Back Online

Ahh, I hate it when people just stop blogging. Their site just sits there with no updates. How rude!

I am hopefully back to blogging, and will try to get back to my old posting pace. Once I had not posted for a while, it was harder to go and post because of the guilt. It has been so long now that I don't even feel the need to post everything I missed. Clean slate, new beginning.

Not So Weird Science

I stumbled to an interesting wired video about chemistry sets today. Even when I was young I had a home chemistry set with some perhaps not so safe experiments. How sad that kids now cannot experience the same chemistry that kids have for decades before.

A whole new world

Electro^plankton directed me to this guy singing both parts of the Aladdin song. I deem it impressive.

Pictures from the Drive East

I finally uploaded some pictures from my drive from California to Missouri. We drove out of Redwood City to make stops at Tahoe, CA, Wendover, UT, Salt Lake City, UT, Arches National Park, Moab, UT, Grand Junction, CO, Boulder, CO, Denver, CO, Council Grove Lake, KS, and Manhattan, KS.

Have a joyful Thanksgiving everyone!

Schooling

I just stumbled upon this story about a parent and their experience with their 7th grade sons science class. The man was driven to take up home school teaching of science the next year. I am a little surprised at how long it took the man to actually find out why his son was getting a C-, but when he did find out it was because 80% of the grade was having an "organized" science notebook. It also seems clear that the teachers main goal is to prepare the students for the state wide standardized test. Well, you can get the whole story from his post.

I am very thankful that most of my teachers throughout my schooling experience were very good at what they did. The ones that were excellent and engaged me are very memorable. I would visit them after class, and be involved during class. I didn't realize then just how lucky I was. The ones that approached the poor teacher described here I grated under. Assignments that were silly and lessons that were insipid drove me nuts. In middle school and high school I never got any Cs, but I did get at least one D because I just couldn't stand the teacher and the pointlessness of the assignments.

I kind of dread the school system I will have to deal with as a parent. If nothing shakes up the current system, who knows what it will be like in the future.

Tetris Mania

Slip Sliding Away

My senior year in high school I did some volunteer work at the City Museum in St. Louis. They had a large slide from the second floor to the first. I enjoyed going down quite a bit, as did many of the visitors. Perhaps in the future there will be more of this. Judging my this link, perhaps it is not so far away.

Rickrolled

Following this link may annoy you.

Long Time, No Post

I haven't been in the mood for much blogging, partly because things are fairly busy.

A few weeks Daniel came up and visited for a few days. I took two days off of work and we headed up to San Francisco. We hiked about ten miles exploring the city. Then in the evening we met up with Ed and Kathy Wyss and their family for dinner in China Town.

The next day we visited Ocean Beach and Golden Gate Park before driving up to Muir Woods. I hadn't been up to see the coastal redwoods for a few years, and they are awe inspiring.

My last trip to LA went well, it was very busy. I stayed with Joe and Sue Klotzle. Joe and I walked down and along the beach during the day, and it was packed. Saturday evening we went to the Hollywood Bowl to see the LA philharmonic. Sunday afternoon the Aberles took me to The Museum of the American West in Griffith Park.

Who is Snape?

I found this fascinating (to Harry Potter fans) look at the character of Snape. It is written by one of my favorite authors, Orson Scott Card. All you Harry Potter fans out there do know that the new book is coming July 21, and we can finally have this story wrapped up. I won't be camping out for it, but Amazon is delivering it to me on the day of.

One of my favorite passages from the essay is, "As for Harry dying in the process of killing Voldemort -- well, she could do that, but she won't enjoy going through the rest of her life without a single literate person ever speaking to her again."

On a totally unrelated note I found this article about Palestinian children's television programming. I have attempted to form a post about it, but have failed.

Perspective

Now, if I could only get something like this in my apartment.

American, Canceled

I am getting pretty fed up with American Airlines. Yesterday, Dad was supposed to fly out from St. Louis to San Francisco. When he arrived at the airport they informed him that the flight had been canceled. There was no call to him beforehand that this would happen. The earliest they offered to get him out was tonight. So he missed one of the four days he is going to have with his newest grandson and west coast family.

