CNN Student News

We (Ms. Carrie and I) have been using CNN Student News every morning with our students.

It has been a very worthwhile endeavor. The students seem to retain a good bit of the information. Most of the students can name the major candidates in the primaries. They all seem to grasp where Iraq and Chad are on the world map. They may be getting smarter. Scary.

To help check for retention, each daily news cast comes with a ten question news quiz. Friday's quiz tests knowledge for news from the entire week. Most students get the answers correct. Sometimes we do get an answer that causes a good laugh. Most recently, two examples stand out.

A question on Monday dealt with the upcoming Super Tuesday Primary. When asked which candidate they would vote for, one student answered with "John McRomney". A hawkish liberal Republican who could balance the budget and capture the Evangelical and LDS vote?

On the same day, the news covered the violence in Chad. The questions on the quiz dealt with the current political situation in Chad and how the violence could lead to many deaths. The United Nations and US intervention were discussed. The final question asked the students to explain what they thought would happen if no-one intervened. I enjoyed, being a sarcastic and sardonic personality myself, one of the students answers. He explained that if the violence continued, there would be a lot fewer starving people in Africa. (Waa waa waaa)

I can't feel my hands

You know the rest of the jingle --

"I'm freezing at Pee Wee Hockey."

Then dad shows up with Dunkin' Donuts Milky Way Hot Chocolate.

The kids and I fell for the promotion and went to Dunkin' Donuts and bought the Hot Chocolate. They got the Milky Way and I got the traditional Hot Cocoa.

Sorry Double D - not as good as advertised. Mine tasted like burnt Styrofoam and I don't think the boys could discern any Milky Way Carmelness in their drinks. Kudos for a good advertising campaign though. We got pulled right in to the excitement and you got my money.

Finished Painting

The classroom has been painted. We still have a few items to finish.


I didn't get the border for the wall screen painted out yet, but you can see where it is by the blue painters tape.



I've also put an American Flag behind my desk. I'll get a picture of that up later.



After we add a few more plants, I think we will be ready to start the exclusion room.

They're Back - American Gladiator

Oh yea!!!

After all these years, they are back - bigger and badder and twice as tacky. I love it.

I watched the first double episode tonight and will be glued onto the TV tomorrow night as well. The Hulkster (Hulk Hogan) is the perfect commentator. The contestants are vetted better than the original and I felt like I got to know them. And the Gladiators are HUGE! My favorite gladiators to date are Wolf and Siren (varoom - she can pugel me anytime), but it is to early to tell who will reign as the ultimate BA.

Check out the NBC site -- AMERICAN GLADIATOR

A Christmas Video

Thank You Aunt Lee

Mom has been undergoing chemo and radiation therapy. She has not been doing well and feels miserable most of the time. My Aunt Lee hosted our family dinner so that our family could get together for dinner.

I like to refer to this clan as the 'Eck'stended family.

Thank You Aunt Lee for all you do!

Return to posting

I have not been posting. The three or four of you who actually continue to check my blog already know what happened. For the few stragglers who stumble across my little project, I now offer an explanation for the gap between this and my past posting.

In the first week of November I was assaulted with a storm of personal crisis. In the span of five days I was informed by the IRS that my 2007 taxes may have been wrong, was accused of sexually molesting three of my past foster kids, found out that my mom’s cancer had returned, and was puked on by a kid in swimming lessons.

Getting puked on wasn’t all that bad.

Everything else stressed me out pretty bad. I just couldn’t find the mental calm to type anything worthwhile. It wasn’t that I require a lot of serenity to write; it was that my mind was that chaotic. I was reduced to reading Anime’. I couldn’t concentrate enough to read a novel or anything longer than an article in a newspaper.

It took almost forty days to resolve the allegations against me. As a result of the length of the investigation I lost a foster kid I really enjoyed having in my home and had thoughts of adopting. The whole experience has really soured my outlook on being a foster parent. It has also enlightened me (further) on how screwed our State’s Child Welfare system is.

Now that my life is more stable, I will be writing further on topics relating to my recent experiences. Be patient. I will try not to rant.

That’s all for now. More to come.

One of the first Egg Bros Inc vids

This is one of the first Egg Bros Inc Videos. I made it about a year ago after I attended a friends baby shower. It is, as always, a little rough.

I have posted it at the request of some of my coworkers.

Yep - I'm going to try the NaNoWriMo again. 50,000 words in thirty days.

I only made it to 15,000 words last year. I had kids at home all the time. This year, the kids will be at the program center until 7 four days a week, so I should be able to find more time to write.

If you are interested, you should check out the website. If you decide to write, let me know so we can suffer together.

Concert!!

The concert was six hours long! The line up was Seether, Collective Soul, Three Days Grace, Breaking Benjamin, and LIVE. It is the only concert I have been at where I was hollered a for standing. I also had beer thrown on me. I have had that happen before; just never thrown on me because I was standing at a rock concert.

The weather was summer weather. Due to a late start, Jerry and I did not have much time to tailgate. We did get lucky enough to park next to truck that was playing the Penn State game. We were, for a short time, the Penn State HQ at Hershey. Everyone who walked by just needed to know what the score was. Shame we didn't have a portable white board. We could have posted the score and avoided unnecessary conversations that cut into my pre-show tailgating feast.

Seether was just opening the show as Jerry and I made our way into the stadium. It was very sunny and warm. The crowd was happy. Jerry watched our seats while I went to get the requisite concert t-shirts (let's not ask how much). Then I went and bought the infamous six-dollar beer. That's about 25 cents an ounce. Uumm, uummm. Good beer.

