Andrew Krause Candidate, Coweta County Board of Education District 1

Those Crazy Kids Are In Love

Two of my best friends in the world were High School sweet hearts who married long after High School was over. He joined the Marines and was probably headed for Viet Nam for all anyone knew. She married another and had a family. They kept in touch, and years later circumstances would bring them back together. They've been happily married for more than two decades and are about the cutest couple you'll ever see. Maybe it's because I respect and admire them both so much that hearing stories like theirs warms the cockles of my heart*.

So here's another: Karen Wilcox and Mike Wilson met in homeroom in the 7th grade at South East Junior High in Iowa City, IA. And fell in love. Then her family moved away and she broke it off rather than have a long distance relationship. They would both go on to be married twice, and divorced twice. Forty-eight years later, they would rekindle their relationship. On August 9th, just before noon, they got married. The ceremony was held in the very classroom they shared as home room**.

^{*Cockles are not listed on any anatomical drawings of the human heart I've ever seen. I learned the phrase from a nice church going lady who lives up near Carolton. Near as I can tell, a Cockle is a type of bottom dwelling bivalve that can be found in the coolest, bottom most regions of brackish coastal waters. So I mean, if something warms the cockles of your heart, (a) it must be warm, and (b) you need to see a cardiologist about getting those cockles removed.}

^{** The exact date and time was 8/9/10 11:12 am.}

Quick Review: Droid Incredible, from HTC

If you read between the lines of my iOS 4.0 review, the one thing you may have heard is the word "disappointment." Simply, the iPhone 3G has been effectively crippled by the bloated iOS software. It ceases to function as a phone. The answer? Upgrade to the iPhone 4. But hold on a minute there, professor... that $200 introductory price isn't available to loyal, bill paying customers of AT&T. It's only for newbs. So here I am with a phone that doesn't really work as a phone, or anything else, and AT&T's answer is for me to pay $600 for an iPhone 4. This could easily get me into a rant about how corporations don't get the concept of "loyalty", but instead... there's a happy ending.

The Big Jiggle?

Big Bang Theory has been the predominant cosmological theory regarding the foundation of the universe for several decades. Since it was first proposed by a Roman Catholic Priest in Belgium (I kid you not here, folks), it has proven robust and has been experimentally verified in a number of ways. Unfortunately, there are a few gaping holes in the theory.

Droid does Java. Andrew does Java. Ergo, Andrew does Droid.

Today I managed to dust off some old memories of software programming. Back in 1996, one of the hottest new technologies was a software programming language called Java. Java was supposed to be the future of the web. That got derailed, primarily by Adobe Flash, but mostly by it's own overweight memory requirements. Java applets that ran on webpages required gobs of memory, while Flash seemed to run quickly and easily. As a young budding software programmer, I had taught myself java, and quickly found it useless as a web technology.

Microsoft, Rich Nerds and Outrageous Learning

Businessweek's front-page article is about the efforts of the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation to reform education. One of Gate's cohorts has something to say about education too. And then there's Dunbar's number.

Lies, Damned Lies and Calculus

Tonight was another fun night of building electronic projects with our 101 snap kid. We did a project titled "Conductor Test". I used the opportunity to explain to my son the difference between a conductor, an insulator and also an important fact that most grown ups don't know: water (pure water at least) does not conduct electricity. Using some test leads connected to the project and suspended in distilled water, I showed this. Then, I had him slowly add salt to the water, and as he did the small lamp began to glow. The salt forms an electrolyte solution when dissolved in water, just like the flouride, calcium and chlorine in your municipal tap water makes it an electrolyte.

We're counting down now to the start of school. Brannon will be in the 3rd grade this year, which means he'll learn his multiplication tables. Actually, he learned multiplication and division last year, a concept I demonstrated geometrically with blocks. This summer I gave him a dose of algebra, teaching him variables and order of operations. My goal is to be able to teach him differential calculus by the time he's in 7th grade. But according to Dr Arthur Benjamin of Harvey Mudd College, I should probably teach him to gamble.

Gravitational Transformers

Of the four fundamental forces of nature, we have known about gravity the longest. It governs every action we take. It has predictable effects which bind us to the surface of the planet. Our understanding of it makes everything from taking a sip of water to orbiting a satellite tricky. And yet, it's deceptively simple. Here on earth, two equations describe almost every action of gravity; the law of gravitation, and the ballistic formula. Yet, we know next to nothing about it. All the research has been directed towards weak-nuclear, strong-nuclear and electromagnetic forces. In fact, the most significant advance in the science of gravity occurred just over a week ago.

The ROKU Player

Cornerstone of my strategy to dump cable is using the Roku player to stream premium content online. The Roku N1050 is a small (6" x 6") set-top box. This is an odd device; there's nowhere to jam a disk, no display... there isn't even an off button. (The latter needs to be rethought; I've had to power cycle this thing once or twice.) The Roku player streams online content from online service providers. That means that it downloads videos over the Internets.

Antenna Adventures

The cable company would have you believe that you're paying for more then 200 channels. But when you look closely, 130 of those channels are music or pay-per-view. I have about 70 channels of programming. I can subtract the six religious channels I never watch, another five shopping channels, another six Spanish-language channels, the TV guide channel and channel 1 (doesn't exist on US televisions), and the count is now down to 51 channels. You know what, let's start with a count-up of channels I watch; History, Discovery, National Geographic, Fox News, Fox, Spike and Sci-fi. Maybe more... I would guess I watch about 10 channels. For this, I pay $50/month.