Summer 2009! (Updated 6/15/2009)

There are so many things to do this summer, where will I find the time? Since a lot of you asked what I will do this summer, here are a few things. No, teaching summer school is not on the list!

Zoo: On Tuesday (June 2) Mrs. Cantlin and I plan to go to the Birmingham Zoo to visit Victoria and Wilbur, the wombats! I will let you know how it goes and will try to get some pictures but if they are kept in a darkened indoor exhibit during the day I probably won't be able to. Click here to see the March article from the Birmingham News that I had posted on the chalk board. Update: Mrs. C. and I went to the zoo on Tuesday, a good day to go because it is half-price ($6 each instead of $12) and it is open until 7 p.m. instead of 5 p.m. - but Victoria and Wilbur wouldn't come out to play while we were there. The zoo people we asked kept saying "they are nocturnal." Well, I know that, everyone knows wombats are nocturnal. At another zoo where we saw them they had a darkened indoor viewing area where you could see the wombats sleeping. Anyway, we went there early in the day to avoid the heat but to even have a chance to see Victoria and Wilbur you need to go in the late afternoon. They get fed sometime between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. so plan your trip accordingly if you want to see them. Tuesday would be nice because surely they will be up and about by 7 p.m. Check at the Kangaroo Kountry exhibit often and ask for help so you don't miss them like we did. Since we missed the wombats we had to make our own picture - click here and scroll down.

Golf: I played 18 holes at Heritage Golf in Oneonta. I played another 18 holes at Heritage Golf.

Reading: I am about 230 pages into "The Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith . This book is also free online, you can download it and read it on your computer or even your cell phone courtest of Project Gutenberg - free "Weath of Nations" - click here. Other books I have already purchased and will read this summer are "The Age Of Fighting Sail: The Story of the Naval War of 1812" by C.S. Forester and "American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House" by Jon Meachum. As I finish these I will have time to select and buy more to read before school starts in the fall. Any ideas? More books: On a recent trip to Books-A-Million in Trussville I bought "Bardisms: Shakespeare For All Occasions" by Edelstein and "I Never Metaphor I Didn't Like" by Dr. Mardy Grothe. These look interesting but are "light" reading and I'll probably start these soon and read them in between the "heavier" books I already have for the summer. I am done with Bardisms: Shakespeare For All Occasions, it is very good but it is not he first book about Shakespeare that I would recommend unless you plan on making a lot of speaches and want advice on how to find and use an applicable quote for the occasion from Shakespeare. The book I recommend, and it is also mentioned in this book, is "Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare". I got this 20 or 30 years ago and it is still THE BEST! Of course, I am asuming you already have the complete works of Shakespear which you can get for free, again courtesy of Project Gutenberg - free Complete Works of Shakespeare - click here.

Computers: I started reading "Excel 2007 Power Programming with VBA" by John Walkenbach. I am on page 152, it is going to take a while to finish this but it looks interesting and useful. I have a new 1 Terrabyte external hard drive (it was only $99 for 1,000,000,000,000 bytes of storage!) Wow!I am going to setup this hard drive as an online backup for my gaming computer. Speaking of which, I plan to update the "Mr. C. Builds A PC" story with changes and experiences I have had with this PC in the two years since I built it. I plan to finish the online PHP/MySQL course I have been working on the last two summers! I find the open source software to be the most difficult to learn - there is too much information and the details hide the big picture making it (for me at least) tough to get traction, I keep spinning my wheels instead of actually writing software programs that solve problems for me. I found Cold Fusion/Access a much easier (though very expensive) way to program databases. Trying to replace this commercial pair of programs with the free pair has made it clear how good these free programs are, but I am frustrated I can't learn to use them on my own as readily as I did the commercial programs (yes, I get frustrated trying to learn too - but I don't give up!). I also plan to work on learning more Flash/Actionscript but I haven't planned out what I am going to do yet. I purchased "The Orange Box" which is a collection of 5 "shoot-em-up" computer games. The one I started with and am now trying to learn is called "Team Fortress 2." Google Docs: These are free online applications. I have started to experiment with one type of Google Doc called a "Form". It has potential for doing things like surveys or online quizzes. Still experimenting, try it out!

Movies On TV I Have Watched: The 1950 version of "Treasure Island" - thumbs up - Arrrrrr Matey - I give it an A+ . I highly recommend reading anything by Robert Lois Stevenson and Treasure Island is an excellent first choice if you have not read any of his other books. Click here for a treat if you are interested in his books. "Kidnapped" is superb. I really like "The Master of Ballantrae." The 1934 movie "It Happened One Night" - it is a romantic comedy with Clark Gable and Claudett Colbert. Cute but I only give it a B. The 1941 movie The Lady Eve with Barbara Stanwyck. Very good, thumbs up! A book in progress that is being reseached by the hero (protagonist) is titled "O'Brother Where Art Thou?" was the source of the title of the recent movie of the same name, this was done as a sign of respect for this classic movie. The 1944 movie "Double Indemnity" Fantastic. A great thriller. Fred MacMurray is a super bad guy and Barbara Stanwyck is always good. Edward G. Robinson shows that a good actor can even make math sound exciting! Thumbs way up. The 1944 "To Have and Have Not" with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. I wanted to like this more than I did, and it is very historical as it is the first Bogie/Bacall movie, but it was too close to one of my all-time favorites: Casablanca (1942). The African Queen (1951) is tied with Casablanca as my favorite Bogie film, I also like the "film noir" Philip Marlow movies with Bogie, particularly "The Maltese Falcon" does it get any better (spoiler alert, don't read this if you are going to watch this great movie) than what Bogie (Sam Spade) tells the woman who he fell in love with (Brigid) but who obviously manipulated and betrayed him: "Maybe I do (love you). I'll have some rotten nights after I've sent you over, but that'll pass...I hope they don't hang you, precious, by that sweet neck. Yes, angel, I'm gonna send you over. The chances are you'll get off with life. That means if you're a good girl, you'll be out in 20 years. I'll be waiting for you. If they hang you, I'll always remember you." ........:-):-)lol.

Motorcycle: My "Battery Tender" got fried by a lightning strike from about 3 or 4 weeks ago. I discovered this when I went to start the bike and the battery was dead. The GFI outlet the Battery Tender was on was tripped, another one on that end of the house tripped during the storm but I didn't notice this one since the only thing I have plugged into it is my Battery Tender. Since the battery was 4 years old I have bought a replacement and charged it up. I ordered a new Battery Tender - it is Deltran's Battery Tender Junior. These are great devices for batteries that may sit for any length of time (ex. boat batteries, ATV batteries, tractor/mower batteries, Mr. C.'s motorcycle battery :-). They are "smart" devices and they keep the battery fresh without overcharging it. I reinstalled the battery, fired it up and rode it around the local street to test it out and warm it up, ran great. I pressure washed the bike and am ready to change the oil & oil filter, adjust and lube the chain, and put air in the tires.

School Stuff: I went to a one day training class at the Blount Career Technical Center that covered pacing (how fast to go) of math classes. A good time was had by all :-).