We have reached the point where Alison is starting to get into doing the same sort of projects that Sarah had to do for school. For biology she has to make a DNA model. However, she has a different teacher than Sarah had, which means different requirements. When I helped with Sarah’s project, we made her model out of marshmallows, toothpicks, and floral wire. Ali’s teacher dropped the stipulation that they were not allowed to use food items. So that threw a wrench into things.
After looking over models online to see what sort of ideas I could come up with for her. I saw some pictures of people making their models out of paper when I thought that maybe we could do the same thing they had done by using PVC tubing. I thought we could cut a few lengths and paint them different colors for the different components of the DNA strand, and use small pcs. of wooden dowels to connect them. That was where we started. So we went to American Science and Surplus on the south side to see what we could get along those lines that would work. We have a couple of weeks to get it put together so when we finish, I’ll put up a couple of pictures.
Monday, March 20, 2017
Thursday, March 16, 2017
Work, Classes, and CNA
One thing that we found out after Sarah began her freshman year at UW-LaCrosse was that in order to get accepted into the PA Program, she needed to have 1000 patient contact hours logged. They gave her examples of service that would count toward those hours, and the most popular, or easiest to get, was doing work that required having a CNA degree. Unfortunately, Sarah does not have her CAN. Had she known, she could have taken the required classes for it in high school. There are programs that you can take at tech school, but it requires 80 hours of class time and 40 hours of patient contact time. That time is spread out over an entire semester.
She could potentially take the required classes over the summer, but because of the time commitment, that would cut into her ability to work full time this summer. And since she is going to be living off campus, she will need to work as much as possible in order to pay her rent and bills. She doesn’t absolutely NEED to get her CAN, but then that leads to the dilemma of how to get those hours without having to cut into work or class time before she is able to apply to PA school. Even if she could get her CAN, she’d still need to figure out where and how to work in the healthcare field where she would be able to get those hours in. We do have a couple of years to help her figure it out and nothing says she HAS to go to UWL to get her PA degree. Sarah could always transfer. But every school we have looked at since finding out the patient contact requirement has some sort of requirement of hours, just not as many as UWL. Until she has to apply, we’ll keep looking for ways to help Sarah get those hours.
She could potentially take the required classes over the summer, but because of the time commitment, that would cut into her ability to work full time this summer. And since she is going to be living off campus, she will need to work as much as possible in order to pay her rent and bills. She doesn’t absolutely NEED to get her CAN, but then that leads to the dilemma of how to get those hours without having to cut into work or class time before she is able to apply to PA school. Even if she could get her CAN, she’d still need to figure out where and how to work in the healthcare field where she would be able to get those hours in. We do have a couple of years to help her figure it out and nothing says she HAS to go to UWL to get her PA degree. Sarah could always transfer. But every school we have looked at since finding out the patient contact requirement has some sort of requirement of hours, just not as many as UWL. Until she has to apply, we’ll keep looking for ways to help Sarah get those hours.
Wednesday, March 15, 2017
Cheer Banquet
The 2016-2017 cheer season has now officially come to an end. We had the annual cheer banquet tonight where the girls get their awards and letters (for varsity), we review the season, watch some compilation videos, etc., and the seniors all gave their farewell speeches and thanks to the coaches. Overall it was a pretty good year. The varsity advanced at nationals for the first time in about 15 years (I’d have to actually go back and figure it out for the exact time frame) and the JV’s had a very good showing at State. The only big disappointment (in my opinion) was the varsity’s performance at State. But I don’t fault the varsity, I fault the judging. I believe they should have placed at least third. I think they got screwed, but it’s over and done with.
Now we have a short break until tryouts for next year. They usually happen around the end of May, but preparation will start before that, usually about a month ahead of time. So we finally get to relax a little bit, if only for a short time.
Now we have a short break until tryouts for next year. They usually happen around the end of May, but preparation will start before that, usually about a month ahead of time. So we finally get to relax a little bit, if only for a short time.
