books are good

I mentioned the book "The trouble with boy's yesterday." Well all of what I said was true I just thought it would be kinda fun to go even deeper into to what I said about it yesterday. Not only are girls leading in all four main subjects lately but in the lower grades boys are not fairing any better. The book mentions that there was a point in history where adults believed that after the age of 3 it was extremely hard to learn anything while at the age of 3 and younger you could learn almost anything. This was proven wrong but then there was this faze with adults signing up kids into preschool hoping for them to learn everything there. The problem here is that even a good chunk of preschools are not made for boys. In fact the book gives examples of 2 boys getting into a fight because they waited in line to long for recess.

I am currently done with my research work on the social injustice project. The overall work took about an hour every day to get the work done but I am not done with the project quite yet. I still have to Make a map of the actual injustice going on in the world. This is going to be a pretty fun project but also quite the eye opener. For example one of the things that I found today was a map that showed the overall poverty of the lee summit area. What's scary about this is that almost all of the lee summit area is deep in poverty except a small pocket which is nowhere near poverty. Another example is the homeless problem within the same area. I didn't just show problems within missouri either I got problems from all over the world and I plan on taking a picture of this map when it is made and posting it.

Today I should finish up my 2nd draft on my Freakonomics essay! It shouldn't be that hard as I have been working on it slowly during the editing process. The cool part is that it will be near done after this editing. Hopefully all that will be left is the pretty presentation pieces including double spacing and titles and whatever they want me to do.

back to normal

Recently I have been reading a book known as "The Trouble With Boys." I found out that this is part of the reason why I am in home school right now and not in the public school district. This book is all about the extending gap between boys and girls in the school districts within the united states. The problem is that that gap with the girls leading is only getting bigger leaving us boys in the dust in the subjects we used to be extremely good in. In fact we used to excel in Math and Science while girls ruled in writing and reading. Sadly now the girls lead in all four of these.

One of my side work assignments within my home school is Social injustices. I am researching acts of social injustice around the world then me and Kristi are going to fill in a map with the locations of social injustice. The hard part about this is finding recent articles that actually help with the assignment as I found some articles from 2005 and even 2003  in my search so far and I am not allowed to use them. I find this assignment quite difficult but eye opening all at the same time.

Work is coming along nicely. I hope to have my Freakonomics paper readable by the end of December minimum. I know that it will not take that long to finish but there is still a chance of it being dragged out way to long. In fact I'm guessing is that if it goes out to long then the adults are going to set a deadline on the assignment. The paper is doing fine for now but there is still room to improve. I will also have to go back and double space and all the other fancy paper things necessary.

Back to the Grind

While yesterday I was going to write a blog entry the internet was being weird after unplugging everything in the house. We did manage to get everything to a manageable household again. The reason for all of the disorder in our house is because we had an extermination. Sadly things are rough in the house due to the fact that we are on a 2 week incubation period. I cannot help but be annoyed as now all of my routine was screwed up and this is the first normal day we have had in quite a while.

Yesterday me and Kristi had to leave the house so that the exterminators could do their job. So Kristi had it set up so that we could go and eat lunch and see a movie. The lunch was alright but nothing to amazing. It was just a cheeseburger and fries on my side but that wasn't what made the day amazing. I got to see the movie I've been wanting to see for quite a while now. The movie was Wreck it Ralph which despite looking like a kid's movie I found that many people could easily enjoy this movie without any explaining or coaxing to see the movie.

Wreck it Ralph did actually have a deeper meaning then what we see. I believe that this movie actually has at least 2 hidden meanings. One is that all things in life would be easier with one event or item. In life this one item could be money or the event could be saving a person from a burning building. The other meaning is that we judge people due to one problem that they have and they can never seem to be able to escape this problem. There is a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. that goes like this. “It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.” I believe this to mean that we should not tell man with nothing to pick himself up and move on with life. This can pertain to the movie just as easily as the meanings. Because there is Ralph who has no boots but is told to get over his position of being the bad guy.

Finally!

