Author: kathleen

We have them at school too.

But since a drunk driver hit our house, my husband wanted to be able to see if we have property damage without leaving the comfort of his bedroom.

Think we’ve managed it.

Here’s our fence:

Which was hit once.  About two years after we bought the house.

Our front yard, not sure how it is going to be when the leaves are all the way in:

We also have a good view of the back yard from two cameras and are thinking about a third.

Best yet, is that I can see my dog room and dog run and know that the dogs are doing good.  We had some storms last week before we had completely set of cameras and being able to check now and then was great.

A former student and good friend (he’s 35 now!) found us some inexpensive cameras, a DVR, and the rest of the parts.  He installed the bulk yesterday.

I can, and have designed a complete website from scratch (http://www.kweaver.net) and have hosted it.  BUT, when I went to do something fast, without having to go through all that, I use TypePad.  I’ve got this blog on Typepad and my Visual Basic lessons there.

Why?

I ran into a bug last night and they answered it this morning with a complete workaround.  It’s probably better than the original solution.

By the way, if you want to learn how to program, see:

http://www.kweaver.us/programming_in_visual_bas/

I’ve started a little project http://www.kweaver.us/programming_in_visual_bas/ and so far it teaches you everything you need to know to write a Hello World program.

I’m doing in a blog format, so you’ll want to start at the first entry: http://www.kweaver.us/programming_in_visual_bas/2012/03/why.html

and work backwards.

Not ready for prime time yet.  Lots of websites not compatible and also lots of software, including Outlook.

I just restored my computer and it's nice to have my life back.  Yes, my computers, even this new one, are my life.

It’s a tad annoying.  I’m getting used to switching between Metro and the Desktop.  So much of what I currently do is on the desktop (Outlook, Visual Studio, etc.).

Use the Windows Key!

Also odd things are broken but better after I ran an update this morning.

It’s interesting.  I have all my old stuff, and it looks the same, but the Start Button is missing.  Don’t like that, liked the start button.

It took a while to load but part of that was taking a backup and making recovery DVDs, since I hadn’t gotten around to it.

It feels like a cross between the Windows Phone 7 and Windows 7.

I really LIKE Donor’s Choose. I’ve finished somewhere over 15 projects now.

Hints: Keep your projects small, I’ve found I get projects under $200 funded quicker and easier. But maybe I’m just not patient enough for the big ones.

I’ve had two projects fail, one for a video camera and one for a laptop.

This week they are matching donations with a code of BLOOM.

My donor’s choose page is at http://www.donorschoose.com/kweaver

Easiest to install networking device EVER.

No wires, no fuss, works right out of the box.

We have a fairly large house, and since we moved back in, we have had trouble with WiFi Coverage in the house. One of my spring break projects is to fix that. Did some research, found references to this device. We’ll see how things go through the week, but I put it in the opposite corner of the house and so far we seem to have better coverage.

To start with, we are in an urban school district with a large free and reduced lunch population.

When I have taught math, very few students have done homework, so I quickly learned to adjust my teaching to take that in account. Each student had a different reason for not doing their work, many of them busy working.

I just heard from a student who came from a district where that was being done. She had to download and print out the notes, and then use an internet connection to watch the teacher go over the notes. They would work on problems in class.

Two huge problems with this concept:

Most of our students don’t have printers (I know this, as they often as to use the ones in my classroom, No, you can’t).

A larger segment of the population doesn’t have access to technology at home.

I do something similar though, and I often record (using Camtasia), instructions, especially if I think that the project we are doing isn’t easy to do from written instructions.

Then the students can assess the recording during class. They could access it at home, but I’m not sure that would be helpful.