It was getting hot at 11:30 AM. The kids loved it though. They got to run and play and watch a stray dog wander around the street beside the school. When it was time to go in we definitely had to stop at the water fountain before going to music. By early afternoon the sun came out and it was getting hotter.

At dismissal it was sunny and around 93 degrees. While at our dismissal spot my students were complaining about the sun and the heat. They wanted to go in the shade. By 3:10 PM I had 4 students left and the sky began to cloud up and we started to get a slight breeze from the east. Then the wind picked up out of the east and it was very cool. By 3:15 PM the temperature had dropped about 25 degrees to 68 degrees. Can you say "outflow boundary"? One of my students was actually complaining about being cold when his mom picked him up.

Once my students were picked up, I went in and worked in my room. By 4:00 PM I was leaving and it was beginning to pour. And the thunder was amazing. I wish I could have recorded it and place it hear for you to hear.

Since I couldn't record it I have placed a sound board from soundboard.com below. Listen to Track 1. that is the closest to what I heard.

I raced the rain all the way home. By the time I got home there was a school bus stopped in front of the house and it was raining so hard I had to wait in the carport for the rain to slacken. While waiting the school bus started to back up. How odd! When I finally got in Chris asked me if I saw the tree across the road in front of the house. Now I know why the bus was backing up, the road was blocked by a tree that was blown down by the wind.

Wow, what a day!

© 2008 Barry T Horst

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Is That Really Where I Used To Live?

I was looking at different things on the Internet yesterday. As it so often happens, I will be on one web page and then I will see a link that looks interesting. So I click on it and go to the page to check it out.

Well that happened yesterday. I was on giveawayoftheday.com and saw a link for Rotten Neighbors. I thought, "Hmmmmm! That looks interesting." So I clicked on it and away I went. When I landed on the site I found out that it is a site that allows people to 1. Join; 2. Submit their beefs about neighbors or neighborhoods; 3. Allows members to comment and post on others posts; 4. Look for the best neighborhoods (I suppose the ones that no one has posted anything about.); 5. View a Google map of the offending house-neighbor-neighborhood.

"Wow!", I thought. I immediately wondered about the site and wondered about oversight and what have you. After reading about a few neighbors I kinda got the impression that if anyone wanted to say anything about anyone else they could on this site. Now understand, I didn't join so therefore I do not now about their TOS (Terms of Service) or other legal mumbo-jumbo. It just didn't look like the kind of place that you would have everyone being, shall we say, trustworthy. I mean I didn't get the impression that all of those posting subscribed to the Dragnet Credo, "Just the facts ma'am!"

Then I thought to myself about the recent news story about Waco being the 5th worst place to raise a family. The article is in Best Life Magazine. I've never heard of this magazine before.

Does Waco have a problem? Do they have a lot of rotten neighbors? So I looked. All I found was one entry. All the entry said was, "Loud music!" I looked at the map and what do you think I saw? No not our house. I saw the neighborhood I grew up in over 40 years ago. We lived there until we moved in 1968. Wow.

I stayed on the site and looked a little more and was able to find a few more reports that were not on the first list I looked at. One nice thing I did find on the website was that they show the areas in neighborhoods where convicted sex offenders live. In Texas you can also find this information on the Texas Department of Public Safety site.

© 2008 Barry T Horst


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Picture Day May 26, 2008-Memorial Day

2008 Memorial Day Poster. (Poster created by Virginia Reyes; U.S. Air Force photo/Vance Janes)

030529-N-9500T-003 Seattle, Wash. (May 29, 2003) -- Photographed from a UH-3 “Sea King” helicopter assigned to Naval Air Station Whidbey Island Search and Rescue team, the famous Seattle, Space Needle built for the 1962 Seattle World's Fair, stands 620 feet tall with revolving restaurants and a 360 degree observation deck, providing a fabulous view of Puget Sound, Mount Rainier, the Cascade and Olympic mountain ranges and, of course, the beautiful city of Seattle. Recently the top was repainted in a red, white and blue stars and strips as a tribute for this years Memorial Day celebrations. U.S. Navy photo by Photographer's Mate 2nd Class Scott Taylor. (RELEASED)

Honoring those who serve and protect:
Airmen watch the flag lowered to half-staff during a special Memorial Day retreat May 15 at Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D. (U.S. Air Force photo/Senior Airman Marc I. Lane)

Arlington 'Flags In' tribute begins Memorial Day commemoration
Service members place 265,000 miniature flags at every grave at Arlington National Cemetery during Flags In. The Flags In tradition dates back to 1948 and begins the annual Memorial Day tribute. (U.S. Army photo/Adam Skoczylas)

A final tribute
At a base in Southwest Asia, Tech. Sgt. William Allen pays his respect to those who have given the ultimate sacrifice. (U.S. Air Force photo/Senior Airman Travis Acevedo)

U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Stephen Kuhne places the first flag in front of the Tomb of the Unknowns during the "Flags In" tribute at Arlington National Cemetery, Va., May 22, 2008. Kuhne is the commander of the relief for the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment, "The Old Guard."Defense Dept. photo by Sebastian J. Sciotti Jr

© 2008 Barry T Horst


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Just What Is Normal?

I was checking a few things out on the Internet recently. I read something interesting that I have never heard mentioned in the main stream media. So, let's get started.

He did Greenland get its name? According to StraightDope.com, Erik the Red and his father Thorvald were exiled from "Viking Land" for murder. They both went to Iceland. After Erik's father died, Erik apparently continued in the family business of "life cessation activities." He was now sent to a much larger island nearby. After Erik's hiatus expired he decided that his new island home would be a dandy place for his Viking playmates to call home. So, good old Erik named the island Greenland in hopes of luring many Viking settlers from Iceland to his new settlement. Apparently Greenland really was green during this time period.

Again, why was it called Greenland? According to Jared M. Diamond, in the book Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed, (2006) Harmondsworth [Eng.]: Penguin. ISBN 0-14-303655-6 Data from ice cores indicate that from AD 800 to 1300 the regions around the fjords of southern Greenland experienced a relatively mild climate, with temperatures similar to today. Trees and herbaceous plants grew there, and the climate initially allowed farming of livestock as in Norway. HMMMMM!!!!! After about 500 years the settlement began to vanish. The condition of human bones from this period indicates the Norse population was malnourished. Main reasons appeared to have been soil erosion due to destruction of the natural vegetation for farming, turf, and wood by the Norse, a decline in temperatures during the Little Ice Age, and armed conflicts with the Inuit.

So that tells me that if there really is Global Warming, then the world is really going back to the way it was and that perhaps The Little Ice Age was the anomaly. And that the earth's climate really is a vast system that is constantly changing and that perhaps "normal" is really "changing" and that man is terribly arrogant to assume that they can truly affect the climate long term for good or bad.

NOTE: The portion in Italics was surreptitiously borrowed from Wikipedia. Thank You Wikipedia for its use in today's blog.Now, for a small break from the total meltdown of the earth as we know it:

© 2008 Barry T Horst


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