Seether only had a 35 minute set before they had to leave the stage. It took about 20 minutes for the next band, Collective Soul, to be set up. They played for nearly 50 minutes before another break. Three Days Grace set-up and started playing.

It was during this third performance that things got whacky in the stands. I picked the front row of section six because it is above the crowd and I have a railing to lean on while I'm standing. Every concert I have been to, the audience stands and goes nuts while the band is rockin' away. As I get older, I like having something to lean on. Apparently the lady (well, she wasn't acting very lady like) behind us a row or two bought stand tickets so she could sit. I'd like to think that she was older than I, but I probably beat her by a decade.

She starts demanding that I, Jerry, and the 5 or so other people in front of her sit down so that she can see. If we wanted to stand, she informed us rudely, we should have gotten tickets on the ground. Jerry remained calm. The girls to his right did not. They told the . . lady (I don't really know why I feel compelled to censor this) to . . . be quite. (OK - they told the f***in B**ch to shut up.)

The lady continued to go on a tirade, trying to gain support from other less enthused members of the stands. Some jumped into the shouting, but most just ignored her. I think I may have asked her something stupid like "why do you think they call this the 'stands'?" or something. Then to further irritate her, Jerry had one of the girls climb up on his shoulders in order to further block this woman's view.

That is about when it started to rain beer. And at 25 cents an ounce, it was a very expensive shower.

I don't know what happened to the lady. Two of the girls went down on the stadium floor and asked for security. Eventually, after the yellow shirt security person contacted a red shirt security person, who in turn found a 'suit', the 'suit' said he didn't have the time to go up into the stands to deal with a crazy woman. He told the girls to go get her friends and he would let them go up to the stage.

By the beginning of the Breaking Benjamin set, Jerry and his new friends were about 5 rows back from the stage taking in the concert. I was happy to stay in the stands and, well . . . stand.

I was thrilled when Jerry came back and said he liked LIVE. He originally thought that they would be 'gay'. Turned out he really liked them. He listened to them in the car on the trip home as well.

Concert!!!

Jerry and I went to see Seether, Collective Soul, Three Days Grace, Breaking Benjamin, and LIVE at the Hershey Stadium.



More on the concert in the next post.

In case you didn't hear

Steelers 2-0
Eagles 0-2

The Pig Roast Video or Worst Music Video Ever!

It took a while, but I finally put together a short video from the pig roast. I didn't have a lot of video to work with and I decided to use Michael singing. Most of you won't get it, but I do; and that is all that matters.

What a great weekend

Pig Roast and Trace's Birthday party were wonderful, but let me mention the other excitement from this weekend --



Penn State beats Notre Dame! Roar!



Then Pittsburgh beats Cleveland! Wooo Whooo!



Then, to make it the perfect weekend -
Eagles get BEAT by Green Bay! Yessss!

A&P vs College Student Parody on YouTube

First - Read the article in the Daily Item.

http://www.dailyitem.com/lifestyles/local_story_241084310.html

Then my response -

I have just read an article picked up in my local paper about your companies suit against the D’Avella brothers. I have not watched the video that they produced. But your heavy handed over-reaction has piqued my interest and I may have to see if I can find the parody on the web.

I do not shop at your grocery chain. There are no A&Ps near where I live.

The article in my paper (Sunbury Daily Item) stated that your company has “at least one” customer who was offended enough by the video to no longer shop at our store. “At least one”? How many really were offended? Two? Three? A dozen? “At least one” is deliberately vague.

How many customers must you lose to make it worth all of the legal fees that you will incur by pursuing charges against these young men?

Frankly, your reaction to this situation is more distressing than any video spoof could be. Your over-reaction will likely disenfranchise you from your customer base more than these young men’s video.

I hate Apple

I had this great idea to use CNN Student news (I know, it sounds like I've sold out to the enemy. But FOX doesn't provide a student news program) in the morning at Bethesda/PATH. So Sunday night I download the news and try to xfer it to my Zen.

Error. Try again. Error.

Four in the morning and I'm still trying to resolve why my video converter will not work. No luck.

Tonight I finally find a discussion group that addressed this problem. Seems like Apple set up the latest version of Quicktime so that it would crash my Creative Video Converter.

I deleted Quicktime and installed a shareware version. Now everything is working fine. Yippee!

Silly Motivational Posters

Court Inequality

Well, I only had 5 responses to the poll. I posted it because of a court case in Perry County. The few Poll results I did get were what I expected. People seem to agree that people should get relatively stiff penalties for having sex with children.

What concerns me is the double standard. In Perry County, a 24 year old woman received a 3 to 18 month suspended sentence for having sex with a 14 year old boy. She is also a the mother of a baby boy. The baby is the son of the 14 year old boy. The judge (Kathy Morrow) doesn't want the baby to suffer from separation from the mother. Hence the lean (non-existent) sentence. I suppose the message is, ladies, if your going to have sex with a minor, make sure you get knocked up.

What if the roles were reversed. If the 24 year old were the father, he wouldn't get out of jail until the baby was 20 years old. I know that the role of the father is just as important as the role of the mother. Why do we treat the sexes difference in these cases?

Trace's First Christmas

A quick video I made off of a friends video. Her husband is stationed out of the country. I'm posting it here so that he can view it, but you can watch it too.

Baby Goes Boom breaks a Grand

One of my first editing jobs just broke 1000 hits on YouTube. Check out "Baby Goes Boom" on My YouTube and help make this video go big.