I am glad to have something to do with some actual purpose. This entire break we have been working on the garage. Not the storage but instead we were working on the house and then the garage. I was not really that relaxed this break except for yesterday. Yesterday for our hard work we got to go to the movies and eat dinner with dad. For dinner we got to eat some Mr. Goodcents subs before the movie. We all went to watch Rise of the Guardians as I was trumped on the decision between Rise of the Guardians and Wreck it Ralph.

I have to say I am sorry about no post on Thanksgiving I was sitting about and I completely forgot about my blog this weekend. As I mentioned I was busy this weekend and I was thinking a bit harder on the work I was needing to do after Thanksgiving. Honestly I can't help but feel that there wasn't that much to write about on Thanksgiving. We all got together this Thanksgiving, we ate some good food, messed around, talked a lot, and really didn't do much else.

Although I didn't feel like there was much of a break there is still some fun things that happened this break that can't be ignored. First of all there was Thanksgiving which I really cannot at all say that it was boring or just another average day. Then there was the finger food night at Kristi's sister's house. At finger food night I got to see Kristi's sister and parents, then I got to see the 4 other kids that were over there. Finally I got to go to the movie with dad, Nate, and Zoe.

Breaks!

The remainder of this week will be a break but don't worry about having no posts. I plan on stopping my posts until Thanksgiving then I will post on my holiday then continue posts on next Monday. I hope that everyone understands as there will be nothing to post about when tomorrow comes or on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I will make sure to make a good post on Thanksgiving if I can remember to do so as it is not a requirement.

So for today my big problem was with my editing. I know this is kinda sad since I have been editing for pretty much the last 2 months but let me explain. I am just now getting started with editing backwards and I am having a hard time coping with it. I am being told that I need to start getting into the habit of editing backwards. Yes I know that it will help but I can't help but not like it over the original form of editing.

On another note I will be getting a free day on next Monday. This is because I have finished all of this weeks work. Then of course I will still have to do things like my flashcards over the break and French. I really can't argue with the overall work that I have done this week much like other weeks this one has gone wonderfully.

Head First!

Thanksgiving is coming up really fast and we are all starting to prep for the oncoming storm of friends and family. This includes deep cleans within all of the rooms and some reorganizing. I also am going to be doing a super deep vacuuming today which includes moving things around the whole living room. Then this visit is a great excuse for us to go even deeper then appearance. This means that I will be cleaning underneath my bed and closet.

The Thanksgiving bash that I have always ends really well. I can't really argue with seeing all of the close family and friends. I get to see Grandma Kathy who is probably reading this blog as well as Kristi's parents then there is all of the people that might  show up other then us that are throwing the bash. I hope to see all of them at the feast as it is never the same without everybody there.

I am currently done with working at dad's job for a while so you will not have to hear about my dislike of the M2727 printer for a while. That is I don't know when I will go back or what I will do when I go to BE Tek. I don't think I will be going back anytime soon as I still have schoolwork to do so I don't believe that they would constantly pull me out of school to help them with inventory. That is as far as I know. I did have fun over there seeing people and I got to learn some stuff that I never learned before. Even better is the part about being paid for all of my work.

Day two: Massive pain

So to start off my blog I have to explain that soon after getting home yesterday I then went to Tae Kwon Do. I then found out that we were going to be doing a really extensive workout that day. After doing the workout I was in extreme pain, weak legs, and dizzy. I then continued with the idea to go to dads job today. The work was actually a lot harder then yesterday as it consisted of replacing optical drives, lifting and testing printers, and lunch.

I officially have worked with 3 printers enough to have a favorite. I like the HP 3390, the HP 3380 is alright and the HP m2727 sucks terribly. Only 2 of the m2727's worked out of the 5 I tested. Even worse is that they weren't even good for spare parts afterwards. The funny part is that there is one thing that I hate about printers that all HP printers share. Scanner Error 5 is extremely evil as it took many a good printer to the back of the store where they would then be thrown away. Of course it was still extremely fun working around BE TEK while it lasted.