Tuesday, March 14, 2017
Fence Posts
With the weather beginning to warm up, I was out in the backyard picking up downed, dead branches that had broken off from the trees over the winter. In doing so, I noticed something. The fence posts along the back lot line are beginning to shift. The posts on the side lot line have moved slightly, but they are still pretty straight even after 10 years. The back posts are only 4 or 5 years old and are starting to tilt back toward the yard behind us. I suppose it would make sense based on the guy’s yard, since it is under water a good part of the year (I kid, but only slightly). Since I am 6-8 inches (estimated) above the guy behind me, there is more support for the posts on my side of the lot line. Not all of them are tilting, and some are worse than others. I really hope I can fix them, I would like to think that they should be able to be straightened. Once the ground actually thaws, I’ll have to go back and take a good look at the posts and see if there is anything that I can do to pull them back to vertical.
Sunday, March 12, 2017
Learned Something Today
I was working on getting videos off of the video camera and off my hard drive this weekend since I noticed that the files were starting to take up LOTS of space. As I was burning them, I noticed a couple of things I never realized before. My camera saves the files on the camera, and downloads them as .vob files. Unfortunately, these don’t convert in any meaningful way to be burned to a DVD. After researching this problem years ago I found something that said I just need to rename them as .mpg files and they are good to go. I found out this weekend that isn’t exactly true.
When I record things, I have the camera set up to film in the 16:9 aspect ratio. However, when I convert the files and burn them to DVD, they are always in a 4:3 aspect ratio. This makes the images look squeezed and distorted (in my opinion). I always figured I made a mistake when I filmed it, and did it in 4:3 by mistake. When I was attempting to burn the latest batch of DVDs, I noticed that strangely ALL the videos were in 4:3, so before burning them, I decided to try playing them on my laptop first. When I played them, they were in the correct 16:9 ratio. Which begs the question, what is going on?
I discovered that when the files are converted and moved into the program I use to burn them to DVD, they lose whatever formatting there is on them and puts them into 4:3 ratio automatically. After a bit of researching, I learned that this is fixable by simply going into each one and manually correcting the setting back to the proper aspect ratio and they will burn to the DVD in 16:9 wide screen. Unfortunately, I have just been loading all our home movies for the last 7 or 8 years automatically without looking at the aspect ratios, so everything was burned in the 4:3 ratio. I suppose it’s not really a problem, just a little distorted when you try to watch them. I guess I can live with it, and I’ll just fix it going forward.
Another thing I noticed was that they DVDs don’t look like they are in HD, even though the setting on the camera is to record them in that way. So I will have to look a little more deeply at that. Finally, I noticed that it might be time to start thinking about getting a new digital video camera. The max resolution is 720p. Taking video on Kris’s iPhone records it in 1080p. So the quality ends up being higher with an iPhone? I suppose the camera is 10 years old this fall, and technology is always changing. That is one of the bad things about technology though.
When I record things, I have the camera set up to film in the 16:9 aspect ratio. However, when I convert the files and burn them to DVD, they are always in a 4:3 aspect ratio. This makes the images look squeezed and distorted (in my opinion). I always figured I made a mistake when I filmed it, and did it in 4:3 by mistake. When I was attempting to burn the latest batch of DVDs, I noticed that strangely ALL the videos were in 4:3, so before burning them, I decided to try playing them on my laptop first. When I played them, they were in the correct 16:9 ratio. Which begs the question, what is going on?
I discovered that when the files are converted and moved into the program I use to burn them to DVD, they lose whatever formatting there is on them and puts them into 4:3 ratio automatically. After a bit of researching, I learned that this is fixable by simply going into each one and manually correcting the setting back to the proper aspect ratio and they will burn to the DVD in 16:9 wide screen. Unfortunately, I have just been loading all our home movies for the last 7 or 8 years automatically without looking at the aspect ratios, so everything was burned in the 4:3 ratio. I suppose it’s not really a problem, just a little distorted when you try to watch them. I guess I can live with it, and I’ll just fix it going forward.
