That may be a stretch as no word yet on whether she will actually make an appearance in the game or not. She is however involved with the project. I applaud her for branching out and finding something to do in her retirement, but have to wonder if she is suffering from dementia. A game to teach children about the court system? Really? Never mind the topic, should any one educated enough to use “vitriolic” effortlessly in conversation ever be involved with a video game? She is just about as far from having her finger on the pulse of current trends as possible.

That sounds a bit harsh, no real details of the game have been released, and it is after all going to be an educational game for children. Thinking back on the computer games back when I was in school, it didn’t take much. Although I do not really remember learning much from “Oregon Trail”. “Where in The World is Carmen Sandiego” was by far more entertaining and probably more educational. Perhaps O’Connor’s new game will be able to achieve the same level of success.

Coming soon: “Justice: Bring the Hammer Down On Those Godless Activists” .

And now onto the regularly scheduled programming.

Talk about having some balls, but apparently a younger gorilla snuck in and did the dirty deed with one of the elder gorilla’s concubines. In the gorilla world this is apparently doubly taboo as not only was the gorilla younger, but it seems that most male gorilla’s are not allowed to mate until the are at least 12 yrs of age.Brass Monkey, that funky monkey. He just snuck right in there and got what he wanted.

My wife recently told me a story from her child hood. She had a friend in highschool, ( when I heard the story I thought it was elementrary school), that she wanted to ride the school bus with. But her father did not allow them to have friends stay over during the school week. This did not deter my wife. Her friend came home with her. Their master plan was for her to hide and sleep in the closet. Unfortunately her father through a wrench into the plans by coming home sick early from work. She was not smart enough to think he might notice a difference in her behavior, ie staying back in her bedroom instead of watching tv in the living room. So he comes back and pops his head into the room to check on them and the friend darts back into the closet. Busted. And in less then a year.

The man had to have cameras installed in his house to catch the woman. And he only became suspecious the past few months when he finally noticed food missing. I love food, I would have noticed missing food much sooner.

I live in Georgia. I grew up in Georgia. I got me some learning on in Georgia. I find it unacceptable for that many students to fail the test. I find it unacceptable that they are throwing out the test scores because it just doesn’t seem right for that many to fail. Something is wrong here. Either the tests do not reflect the curriculum, the teachers are not teaching the curriculum, or the students are just that stupid. My money is on all three. The tests seemed to always be just beyond the base curriculum, which is acceptable to test the extent of the students knowledge and skills. The teachers can only teach what they could get to in the amount of time they had, limited further by dealing with the students. And based on one of my universal rule that everyone is stupid, students are stupid.

“But my kid had all A’s and B’s in Social Studies and still failed”. How many teachers have a mandate that says the students must have a certain grade or higher? I never remember middle school being terribly difficult. Sure you could classify my as one of the smart kids in school. But even when I did poorly there was always a way to make that poor test score up. And I could easily believe it has gotten even easier with even more extra credit being given out. I do not want to go off on a tirade on what is wrong with our educational system so I will stop where this seems to be heading and move on to other questions I have concerning the CRCT.

First, have they investigated the difference between the test and the curriculum that is supposed to be taught?
Second, have they investigated the difference between the curriculum that is supposed to be taught and the one that actually is?
It seems premature to just throw out the entire test with out answering either of those questions with yes.

Third, why are the schools not getting the test results? I would think the schools, if given the test results, could pinpoint exactly what problems the students had, which would then help to answer questions one and two. Supposedly they have gotten some feed back from a few teachers, which is good. However this is only part of the investigation. You must also have a neutral party compare the state curriculum with the test and not simply rely on the teachers. Of course the teachers are going to say the test is not testing what they taught, but you must verify that they are teaching what they were expected to. The southern states are NOT a separate country no matter how many of use think they should be since the civil war should never have happened based on the U.S.’s own declaration of independence (although it said nothing of separating peaceably and no provisions for succeeding from the union were really provided for in the constitution, although if I am mistaken on that last part by all means feel free to correct me, I did after all go to public schools in Georgia).

Fourth, why was this problem brought to light a week before most state schools go on summer break? This should have been seen and addressed well before now. I know I would hate it if I had to take another standardized test just before, or worse yet just after, summer break starts.

Fifth, why do both the curriculum and the tests have to be changed to in order to properly assess the students knowledge and skills? It would seem that only one is at fault and only one must be adjust accordingly. Although I would not fault them for scrapping the whole curriculum and tests and starting over from scratch assuming that is the new curriculum and test are at the very least on par with the level and amount of knowledge and skill as required by its predecessor. Otherwise they will just set education back even further.

Personally I have no problem simply failing all of the students and holding them all back another year. I personally fear that generation eventually being the ruling generation.

I may have misled you a bit with the title. Sorry, I have very little money so it would do you no good to try and sue me for false advertising, besides which I did say not exactly a talking, flying donkey. However the donkey was very much treated like a human. It got into a fight, beat a few people, and was thrown in the pokey until its bail could be paid. I am not sure which had more to drink, the police, the donkey or the people assaulted by the donkey. In either case, I bet that’s the last time they give him the worm. Or perhaps the Chiapas police are not real police, but are in fact animal control officers in disguise as police.

So the donkey didn’t talk (it didn’t really fly either), but the parrot sure enough did. Trained to repeat its owners address if lost. Nice. Just one question, how did the owner teach it to recognize when it was lost? Teaching the address is one thing, but teaching it to recognize when it was lost is another. Unless of course they simply taught it to respond with the address when prompted with a certain question or questions. And it refused to talk to the police. Perhaps it has watched too many crime drama’s and wanted his lawyer present before he said anything, just in the off case he say something to incriminate himself. “yes, I stole the crackers. I can’t help it. That dry bland salty goodness just drives me over the edge.”