Earlier this year as Mom, Dad, and I were flying back to San Francisco from Maui through Los Angeles we had a similar problem. We flew the red eye to LA and had an two hour layover. As we were sitting there at the gate we saw on the monitor that the gate had changed. Then in a few minutes the flight was canceled. They made no announcement over the speaker, just waited for the mob of angry people to go to the other gate. Of course everyone still wants to get to SFO, but there are no other American flights that can hold that many people. After a very tense few hours we did get them to put us on a Frontier flight from another terminal, that we barley had enough time to get to, and go through security. Of course our bags did not make it with us.

It is bad enough the way they cancel flights with no warning, and no replacement flight. But what really gets my goat is the contempt with which they treat those inconvenienced. They act surprised that you still want to travel to the same destination. Of course there are not enough seats on other flights to carry a full plane load of people. They make no attempt to contact those whose flight no longer exists.

I don't have these problems with Southwest, or any other airline I use. I cannot remember what else I was angry about, but in LA I recounted a litany of previous problems.

I am to the point that I will spend quite a bit more on other airlines to avoid American Airlines.

Noah

Noah Clayton Schrenk. Date: 06-23-2007. Weight: 7# 8 oz. Length: 19.0". Color Hair: Black. Status: Healthy.

Upcoming Family

Mom is flying in to the Bay tomorrow morning, and Kathy should be checking into the hospital in the evening. Hopefully this weekend there will be a new Schrenk.

Global Warming

My brother, Peter, sent this link out to some of the family and I think it is pretty clever. It is one of those ideas that after you hear it think, "that is so obvious, why didn't I think of that." The main idea is to tie carbon emissions taxes to an agreed upon measure of global warming. That way if warming happens, the tax goes up, otherwise the tax goes down. Seems very reasonable.

Fire Alarm

Having never lived in a large building before, I am experiencing my first late night fire alarm. The ringing is starting to get on my nerves. Overall it is about ten times worse then random car alarms going off late at night.

Wheelchair + Semi = ?

It could have been a tragic story, but instead the unexpected happened. No one was hurt. And this is the BBC article, so lorry = semi.

"He refused to believe there was a man in a wheelchair stuck to the front of his truck until he saw it for himself, police said."

Bocking

So bocking looks like it could be quite exciting. This video is mostly jumps, but it is also possible to run at a good clip with these. After 4:50 there is some cursing, but this is one of the better videos I could find. After that they just seem to blather, so there is really no reason to finish the video.

Busy Weekend

This has been a good weekend up in the Bay Area. Yesterday I spent most of the day scoping out windsurfing locations, and shopping for windsurfing gear. I found a store up near SFO that sells winter and summer board sports. Comparing the size of the windsurf gear to the kitesurfing stuff was almost enough to make me switch sports. For windsurfing you need a fairly large board, mast, boom, and sail. All of this together is quite a lot of volume. They sell the kites in a backpack, and the boards are small enough to fit easily into a trunk. I did end up buying a package including a Hifly Mambo board and a 6.3 m² X-Ride sail.

This morning I was invited to the annual Shoreline service of the Bay Area Christian Church down in Mountain View. The service ran from 11-1 and was interesting. It seems that every year this church rents out the Shoreline Amphitheater and has a big service. Afterward many people have their picnic lunches, listen to music, and fellowship.

This afternoon I carted my gear up to Foster City to test out my new board and rig. There was some sort of big carnival going on in the park next to where I windsurf, and the street was closed off. I eventually found another way around. It took me a little while, and some help to get my gear ready for the water, but when I did it was great. This is the biggest sail I have yet used, and the board is about as small as I have tried before, but for the first hour and a half there was enough wind to really get going. I am pumped, and will be looking forward to trying out new areas now that I am not tied to the rental location. My arms are very tired, and I want to get and learn how to use a harness soon. I will probably pick up a used sail to try that out on, because I will be pretty sad if I fall through my new sail.

I Can See My House From Here.

Well, not really. But I can see Times Square, Coors Field, The Monte Carlo, Orange Bowl Stadium, the Palace of Fine Arts, and San Francisco from the Golden Gate Bridge. This new Google maps "street view" feature is impressive. As this service gets rolled out more it will make it a bit easier to find that address that you have never been to. Although, I have to say, I couldn't really find anything to see in Miami from the car.

I look forward to my virtual vacations through the internet with this. And when the Google van drives by, be sure to smile.