Steve on “New Years Resolutions” (8 Jan 2010 (Fri) @ 7:04 PM (PST))	If I watch you run it, then it's basically the sam...
Lord Cheese on “New Years Resolutions” (8 Jan 2010 (Fri) @ 6:52 PM (PST))	I think to fullfill #2 and #3 you need to train to...
Brent on “The Truth with us” (5 Jan 2010 (Tue) @ 12:16 PM (PST))	You've got to love that story. One act of compass...
Lisa on “The hound” (4 Jan 2010 (Mon) @ 11:07 PM (PST))	She is a (psychic) freak of nature! :D
Steve on “Enviromentalism fail” (18 Dec 2009 (Fri) @ 9:18 AM (PST))	True, yeah, I thought of that... But I didn't want...

All my short updates go on facebook, and I don’t have time for long updates! egads.

Had a midterm today. Not sure why many students don’t seem to read the question. They copy info directly from the book that doesn’t answer the question, is just “about” one of the keywords in the question... One student had some attitude on the exam “these questions are so trivial” but then misapplied some techniques. Maybe not so trivial.

(found online)

01) Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.

02) Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.

03) Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.

04) Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn’t changed at all; women are still property, blacks still can’t marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.

05) Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed; the sanctity of Britany Spears' 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.

06) Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn’t be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren’t full yet, and the world needs more children.

07) Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.

0 Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That’s why we have only one religion in America.

09) Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That’s why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.

10) Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven’t adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans.

Lisa has moved back to day shift, so this helps the schedule. Hound is better after her hospital visit; the vets think it could be either pancreas attack or food poisoning. Another prof observed my math class today, she thought I did a good job. She liked my use of silence especially.

One of the neat things about being a teacher is having the students teach me something. I learned two interesting things (one from the basic math class, and one from programming logic) in the past week or two:

1. Consider the case of fraction multiplication, such as

73      50

–   *  –

100     26

The usual technique calls for multiplying across top, across the bottom, and then simplifying... Simplify this:

3650

—-

2600

Or don’t. Alternative technique: “pre-simplify” by identifying common factor on diagonals. In this case, 50 and 100 are both divisible by 50. Let’s divide both by 50. That’s easy:

73      1

–   *  –

2       26

That’s a much easier multiplication with much more reasonably sized result numbers to work with.

2. Two’s complement (signed integer representation for computers). The usual technique for finding the value of a two’s complement involves identifying if it is negative or positive, then doing the old “invert and add one” to get the absolute value. Then add up the binary place values.

10110101 is negative, so invert = 01001010, add one = 01001011, find value with usual power-of-two placeholders: (from right) 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128. so 1 + 2 + 8 + 64 = 75, but it was negative, so the original value is -75

Alternative technique: Consider the left-most value as negative. No special consideration for negative vs positive needed, no invert and add one. 10110101 with from the right placeholders: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, -128. The left-most placeholder is simply called a negative. If the number is positive, this bit will be zero and the value not used. Take the placeholders as usual: 1 + 4 + 16 + 32 + -128 = -75

Both of these techniques are much easier than the way I’ve been doing it.

Not much happening. Flight with Lisa over the weekend; had a nice night landing and investigated the parachute jumping place in Shelton. We want to fly up to Snohomish and watch the jumpers there; there is a restaurant at the airport with a deck for watching skydivers. Some Friday when the weather is good...

After this week Lisa returns to day shift. That should help a lot!

So we were doing what appeared to be a simple division in class today (the math class), and I got stumped. I decided after to email one of the math instructors for assistance:

Consider the problem of a contractor with 48 acres building 1 ½ acre lots. How many lots can they build?

So the straightforward approach is 48 divided by 1 ½ which gives us 32.

An estimate of 1 acre lots gives 48 lots, and an estimate of 2 acre lots give 24 lots.