I have been toying with the idea of starting another blog, especially now that I have finished up with school and will hopefully have more time on my hands. There are plenty of personal diary blogs out there and I do not particularly feel like sharing nor do I think any would be all that interested in my life. The additional blog would like relate to my work and possibly hobbies I am trying to develop. Most likely I would start with the work related themed blog since I have more experience and stories to write about. But just what would it cover? Well I am a Software QA Engineer. So it would deal with software quality, development, and testing. Rather boring for the average reader, but could prove very useful for me as it would provide a way for me to organize, collect, and vent on software testing methodologies, strategies, technologies, theories, and so on. Anyway, on the ulterior motive part.

Creating a second or more blog is rather trivial. Maintaining it just as trivial (granted more work, the work is not really any harder). The trick is advertising and keeping the advertising managed across all your blogs. Well them sharp fel’ers over at Entrecard have provide what looks to be a very promising means to handling this (at least managing your entrecard advertising). You can now link your different blogs to the same entrecard account, allowing you to switch “blogs” without having to logout, clear your cache, and log back in. It promises to manage the cache for you. But I do not have a second blog so I have not really tested this out yet. But if you have multiple blogs and belong to entrecard, I suggest you try it out.

In other un-related entrecard news, they have released the free entrecard official ebook. I have given it a quick read and it looks great for newbies. It provides some pretty straightforward steps to getting started, and a few more “advanced” features as well. Anyone already familiar with entrecard may not find it to be that useful. Although it does provide some brief tips on how to keep readers once you get them to your blog. It is not the world’s best book, although for now it is the world’s best book on entrecard.

Back to the original original topic of the post, dissociative identity disorder (DID). Before starting another blog I think I will have to take some time and brainstorm a few ideas, not just for general theme for the blog, but some initial content to see if I have enough material to actually start another blog or not. With that, I now return to the regularly scheduled content (at least if something crazy or odd happens that is worth writing about).

The chased the mouse through the power plant and into the high voltage lines, subsequently causing a power outage. No word on whether the mouse was caught or not, or if the “woman of the house” chased the bad cat out of the house for trying to catch the mouse.

I never did really understand that part of it. Why would you shoo the cat out of the house for trying to catch a mouse (and not shoo the mouse) when your reaction to seeing the mouse was to scream and jump up on the table? And Tom was half the size of a human. That is one damn big cat and I would think it would cause massive destruction in all of its other cat activities and not just while chasing Jerry. I did like the fact that they did not speak, although it was ruined when the little bird was added. I am still trying to decide if they hate each other or not, and whether Tom chases jerry simply for keeping up the traditional roles society has placed on them. Not to mention adding a dog into the mix. I can buy into the dog chasing the cat, but have a difficult time believing the dog would protect the mouse. Personally I would think the dog would proceed to chase the mouse after finishing with the cat.

Recent studies have shown that cats stop killing somewhere around 12 to 15 mice  if placed in a room with mice. This could suggest that they only kill what they need. But if that is the case then if you provide enough equivalent food would they still kill the same number of mice? If so, would this not then suggest that they also kill for fun and not just necessity? So then you could surmise that Tom chases Jerry for the fun of it and not because he needs to eat. I know my cat chases her stuffed mice because they are filled with catnip. So perhaps there is a drug deal gone wrong that drives him.

Take for example: Paging Dr. Jones: Crystal skull stolen from New Age shop near Los Angeles
A store had on display a crystal skull. No, not an original crystal skull, as they admit it is perhaps only around 500yrs old (which I still find a little hard to swallow). In any case, the store had it on display and someone decided to take it. It was not the most valuable item in the store, or even on the alter on which it was being displayed, yet it is the only thing that was taken.

And in a throwback to “Temple of Doom”, Nepal king makes animal sacrifices to power goddess. I thought Indy had taking care of this little problem already. He killed the bad guy, got the stone with the three lines, and returned the children to the village. And Didn’t remove Cate Capeshaws heart in the process. But apparently the great Kali’s power (which make sense since she is the Hindu god of power) reaches beyond the fictional world of movies and still drives people in the real world. As long as they don’t force me to drink that nightmare blood and there is no giant lava pit nearby, then things should be OK if you are taking a trip there.

Thus the SAM LSD, aka Self Actuated Mechanical Linear Sand Disclocator. That seems to be suitably gewgaw.

So now for the final SAM LSD (and you will have to forgive the shoddy camera work, I was using a hand held usb webcam and you may want to turn the volume down as the sound can get rather annoying).

The robot is done.

The reports are submitted.

The degree project completed.

Now just waiting for the grades to be posted.

Assuming I did well on all the reports, I expect another semester of all A’s. Making my final gpa for my master’s a nice even 4.0. I must admit though, I am very disappointed in the program. My undergrad degree at GA Tech was much more challenging. Not just because it was initial exposure to content, but because the professors were much stricter.

Should students in a master’s level program really be allowed to turn all the assignments up until the last day of class? With no penalties?

I also expected a little more structure and specialization to the program, along with more guidance and advice from a faculty advisor. Particularly as it related to the “degree program project”. I suppose it is my own fault for doing a project not sponsored by a faculty member, but rather a project actually related to my current job and occupation. Stupid me for trying to make it relevant.

 Anyways it is done. I am more then certain I passed everything and very certain I got that 4.0 for the semester and thus the program. But you never know.

In any case it means that I can now resume the regularly scheduled bloggin activities. So stay tuned.