BOTBALL!!

Updated with pictures!

The competition board and our robots in action!

Taylor, Grant and I discussing strategies for reprogramming.

The team watching the competition. The five boys
surrounding me are on our team.

Original Post:

What a fun, fun day! Today was the Botball competition and we loaded up our robots, our toolboxes, our computers, and our students and went over to Carnegie Mellon to showcase our stuff. Lots of lessons later, we didn't place in any of the categories but we did receive a "Judges' Choice Award" for our robot designs. The kids had a great time and, although they are dead tired, are already thinking about next year's competition. I'll post pictures tomorrow when I finally get my hands on some.

You know..

... you live in the middle east when you pull into the grocery store parking lot and realize that the Porsche Cayenne parked next to you has been left running while its owner went inside. I couldn't believe it! The owner possibly felt comfortable enough with middle east justice or was just so filthy rich that he/she didn't mind the car being stolen.

Welcome to Doha.

Recovery

After two naps yesterday, I was finally rid of the migraine. Or so I thought. Nasty bugger decided to return and attacked me all night. Today is much better.

I'm up at school working on writing my major paper, kind of like a thesis just not as big, for my masters degree. It's a gorgeous day and I'm sitting in the senior commons, a place in school with windows two stories tall. Birds are flying around outside the windows and I'm energized to write. Wahoo!

Okay, break time is over now. See ya!

Migraines are for the birds

When I was a kid, I would get a migraines often and have to go in to my mom's bedroom because it was the darkest and quietest room in the house and I would sleep it off. Now that I'm an adult, the don't come around as often but when they do, they are whoppers. I've been fighting a bad headache off and on for three days and so it was no surprise last night that it turned into a full fledged migraine. Yuck. Queasy, dizzy, hungry but nauseous, pounding, pounding, pounding. Thankfully, these days there are better over-the-counter medicines to help. Thank you, Excedrine Migraine! I took two pills and slept through the night. Now that I'm awake, my head feels about 5 feet big/wide and a little light-headed, but that's pretty normal for the after-effects. There is still some lingering pain so I'll wait to see what it does before I decide to take more meds and go back to sleep or not. Or maybe I'll just go back to sleep.

Thank you, Lord, for sick days. It feels so weird to be home when everyone else is at school. I put more birdseed out on the balcony so I could watch the birds come and listen to them sing. It looks like it's going to be a hot day here!

Seniors

All year long, I've had this one particular Senior boy in my AP computer science class who has tried to get me to slow down, to not give so much homework (or any), and to go off on tangents during class. He has annoyed me to death! There were days I actually did not want to see him or hear his voice. Now they have finished all the course materials and are taking practice exams to prepare them for the big one on May 5th. Now he says to me, "Thank you, Miss T. This practice is really helpful." :-D Aaaaahhhhhh. Finally.

Still...

...dealing with writer's block. Ugh!!!

On a different note, here is what my Robotics students have been doing lately.

Kids...

...Just hang around them long enough and you'll get the laugh you need. Today, I heard a robotics student say, "There should be a robot powered by sheer awesomeness. Then I could power it just by being in the room."

Ah, no self-confidence issues for him! :-P

Need a laugh

I need a laugh today. I'm exhausted, have tons of work to do and I can't concentrate one iota. Hope you enjoy this laugh as much as I do. Laughter is medicine for the soul...

This is complements of www.failblog.org and it was posted by Marie-Josée. Thanks for the laughs! One note on failblog, there is a g-rated version link at the top of their page.

Git R Done

A colleague at school ends his emails with "Git R Done." And that's just what I need to do. My paper for my masters degree, I just need to git r done. I absolutely hate writer's block and don't kn ow how to get around it. As well, my sugars are still a bit higher than they should be and that makes me sleepy. I took a 5-hour nap yesterday, then slept 7 hours last night, and I'm yawning as I write this.

Okay, gonna run to the grocery store now. Then I'll write!

20.3 - Yikes!

So the excitement for the day is my blood sugar, 20.3, where normal fasting is between 4.4 and 6.6. These are numbers are the European values used to measure it. To get the US numbers, multiply by 18.

The nurse at my school ordered me to go to the hospital. I ended up in the ER getting saline. By the time they took measurements, the level was going down so they decided not to give me insulin. Wahoo!! It appears that a recent change in my diabetes medications was not doing what it was expected to do so the amounts are being changed again. Oh well...

Now for more FUN excitement, I get to build the Botball competition table this afternoon. Double wahoo for power tools!!!!!!! If you don't know about Botball, it's a robotics competition where student teams build robots to manuver around the table and collect objects to earn points. For more info, visit www.botball.org. Here is a short video from them about this year's tournament:

You can see the table that we will build this afternoon. My team has built two different robots to perform two different functions on the table and their ideas are great. I really hope they do well!

Starting up again!

Wow, I haven't blogged in 4 months! You folks are patient with me. It's been a real rollercoaster with my job here from the end of December to the beginning of March. I was facing an absolute TON of work (about 16 hours a day), most of which had no real effect on the students and I was getting quite depressed. So I stopped blogging. I stopped communicating. I sometimes do that when things are rough because I can't seem to find a way to be positive. As I was taught, if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. While that maxim definitely has its place in this world, I'm learning that there are times when you just need to be honest, with yourself and the people around you.

I'm learning this from a woman who is blogging very honestly about her experiences with her very sick son, Stellan. Go to www.mycharmingkids.net and read. And then pray. You see, Stellan wasn't expected to survive until birth because of a heart defect discovered while he was still in the womb. Now he is about 5 months old but back in the hospital with a VERY fast heartbeat. MckMamma, as she refers to herself, has to be the most real blogger I've read in a long time. I hope her tales impact you as much as they have me.

On more mundane matters, school is better now that I'm not teaching a 4th prep (the Algebra II class) and I can focus on trying to really get my head wrapped around the new courses I'm teaching. I'm happier and I'm enjoying what I'm doing now. The AP Comp Sci class had one team enter a programming competition at Carnegie Mellon Qatar last weekend and they took 3rd place. Way cool, especially since I feel I haven't done them justice this year. The robotics team has a competition on the 25th and it's called Botball, if any of you have heard of it before. If not, check it out at botball.org. It's a fun competition.

The biggest thing on my plate right now is finishing my major paper (almost like a thesis) for my master's degree. It is overtaking everything but the work is soooooo interesting so it's okay. Please pray that I don't procrastinate AT ALL IN THE NEXT WEEK as it seriously needs to get done and I'm such a distractable person.

Well, anyway, sorry to be away so long. I'll try to get photos of my trip to Ethiopia up and the few others I've taken since. Love you all!!!