Now here’s where the weirdness happens. It seems that 1 ½ being half-way between 1 and 2, should mean that the answer is halfway between 48 and 24, as per the estimate. However, if we take 48 - 24 = 24, 24 / 2 = 12, 48 – 12 = 36

We get 36 lots, not 32.

It seems to be, and I expected, that these two techniques would give the same answer. I’m confident the division approach done first above is correct, but I can’t explain why the half-way estimation approach is wrong.

During class one of the students had the reason, and I could feel they were right, but there weren’t enough words to explain it.

I continued to think about it during the day, but couldn’t come up with the reason.

The instructor emailed back:

What a great question! I had to think about this a moment myself.

Here’s a way to think about this that might help.

Yes, indeed, 48 x 1 ½ is halfway between 48 x 1 and 48 x 2. But think about the divisions rewritten as multiplications.

48 divided by 1 = 48 x 1 = 48

48 divided by 1 ½ = 48 x 2/3 = 32

48 divided by 2 = 48 x ½ = 24

Since 2/3 is not halfway between ½ and 1, the product of 48 and 2/3 will not be halfway between.

Or to put it more succinctly, but not in terms your Basic Math students would understand; f(x) = 48 x is a linear function, but f(x) = 48/x is not a linear function.

If your class wants to investigate this further, you might have them draw grids and break these up into 1 ½ unit groups. For example, if you have six units, you can make 6 groups of 1 unit, or 3 groups of 2 units. But you can get 4 groups of 1 ½ units, which is not halfway between 3 and 6.

This morning Lisa and I decided to fly to Hoquiam to eat breakfast at the cafe there. It’s a short, easy flight but for whatever reason our specific goal of landing and eating at the cafe was always been thwarted in the past. The weather was questionable this morning; the reports were good but there were some low clouds in the hills. We took off and were able to make it out and back, and enjoy a nice breakfast. The Hoquiam airport was infested with Canada geese and I was concerned about a bird strike, but they stayed out of our way.

Lisa took some video during the flight.

Flight to Hoquiam part 1

Flight to Hoquiam part 2

Lisa and I both have today off, so we were doing some errands and enjoying time. Later we will go up to Bellevue to celebrate John’s birthday. I’m getting into a pattern for all my classes but waking so early is still very hard. After some consideration, I told the chair that if someone else wanted the 7am spring term they could have it... It’s just too early for me. So we’ll see...

Hottub leak returned. May have to attempt sealing again.

Another siding soft spot found; probably will wait until we have several contractor to-do items before attempting to have it fixed. Probably would be a waste to have him come out for one little thing.

As part of getting my certificate, I took one required night flight with my instructor. We flew to Kelso and back and did our 10 full stop landings (all but one at Olympia). That taught me that night flight was possible, but I wouldn’t have said I was comfortable and I never did a night flight on my own.

I decided I wanted to take another night flight to increase my comfort level, so I scheduled with another instructor (my original instructor doesn’t usually work evenings) to get currency. Using a Christmas giftcard, I had purchased a red/white headlamp specifically for night flight use.

The weather started out fine, with high ceilings around six to nine thousand; but the rain started as I arrived at the airport and I could see a little bit of mist around the hills. The temperature dropped to meet the dewpoint, but no fog formed yet. Icing and turbulence were both airmet'ed starting at the surface. I didn’t believe the icing airmet because surface temperatures were significantly above freezing.

I talked to the instructor and was surprised (not really, actually) to hear him say the weather was good. In the same breath he also asked if I had actual instrument condition experience and said he had all his IFR approach plates.

I preflighted the plane using the headlamp’s white light. It worked great. We were quickly fueled and ready to go. We waited briefly for the required one hour after sunset to arrive.

We departed from Olympia first to Tacoma Narrows. The air was slightly bumpy. We climbed to 3,000 feet and discussed our navigation. Rain was streaming off the windshield but visibility was good and soon I saw the airport beacon. I mentioned that one of the things I wanted to ask about was making an approach if your landing light burns out. In my original training we never did make a night landing without the landing light.