The end of the week has come and I made through all of the week. I feel that the money I will be getting for my work at BE TEK will be hard earned and should not be wasted in one place. It shouldn't be wasted at all. So I will gladly agree with dad to open up a bank account and place my earned money inside so that I will not be to willing to spend it all right out the gate. I hope that this money can be properly invested somewhere in my future. If I can not find a decent investment then I will find something else to do with it later in my life.

industry and Teknology

Today I had agreed to go to work with dad to help him out with a huge load of equipment. So i went ahead and went with dad to work and saw a wall of work I was doing. The work really isn't that bad really. The first half of my day is just testing out monitors while the other half of my day is testing printers. I have so far only tested 44 monitors and 8 printers. 31 monitors were good while the remaining 13 monitors were bad. While for printers only 1 was completely shot and wasn't even worth putting up for sale.

In the middle of the day for lunch dad and I had some "Planet Sub" subsammiches. Now this was my first time having one so I went for one of the weirdest named sammiches on the menu. Its name was the Green Turkey. They tricked me with this sammich as I asked for no tomatoes but then I realized that there was tomatoes in the salsa that was on the sammich. Honestly I got ripped off because I was new to the menu.

Other then all of the work done here at BE TEK I had a really good day. I did have to walk back and forth for the entire day and it may have been repetitive and annoying, but it was all worth it because now dad can get home and have a much more enjoyable day. Every Thursday he has really long days until 7:00 but today he gets off at 5:00 and I did the part that he doesn't like. No matter how annoying the work was I am truly happy I did the work as it leads to a much happier dad and I would gladly make dad happy any day I can

Early to rise Early to end

Today I managed to wake up at 9:30 and get straight to work. This is actually quite interesting considering the fact that I have lately been sleeping in towards 10:00 and do not start until about 10:30 after Good Eats with Alton Brown. Either way I have finished all of my work and it is only about 1:15. Of course so the only way to keep up with my schedule is to do some work for tomorrow or to finish work that I haven't gotten done. I only have one assignment that I haven't finished so I guess I'll do that and it should help me wrap up for the day.

My work on the Freakonomics paper has drastically changed how I look at my blog. Now I go back over my blog and see what words can be eliminated and what sentences can be changed to make things much better. I will tell you after home school I will never look at writing the same way ever again. I am actually quite happy with my change in opinion over writing because within the public school district I despised writing class as I never had a decent subject to write about and they never really taught me how to properly edit my paper.

I am still concerned what will happen after Cindy leaves as a lot will change starting with her. Then after Cindy leaves the last thing to happen will be Nate leaving and I quite like Nate as he has been their for all of my life and Summer next year he will leave. I know there is a while to go before he leaves but I want to spend as much time with him as I can before he leaves for job core. I know that the Nate I see everyday is a different Nate then the brother I once saw everyday of my life. Now he is focused and dedicated to his work. I fell proud to see Nate's turn around with all of his school career.

2nd draft

Today I started off my editing with my second draft of my Freakonomics essay. It is coming along quite nicely and I am waiting for the final draft to be ready to be posted. I have waited so long for this piece of work to be done so I can show off all of the final draft. Of course this will still take much more time as I still have three pages to edit about 2 more times before I can finally say that it is my final draft.

From today it is official one week away from Thanksgiving break. Another break right around the corner doesn't sound to bad and I really can't argue with the holiday to come with it. I think I don't need to go into to much detail over Thanksgiving as anyone that reads this blog would know how strongly I feel about it. The break will be much obliged after going through all of the work I have coming.

Things around the house are going quite well. Sadly though Kristi is outside the house for most of the week. The only time she is going to be here is tomorrow for her checkup at the doctor and of course she will also return some time on Friday. I know she pretty much will only be gone a full day on Thursday but either way she will be gone and it will be just a little bit harder to work through the day without my teacher downstairs waiting for me. I can still do my work it will just be that little bit harder as I am a bit iffy on calling people at all unless I know their schedule.

Speeding up

Today's work was extremely easy. Didn't really require more work then to be able to read, pay attention, and to be able to fill out some problems. Of course there is a lot of work to come this week but I made it through today and am pleased with my work I have done. I am already getting questions about my birthday which is December 15th and I am almost speechless about what I really want. The first thing I wanted was Jalfrezi which is like an Indian chicken stew. But then I decided that there was one leftover that I would eat two bowls of and I can never get enough of is Clam chowder or a well made Potato soup. Of course I then trumped Jalfrezi instantly but I'm still thinking on which one and I then have to think about what kind of dessert I want with my dinner.

