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By Kyle, June 11, 2008 9:50 am

I begin this post with the following disclaimer: if you’ve ever found symptoms in yourself of ADHD, you’ll love this post!

First, on my way to work this morning, I laughed out loud as I passed billboard you see to your left, an advertisement for the local grocery store Vons, whose advertising department became the victim of incredibly and hilariously bad timing. Oops.

Also, as of July 1, California motorists will no longer be able to legally drive while holding a cell phone. Although I’m used to this (my home state of NY was the first to enact such a law), I find it ironic because I can think of about 5 things off the top of my head that I do while driving that are certainly more dangerous than talking on a cell phone (the above picture should give you a clue).

Funny math stuff. Today, received two humorous math images (seriously, most are lame…..these are good). The first was a cartoon off a blog that a friend subscribes to, describing the purity of the discipline.

The second was an email from my sister-in-law who forwarded an image entitled "How you can tell you’ve pissed off a mathematician", in which a disgruntled Verizon customer pays his bill.

More randomness. As you may recall, I got a new computer about 3 months ago, thanks to DHL who lost my old laptop in a shipping mishap. Interestingly enough, my new PC has been sporting Windows Vista, which I, while initially hesitant about, became more and more in love with due to some amazing new features.

  First, is the extremely customizable Sidebar. Mac users will recognize this instantly as the Windows incarnation of the familiar widgets (small, lightweight programs that are designed to do only one thing). So now, on my desktop, I have instant access to the weather, my recent Office documents, the recently opening films, and an iTunes window which displays the current iTunes track (in this case, George Harrison’s country-ish Behind That Locked Door, off the best post-Beatles solo record of any of them, All Things Must Pass).

Second, is Windows Live Writer, a program that I am now using to write blog posts and publish them online to my blog. Much in the same way that Outlook is to Email, Windows Live Writer is to blogging. I’m super excited about using this tool to make my blog posts faster, quicker, and more exciting! This thing is powerful. Wow. Anyone who does blogging using any type of computer that’s actually useful (i.e. not a Mac), should consider using Live Writer.

Finally, thanks to the reminders of folks like Douglas Hofstadter, is what I used to actually take the photo above, the Vista snipping tool (to which I assigned a shortcut key), which is a fully customizable feature that allows me to take full or partial snapshots of whatever I’m looking at on my desktop. Very cool.

Anyway, that’s way too much for today….but that’s what happens when you have ADHD.

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By Kyle, June 8, 2008 8:25 am

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Wow. Even some of the greatest artists ever still had their share of junk they released. The iTunes random selected this morning has chosen Paul McCartney’s No More Lonely Nights, which is a pretty crummy ballad of a song and simply proves the fact that all of us, yes all of us have off-days. Luckily, for me, the number of so called “off-days” with my kids grows steadily fewer with each passing year.

Now we are down to two weeks, although it certainly seems like a strange time to be protesting the District budget cuts with a one hour strike Friday morning. Whatever. Almost 80 of us joined thousands of other teachers across the city in the march (which, for us, consisted of walking around the block and standing at large intersections waving at cars, many of which honked their horns in support). We’ll just have to wait and see what happens as a result (my guess would be “nothing”).

Other random bits from the last few days: A good friend of mine is a special education technology program director at a local community college and for his training had to administer the Woodcock Johnson intelligence test on a guinea pig, who was, you guessed it, me. I think I passed the intelligence test, but there were certainly sections that were downright frustrating. There were times during it that I definitely felt like there was no way I could be smarter than a 5^th grader, but I think I at least passed.

Tonight is Game 2 of the ultra-hyped NBA Finals between the Celtics and the Lakers. Luckily, I was not able to watch the travesty that was Game 1 (although I do now think that Celtic Paul Pierce may have a future in Hollywood) because I was at a celebration dinner for a student and her mom with many of her other teachers. This 8^th grader worked so hard in her classes over the past three years at school and got into a really prestigious Brentwood private school. As I left after the dinner with some of the teachers, we remarked to each other how it is kids like this that make it worth putting up with some of the other clowns we deal with on a regular basis.