Another thing I noticed was that they DVDs don’t look like they are in HD, even though the setting on the camera is to record them in that way. So I will have to look a little more deeply at that. Finally, I noticed that it might be time to start thinking about getting a new digital video camera. The max resolution is 720p. Taking video on Kris’s iPhone records it in 1080p. So the quality ends up being higher with an iPhone? I suppose the camera is 10 years old this fall, and technology is always changing. That is one of the bad things about technology though.
Friday, March 10, 2017
Spring Break 2017
Sarah has reached the Spring Break point of her first year. Luckily she isn’t doing anything this year so Kris and I don’t have to worry. I have seen the horror stories on the news for the past couple of years and just cringe at what goes on in Florida and Texas on Spring Break now. But I digress…
Sarah came home because she had an interview for a summer job, and Kris and I ended up driving up to LaCrosse to get her. We got there about 3:00 in the afternoon and the campus was already absolutely dead. I think we might have seen all of two or three kids still hanging out in the dorm, everyone else was gone. We got her packed up and ready to go in about 10 minutes, and that was also after having a look at her Papasan chair, which had a piece of the bamboo break shortly after the semester started. I got it glued, and put some tape on it to hold while the wood glue dried. Hopefully that will fix it, since it wasn’t cheap and I don’t want to have to buy a new bowl.
Before we left, we did end up running into one of Sarah’s friends from grade school who also goes to school in LaCrosse. She was picking up a friend who lives on Sarah’s floor and they were heading out to Colorado for their Spring Break. At least that is a break trip I would be in favor of. It was good to say hi to her and see how she was doing so far. After that we got the car fired up and headed home. Nothing like six and a half hours of driving to start off a weekend. And in nine days we’ll be doing it again.
Sarah came home because she had an interview for a summer job, and Kris and I ended up driving up to LaCrosse to get her. We got there about 3:00 in the afternoon and the campus was already absolutely dead. I think we might have seen all of two or three kids still hanging out in the dorm, everyone else was gone. We got her packed up and ready to go in about 10 minutes, and that was also after having a look at her Papasan chair, which had a piece of the bamboo break shortly after the semester started. I got it glued, and put some tape on it to hold while the wood glue dried. Hopefully that will fix it, since it wasn’t cheap and I don’t want to have to buy a new bowl.
Before we left, we did end up running into one of Sarah’s friends from grade school who also goes to school in LaCrosse. She was picking up a friend who lives on Sarah’s floor and they were heading out to Colorado for their Spring Break. At least that is a break trip I would be in favor of. It was good to say hi to her and see how she was doing so far. After that we got the car fired up and headed home. Nothing like six and a half hours of driving to start off a weekend. And in nine days we’ll be doing it again.
Wednesday, March 8, 2017
Cheer Showcase
The cheer season officially came to an end with
the cheer showcase tonight. As always,
the teams all do a performance, and the varsity girls demonstrate some of the
basic moves/stunts that they use. We
also got to do the annual father-daughter routine. This year though, there was one parent who
was annoyingly in my way when I was trying to take pictures of Ali. Somehow, this clown has taken it upon himself
to be the “unofficial” photographer for all of cheer even though his daughter
is still only in junior high. I think
the guy is rather creepy, always lurking about, and I am too nice of a person
to get in his face over it. I figure if
the coaches have a problem they’ll say something to him. I would like to think that the guy would at
the very least be courteous enough to allow other parents to take photos, or
video, of their children as they see fit.
Why does he think that HE is the one who needs to take pictures? He was walking around without any regard to
any of the other parents in the bleachers.
I had a couple of shots of Ali I could have taken, but was unable to
because he was strolling around. This is just one:
What a D-bag! One reason I didn’t much care was it was the showcase, and essentially just a practice. But if this were a competition, then you can bet I would have been angry!
Since Kris didn't know how to use the good camera, there are no pictures of the father-daughter routine this year. Sorry. But here are a few pictures from their routine:
What a D-bag! One reason I didn’t much care was it was the showcase, and essentially just a practice. But if this were a competition, then you can bet I would have been angry!
Since Kris didn't know how to use the good camera, there are no pictures of the father-daughter routine this year. Sorry. But here are a few pictures from their routine:
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