Something amazing is happening much earlier then we had expected. My Grandma Cindy should be moving out by the end of the week! I know it sounds mean that I'm so excited but I've been looking forward for things to start changing for the better. So it appears that Zoe will be getting her own room first as she'll be moving into dads room while Kristi and dad will move up into Cindy and Zoe's old room. I find that things are changing fast and for the better. Even as I type I think of how things will end after everything is done.

 I can't wait for Thanksgiving to come. I watch Food Network with dad and Kristi together because it is one of the only forms of media that support Thanksgiving right now instead of Christmas. I have no problems with Christmas it's just that it's not Christmas anymore it's a day for raking in the dough for all of those rich investors. We have to face that fact that Christmas has just gotten extremely commercialized and there isn't much that can save it. Of course we could always start with bombing hallmark, but that might be a little extreme. I can see it now Bomb Hallmark save Christmas.

Pay Attention

I surely made a fool of myself yesterday. I thought that I was falling behind this week while in reality All I was falling behind in was science and one specific blog entry for Tuesday. So today I am going to be catching up in both of these subjects. The next two paragraphs are going to be based around my projects. One project was meant for today while the other is meant for Tuesday. Both are around government and questions that I was presented.

Starting with Tuesdays questions number 1 was "Do you agree with the idea of extending public financing of election campaigns to include congressional campaigns?"  Well I do agree with the public financing of the election campaigns. The reason why is because if you don't have very much money you will have to fund all of your own campaign. I don't think that every president was rich enough to fund all of the expenses. Question 2 was "Television can convey some - but not all - of a presidents personal and political qualities to an audience. What important presidential qualities do you feel cannot be transmitted by a television. How else do can a candidate for presidency can communicate these qualities?" Well first things first what qualities can't be shown on TV? I believe first off that the main quality that can't be shown on TV is how important this person will actually be to America. How do you get around this? well you can't exactly change what people think of you unless you lie quite a bit and that will lose you voters if anyone finds out. Finally question 3 was "The 26th amendment enabled 18-year olds to vote. In terms of percentage, however, far fewer members of this age bracket actually exercise their right to vote than is the case with any other age group. How can this be explained?" Well how else do you explain this without going for a basic truth. Most kids at the age of 18 are not interested in voting. I want to make it clear that I said most as there is some kids at the age of 18 who do vote but most kids at 18 are more interested in friends, girls, and stunts that would make them look cooler. What goes on in those brains of theirs varies by person and is quite hard to explain if you are not 18.

So second up is opinion writing about an article called the love business. A very interesting article about marriage in china. Explaining how competition in China is very hard as over in China you can only have one child and people then decided to do sex selective abortion. Most people didn't want girls as they don't help with continuing the family legacy. So there is a low demand for men and a very high demand for women. Since no one wants to have a girl it makes finding a wife for men an extremely hard task. Gong Haiyan decided to open up one of the first dating websites in china. All of a sudden it is a huge boom in the dating society as then it became easy for people to meet their soul mate instead off believing destiny to help them as in the article it states that many people do believe in destiny to help them. Quickly Gong became a millionaire with her extremely successful business.

Falling behind

I'm getting really scared due to the fact that I am falling behind in my work. Despite my work that I did yesterday I am simply falling behind. No matter how hard I work it seems that I can't keep up with the amount of work presented this week. Even worse is that there is no make up day this week. I am simply freaking out over the fact that I may be working on the weekend to finish everything. Just like everyone else I also try to relax on the weekend and having a load of work to do will not help.

I have been working really hard on doing the harder sources of work. For example I was working on editing my essay for everyone to view. I went from 4 to 3 pages and I am only half way through my essay. I think that it is coming along nicely but I think that I so far to go as I am only editing first draft right now. After finishing first draft I then have to work on editing the 2nd draft. Sadly that will not be much easier as there will definitely flaws but they will less prevalent.