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By Kyle, June 4, 2008 10:40 am

I can’t believe how fast this year has gone by after Spring Break. Usually the months following Spring Break create what is usually the longest and most difficult unbroken stretch of school. The kids typically disengage, and it’s not much later until the teachers do as well. For some strange reason, that has not occurred for me this year. After Spring Break, my students and I dove right into preparation for the California Standards Test (CST), and halfway through May they took the test. For the past three weeks (after the test), they’ve been scrambling to make sure they’ve turned in enough work (and earned enough points) in order to earn a passing grade in my class, and thus be eligible for our culmination ceremony that takes place on June 20^th. Now that the deadline for failing students has passed, the question is what on earth to do for two weeks?

For this, I’ve turned to one of the best integrations of pop-culture with my profession, a television program called NUMB3RS, a CBS series not unlike CSI, in which the FBI tries to solve crimes. The fun twist is that the main character has a brother who is a mathematician who joins him and uses math to help the FBI solve these crimes. (For those of you who grew up on PBS in the 80s, you might recall Square One and MathNet)! Anyway, for the final couple of classes we’ve got together, I’ve been showing my students some of the episodes, which they love. What is better yet, is that there are even pre-made activities for each episode that I can print and use with the students so they can actually do some of the mathematics in the episodes! Today my students will be doing some examples with the Goldbach Conjecture! Cool.

Anyway, as school wraps up, I begin to contemplate summer projects, the least of which include polishing several books off my reading list, cleaning and reorganizing my garage, or organizing 4 years worth of data files related to teaching. Fun.

Finally, as randomness determines that another chapter from my Blue Like Jazz
audio book begins to play in the background, I reflect and ponder as this year comes to a close about how much I am loving teaching despite all the not-so-fun elements that are now becoming more and more a part of it (such as dealing with an inept and ineffective district, as well as dealing with all the personal and personnel politics in the school and in the department).

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By Kyle, June 1, 2008 9:50 am

It’s Sunday morning, and the random iTunes shuffle thought it would be funny to play some hard rock this early on a Sunday. Ok, ok, I get it, I’m awake now! Only recently have I been exposed to the band Tool (the song is entitled The Pot), specifically, thanks to a Christmas gift from my brother Kyle (yes, that’s actually correct, for those of my readers who didn’t know I had a brother, let alone one with the same name – I’m glad I’ve finally graduated from being known under the auspices of “little Kyle” to that of “California Kyle”, which has a much better ring to it). I’ve never been much of one for modern hard rock, but elements of it are certainly quite interesting, especially the fact that the band rarely binds themselves to a simple 4/4 or even 3/4 time signature, venturing far off the beaten path into the world of 5/4, 7/4, 11/4, and dare-I-say-it, even 1/4!

Also, I just realized that this is officially the 100^th posting of this blog! In reality, this is about the 3^rd blog I’ve had (since two false starts last summer) and I’m super excited that it’s been something I’ve been able to consistently keep up with for 100 posts already! Some highlights from the last 100 posts:

Total Visits: 1,928

Best Day: Friday, March 21, 2008 (132 visits)

Best Month: March 2008 (451 visits)

Worst Month: February 2008 (32 visits) – “What happened people???” I only had 4 posts in March and 8 in February?!?!

The Most Visited Post: Entitled “Healthy Competition“, I wrote this December 13^th posting following the revelation of steroid abuse by a number of major league baseball players. I guess I thought that what was happening was both simultaneously sad and ironic.

The Most Followed Link: I try to include relevant (if not also interesting) links to some of the events that I refer to in my blog. The link that you followed most often was the Select-a-Candidate link from my post Election Day (back last November) which points to a page that will help you select a candidate based upon issues. Hmmm….for some reason, I don’t think this link may be that relevant much longer.

The Most Commented-On Post: This is the recently posted “A Whirlwind Weekend“, in which a whopping 5 of you apparently liked my new car. Seriously, you guys are a bunch of lurkers. Comment more…

Finally, in celebration of my 100^th post, here is a list of 100 bests across the internet! Enjoy!

Top 100 April Fools Day Hoaxes

Top 100 Baseball Players of All Time

Top 100 Greatest Guitar Solos

Top 100 Beers in the World

Top 100 Religious Books of the 20^th Century

Top 100 Mathematical Theorems

Top 100 Cartoons

Top 100 Moments in Los Angeles Sports History

Worst 100 Ideas of the 20^th Century

(And my personal favorite, which was circulated back during my jr. high days): 100 Ways To Order a Pizza