Lame title line, eh? It's an expression I often hear from my U.K. counterparts. I have such a diverse assortment to write about I don't have a good summary title line.
Well, Bev and Ed, you can rest easy! Daniel has caught up with Michael. Today we noticed that Daniel has cut his first tooth!
Tomorrow I take the girls to Canobie Lake Park again. Michelle and the boys will join me later. It's VAutomation's company family day outing. So far the weather forecast looks perfect for an afternoon at an amusement park!
I don't think I mentioned it earlier, but Claire got through her reading primer. Anyone who is over 50 and attended Catholic grade school would have deja vu over seeing her primer. "... Ann, David, Skip, etc...." I'm very proud of Claire and of Michelle for seeing Claire through this far. As she has many times before, Michelle did it in spite of discouragement from others. She bucked the system that told her she was crazy. "Claire is so shy and quiet... Put her in school so that she can be properly socialized". Now Claire gets compliments on how polite and outgoing she is.
I'm happy to report that Sneaker, my ol' Honda CRX, that now is owned by my sister, Suzanne, is happily chugging along. With over 100K miles on it, it went in for service the other day. The family was worried that there might be a transmission failure because it was making noises to that effect. Nope, it was just a heat shield that was loose from corrosion. They also did a little tweaking to the clutch-- which is still the original! Go Honda! Go Honda! Go Honda, Go! Wait a minute! Why didn't John's Mustang or Camero clutches last that long?!! Things that make you go: Hmmm...
I was watching a local television station that covers things of interest in New England when I saw a story about a place in Salem, NH (which is about 30 minutes away) called Vintage Vending. Check that link out. They've got some very cool stuff there: all beautfully restored vintage 50s items! I only wish I had known about it earlier when the Gerrits' were here. Peter would have died and gone to heaven! (Figuratively speaking) Perhaps I can take my parents there when they come in September.
I saw an interesting story in Slashdot about how the old Tandy Model 100 laptop lives on! I had almost forgotten about these pioneering machines. Click here if you've never seen one. Back in it's day, I thought these machines were really the cat's meow. As the article states, in many ways, these are still very useful machines, especially "in the field". They were rugged (you can drop them from 4 feet and it doesn't phase them), booted instantly, and had long battery life (12 hours on AA batteries!). Oooh Rah! Based on those benchmarks, today's laptops don't even compare! A bit of trivia: The software built into the Model 100 was the last computer code Bill Gates was personally involved in writing.
I had long thought that Palm Pilots couldn't replace my ordinary Franklin Planner (or a DayTimer, DayRunner, etc. ). They seemed to be missing the functionality of the right hand side page where you put your notes, event, thoughts, lists, etc. of the day. Sure, you could kludge it in there sorta, but it wasn't natural. I finally found a Palm Pilot piece of software to do that and am now trying to have the Palm substitute for my paper planner. The software is called DayNotez by Natara Software. I've used it for a couple of days now and it finally seems to make my Palm Pilot do what I need it to do. So far so good. Like most Palm Pilot software, I'm trying it out for a trial evaluation, but so far I think I'll be buying it in a week or so.
Before I go I thought I'd close with some stats that I'll just call our American Cultural Indicators:
"Americans increasingly vote as they pray or don't pray." Consider two 42 percents. The 42 percent of the electorate who attend religious services once or more weekly voted for Mr. Bush 59 percent to 39 percent. The 42 percent who seldom or never attend voted for Mr. Gore 56 percent to 39 percent.Source: Michael Barone's upcoming Almanac of American Politics
In inflation-adjusted dollars, America spends 72 percent more for education today than in 1980. Annual spending per pupil, adjusted for inflation, increased from $3,367 in 1970 to $6,584 in 2000...Source: the Heritage Foundation and a commentary by Linda Bowles. Yet, despite these efforts, there has been no academic improvement, scores are relatively flat, and the achievement gap between poor and non-poor has not improved. In Linda's words, "How long will it take us to learn that increasing the budgets of failed programs is no substitute for real reform?" Amen, Linda!Since 1965, the federal government has spent over $120 billion on Title I programs for low-income students...
The number of computers in the classroom increased from one for every 63 students in 1985 to one for every 5 students in 2000.
Billions of dollars have been spent on a huge bilingual educational bureaucracy, only to discover that standard bilingual education of immigrant children actually delays their ability to read and write English.
