Category: Blog

I grew up in Indiana and spent most of the month of May, at least the weekends, in Indianapolis.  Actually AT Indy.

I know that we camped in the campground, and we always had tickets in the infield.  Now we didn’t always have tickets for race day, but we always were in the infield for the practice and carb day.

I also know I’ve been in every place at Indy except gasoline alley.  Why?  Because I am female, and even little girls were not allowed in Gasoline Alley.  I know a few times I had to wait outside for day, but I wasn’t allowed in.

This year has been different — partly because of Charlie Kimball, he’s been blogging and twittering about his first Indy Lights race there.  I’ve also been following Sarah Fisher on Twitter and IndyTalk and it really adds to the indy experience.

Who knows maybe next year we’ll go to the Texas Indy (it’s here in the Dallas area, next weekend).

I think it was great Helio won again, and kicked everyone’s butt.  I also think Danica had her best Indy ever, as did all the women racing.  I was really glad to see all the ladies race just like ladies, not screwing up, or causing wrecks.

In fact, several of the wrecks were caused by offspring with what we call at our house "too much name, too much car, not enough driver".

Have I said I love Twitter lately? I love Twitter.  A lot.

However, I don’t get to twitter most of the day.  I teach high school, and that involves most of my energy throughout the day.  I also do dog agility — which is one whole evening I’m off the grid.

So how do I keep up.

First, I have some people I want to see all of their tweets — Alfred Thompson, Clint Rutkas, my sister, and a few others.  I’ve got unlimited text messages and I have those people on the mobile phone.  I’ll check on them periodically if I get a breath during the day, plus I have one place with all their tweets.

I’m also got http://tweetbeep.com set up for people who really send quality tweets. That service will send you an email periodically with a list of that person’s twits.  I think you can do it by subject too.  Haven’t played with it that much.

And my favorite twitter client — TwInbox at http://www.techhit.com/TwInbox/twitter_plugin_outlook.html  It’s an add-in for Outlook and lets you filter out twits and do everything else you can do with Outlook messages.

And yes, I love Outlook too!

I love TRS Active care — I am answering this because another teacher on Twitter asked.

I have always gotten max coverage, doesn’t matter which employer I worked with.  I’ve been with Dallas ISD for 16 years, and we’ve had okay coverage until TRS Active Care.

I think the last plan we had was Aetna, and I’m really glad we left A.  (From their commercia — Aetna, Glad to Meetcha, not so much).  I had a major battle getting my insulin pump covered.

I have TRS Active Care – Teir 3.  Since we’ve been with them, they have covered 2 insulin pumps with absolutely no problems.  In fact, this one they upgraded a month early.

Last summer I was in the emergency room and hospital for a 3 day stay and total cost was less than $500.00  I had already met my copay.

Here’s a list of things I’ve had coverage for with no problems:

• 2 insulin pumps and their assorted supplies
• 1 AutoPap Machine (for sleep apnea) and all supplies, they cover new masks very frequently I am thinking 3 months.
• Cardiac Catherization and complete workups ever couple of years.  There was one item they didn’t cover, which I did do.  Cardiologist wanted it, primary care physcian thought it was experimental — it was something they do to keep from doing the catherazation.
• Lap Band surgery which I am currently dealing with and it is costing me total less than $750.  That includes the cost of jumping through the hoops — 6 months medically supervised diet came out of pocket.
• Symvist in knees and physical therapy.  I think that worked, but I have to really hurt before I go back for that.
• Chiropractic care for shoulder

Medco — the pharmacy plan — drives me absolutely nuts.  I’ve blogged about Medco at http://www.kweaver.org/blog  My favorite is that they spend more money shipping a $15.00 birth control injection than they do for $600.00 of insuln or Symlin.

While I am at it, i also recommend doing the Flexible Savings Plan.  I just recently maxed out that — and it is super.

Here how it works in our district.  You tell them to take out money for Flexible Saving Plan.  Pretax dollars.  You get a credit card.  You use the credit card to pay for everything until it’s maxed out. I maxed out this month.  Note that I still have medical expenses coming so I have to now pay for them with regular payments. Also note that I was able to spend the money before it was all put in.

LOVE TRS ACTIVE CARE!  Especially the Tier 3 BCBS Version.   Would NOT work for a school district without it.

I’m going to teach Middle School Girls Technology Camp, two different weeks in June (two sets of girls).

I’m going to write district ACP’s and district curriculum.

In July, I’m going to Virginia for a Tapestry Workshop which pays $1000, and a week later go to a Media Computation Workshop that pays $200.

And I have some time to relax and reflect for a change.   Maybe.

I knew it was going to take two classes periods to administer the Physics EOC Field test and wanted us to made those allowances.

They didn’t — only allowed for one class period.

We’ve had to punt, but it’s going well.

For me, it’s a three day at school week as I am having surgery on Thursday.  Details on that on the diabetes blog if you care.

I’ve got to Field Test all the physics students on Wednesday.  I need to change the proxy on two of the workstations next door just in case we have to use them.

I had to come up with an paper assignment for my students that day — I’ve put together an exam review packet.  I am going to have the physics teacher pick them up and give them to me and I’ll hand them back out next week.  I am also going to have the kiddos put their answers in online and have a grade for them that way too.

I have to come up with lesson plans for next week and notes for my substitute.

Finishing installing Rosetta Stone today — I think I just have to add the management part, everything else should be installed.  And that has to be done today.

And push on TAC to get the wireless up for our new principal.

And I’m sure someone else will find something I just HAVE to do, like the Rosetta Stone project.

School districts turning to Twitter to speed up communications

School districts turning to Twitter to speed up communications | tallahassee.com | Tallahassee Democrat

Of course, my district is blocking Twitter.

But speed is one of the things I do like about Twitter.  I’ve got certain people that I am really interested in going to my mobile phone, the rest go to regular Twitter.

Though I might not get to go …

I got an email today asking me if I wanted to go to the Tapestry Workshop in Virginia in July — well it said last we they asked me but I swear I got an email saying it was full …

And the cool part is that they pay you to go.

Hope it works out, if so, I’ll drive to Virginia and back and even let my family torture me.  Might take a side trip to DC since I’ve never been.

Yes, I have a Chumby, http://www.chumby.com — did you expect anything less? Well, I actually have two and one on the way.

They have a mother’s special going on — will probably go away or become a father’s day special and I bought one which arrived last week.  It solves the clock problem in the living room, but still doesn’t solve the really dark pixels on the one in my bedroom.

I was really disappointed when the pixels started going dark and dummy me didn’t look at the warranty until it was too late. I would have replaced the first one long ago, if they had given me any sort of price break and so with the Mother’s day, I jumped for it.

So I bought another one, and it’s on its way.  I think the wireless radio is starting to fail on the original one. Considering it’s been on and working for quite a while — I got one of the first, I don’t feel too bad about replacing it and it will give me one to play with.   I’m just about ready to ditch the clock radio.

I also got back into Chumby development and starting to program in Flash.  I figured out last night, with the help of a person on the forum, that the graphics front end of Flash scares me and makes all my logical fly out of my brain.  Now that I understand that, it’s going better.

I now have my Chumby in the living room programmed so that at 10:00 pm it tells me to go to bed, and stops that behavior at 12:00 pm Wrote a little flash widget that displays "Go to Bed" text.

I have it working in CS3 but haven’t tried it again in CS4.

And this is freaky — the Chumby people even accepted it as a Widget!