At that prompt, he shut off the landing light and the panel lights. “Electrical failure,” he noted. I turned on my red headlamp (glorious) and he talked about how great headlamps were for night flying. I was nervous for the approach because I was taught to flare at night using the markings reflected in the landing light... Without it, how to flare?

He showed me that with the runway edge lights on, you can start to see the runway when you are at about 50 feet, and I was able to land without trouble.

Next we went out to Shelton. The wind was out of the northeast (but very light) which would normally indicate runway 5. However, only runway 23 has a visual glide slope indicator, so I told him I planned to use runway 23. He agreed that was the right choice, but then said that it would be better training to use the runway without.

I had never landed at night without a visual glide slope indicator.

I also found that the area west of the airport, where the pattern for runway 5 was, was completely dark on the ground. There were also known hills (which we could not see). This is called a “black hole” approach where all you can see is the runway edge lights and nothing else. Flying a black hole approach in an unfamiliar area is how pilots get killed.

He talked me through the approach, which ends up similar to an engine trouble approach where you fly the pattern high and come down steep. We ended doing three landings on the Shelton pattern to practice the black hole approach. They weren’t the smoothest landings ever, but they certainly worked. I should mention that these landings too were made without landing or panel lights.

The extra tool for these approaches was the altimeter. We knew the field elevation and used the altimeter to judge our place in the pattern and also our threshold crossing height, which was higher than normal at 100-150 feet.

It was raining most of the time, and we could see the rain streaking off the windshield. One time while we were in the pattern the instructor turned on the landing light ("Let’s see if we can see any terrain") but it just illuminated a grey blob of rain. The landing light actually made things worse. He quickly turned it off.

For our final landing we returned to Olympia. I flew an indirect route; east and then south, to avoid the poorly lit hills. We intercepted the ILS (instrument landing system - a glide slope indicator in the cockpit) and the instructor showed me how to use the DME hold option (which had previously just been trouble) to assist with using the ILS.

For this landing he turned on the panel and landing lights. Ironically, perhaps because I had become accustomed to the darker landings, the final landing at Olympia was the most jarring and abrupt of all.

As we taxi’d back to the ramp, I told him that after this lesson, I would actually feel comfortable flying at night. Very much a worthwhile lesson.

Lisa and I were thinking about life goals today.

I’d like to travel to the major continents... Visit mainland Asia, South America, take a substantial trip through Europe, and visit Africa. I’d like to own an airplane at some point (or co-own). I’d like to learn my Grandmother’s tart recipe. I’d like to get good enough to grow a substantial amount of vegetables, and then learn to can and preserve them.

what makes a good teacher

An excellent article. I can’t help but to read between lines a bit. Mr. Taylor, who’s only been teaching for three years, “looks tired”, works weekends, etc. has students succeeding. But the 23-year veteran doesn’t.

Superstar teachers had four other tendencies in common: they avidly recruited students and their families into the process; they maintained focus, ensuring that everything they did contributed to student learning; they planned exhaustively and purposefully—for the next day or the year ahead—by working backward from the desired outcome; and they worked relentlessly, refusing to surrender to the combined menaces of poverty, bureaucracy, and budgetary shortfalls.

How many hours a week is that? What I’m asking is, how sustainable is that?

Gritty people, the theory goes, work harder and stay committed to their goals longer.

How much harder? How much longer? (no, this isn’t a porno). There’s only a certain level of consistent output that is sustainable over a long term. If the author had visited the 23-year veteran on her third year, would good student success have been noted? Would her opinion been rosy and optimistic?

The Teach for America teachers are great, sure, but look: “the extreme hours that Teach for America teachers put in—for two years—are not sustainable for most people over the long term.” That doesn’t sound promising for career teachers. The article rebuts, claiming

But if school systems hired, trained, and rewarded teachers according to the principles Teach for America has identified, then teachers would not need to work so hard.

But how? That is never addressed. Is it possible to be a “good” teacher as the article defines it without putting in burn-out levels of energy?

And the three year Mr. Taylor with his seven day work-week multitasking super-classroom? “He’s thinking about quitting in the next few years.”

The conclusions of the article almost want to suggest that teaching (at least at the mandatory school levels) shouldn’t be a career, it should be a service. Should all teachers be young temporary two-year service workers between college and career? Do the students need a younger, energetic person who will put in seven day weeks and constantly revamp everything? And if so, is it really plausible that a normal person could maintain that performance year after year into the decades?

My personal favorite sentence: "Meanwhile, a master’s degree in education seems to have no impact on classroom effectiveness. "

In the monastic pre-dawn,
a row of silent lights over the water
halfway across the bridge
a pure black cat sits waiting.

I tread the bridge lighty
the black cat flees
melting into the silent night.

From a book (I abbreviate it):

The fourth century Indian monk Asanga was known as the greatest scholar of his time. Asanga concluded that, by cultivating a state of deep concentration, he would be able to communicate with the coming buddha [Maitreya]. He retired to a cave and meditated for three years, without result. [Several time he prepared to leave, then returned to continue]. Now having devoted twelve years to the futile attempt to contact Maitreya, [Asanga shows compassion to help a wounded dog]. He opened his eyes to see the bodhisattva Maitreya standing before him, resplendent in silk robes.

Asanga recognized him immediately and could not resist asking where Maitreya had been for the past twelve years. Maitreya responded that he had been with Asanga all the time; he had been so close to Asanga in fact that the front of Maitreya’s robe was soiled by the crumbs from Asanga’s noon meal. It was just that the obstacles in Asanga’s mind blinded him to Maitreya’s presence, obstacles that could not be removed by twelve years of diligent meditation but that evaporated in the face of Asanga’s moment of compassion for the dog.

Tomorrow starts the new term...

So our car is having some trouble, and we are borrowing my parents Jeep until it is fixed. Lisa came home a little early tonight, and in a different car. Still, the hound woke up from sleeping, ran downstairs and waited at the window ... a good 15 seconds before I even heard the engine!

So somehow the hound knew even though it was a different time, and a different car, with no line of sight, no line of smell...

Ok, so what will happen this year...

1. Be understanding of how hard Lisa works at her job.
2. Lose more weight.
3. Take a trip
4. Complete some kind of extra flight training (mountain flying, tailwheel endorsement, etc.)
5. Get rich quick with no risk, no effort, and no initial investment.

(Power of positive thinking, right?)

Opportunities await!

Back from California. Went down with my parents and had a good visit with my grandparents. The overall gathering was very nice.

I then spent several days with Brent and Clara, including a hike out near the beach, gaming with Raph, Clara making enchiladas, and play time with the kids.

After getting home we went to Red Robin where we saw a pair of completely conjoined twins – two heads on one body. Haven’t seen that before.

Looking forward to Brent and Clara visiting this summer!

Lisa and I had our Christmas this morning. In addition to stocking stuffers, including a bobble-head darth vader, exchanged gifts included a new tool set, the complete series of Seinfeld, and a movie poster.

Just a few days away... Everything is a jumble. Want to spend as much time with Lisa before I go, getting all ready for winter term (got my key for the math classroom today... it will be a tight fit). Winter term will be very busy, plus Lisa and my schedule don’t fit well so we won’t see each other as much as desired.

I completed the 60 minute Lord of the Rings edit. It turns out that editing video is much harder than editing images or audio. Plus I don’t have a good tool. So technically the transitions are jarring. I’m hoping that it will still be worthwhile as a way for people who don’t want to sit through 12 hours of movie to get the basic idea.

Tomorrow meeting and finish up some work, then Wednesday to my parent’s house for dinner and pre-Christmas, then overnight until the next morning, an early AM flight...