Other then my work I have some other problems. That would be problems with something else that is coming around the corner fast. This dilemma would be Thanksgiving. I have absolutely no complaints about Thanksgiving. The problem would be the fact that the media treats this holiday as if it dosn't exist. One of the only American holidays that we have that people are always willing to celebrate and ignored by almost everybody. I love Thanksgiving as much as the average person if not more. The fact that friends and family no matter what will sit down and talk and eat and laugh all together is an amazing holiday. I wish that this holiday could be recognized as important in all of America.

Overtime

So today I have been working a little bit over my average time. With all of the work I did today which wasn't much sadly enough, I worked about 5 hours today. That is the original amount required of me everyday before my one less hour. At the rate that I worked today I could have another 20 hour free day in another 2 weeks. Half a month of work for one free day sounds pretty easy to obtain to me.Of course this would require working everyday from 9:00 in the morning to 2:00 or 10:00 to 3:00. Not that hard to obtain as this is something that I used to do every day.

Today's work was easy except for the heartfelt disappointment with my essays many flaws. There was so many flaws that I wouldn't even dare count the number that Kristi and I found while checking the paper. Even worse would be putting the number on my blog to show the world all of the flaws found. Of course I have gotten about half way through the editing before just stopping for the day at the end of the day.

While the work was a pretty easy other then the fact that I was getting spinny. The good part is that Grandma Kathy came into town and we got to go out for lunch. We all went up to Zara sushi and right now I still remember the beautiful platter that I had for lunch. I had an avacado and peanut roll as well as a spicy, crunchy, tuna roll. For a side I had a spring ginger salad that was to die for. Overall the entire day was extremely fun.

Voting Day!

So today everybody is finally voting. I think that it is about time. I mean seriously I have been getting tired of answering the phone and getting all of these political questions. Did you know that Mitt Romney did ( fill in the blank ) and you shouldn't vote for Obama. I really don't care at all. In fact this is pretty much been an entire day about the government. I started the day watching Rachel Ray ( not very political ), then I read Economics for Dummies, went on to learn about voting on Khan Academy, then spent the rest of the day reading out of a large social studies textbook. Pretty annoying day and I am going to become a very mean person if I have to hear one more word about Election other then it is finally over.

I was told for my blog to comment on a quote from John Wesley. The quote was
"I met those of our society who had votes in the ensuing election, and advised them, 1. To vote, without fee or reward, for the person they judged most worthy: 2. To speak no evil of the person they voted against: And, 3. To take care their spirits were not sharpened against those that voted on the other side.
I believe that all of this quote is pretty easy to translate, but this is all about opinion here.

So lets begin with 1. To vote, without fee or reward, for the person they judged most worthy. Pretty much it is do not vote for money for the person you chose. I didn't even know that people voted if bribed but it must have been there at one point or another. Either way this is pretty important to remember that we are voting for our new leader not for money. Maybe by voting for one person you can save yourself money in some way but still this might be the one thing that he was warning about.

Next up is number 2.To speak no evil of the person they voted against. I like this guy the more I read. I agree with this guy all the way with this one. Just because you voted for one person does not mean that you should start hating on the other person. All electable individuals may have done well. Maybe the person that you didn't vote for would have done better. There is more as Conflict from hating talking badly about the other candidates .

Finally number 3. To take care their spirits were not sharpened against those that voted on the other side. This was exactly what I was talking about in the last paragraph. Do not start disliking another person because he or she voted for a different person. If we all went after each other over opinion where would we be now. If dad and Kristi wanted to vote for Obama and their parents wanted to vote for Romney this does not mean that they should start quarreling because they disagree. In fact the world we live in thrives on opinion and without it our world would be dull and boring. All of this election stuff is important but it requires opinions from everybody.

I hope that everyone enjoyed another lecture from me and all of my different opinions as I know I do this entire buisness with myself everyday. Fighting with myself over my own opinions can be kinda fun sometimes. This may sound wierd but it is hard to find someone else my age to discuss politics with as no one is really concerned about the world at this age. I guess things will just get easier as I move on in life but I still have a long way to go.

Surprise!

So I got a really interesting surprise sprung on me this morning. I was getting a day off today! The parents were expecting me to use my 20 extra hours earlier rather then later so I got this little surprise this morning as I was not informed last night and I woke up like every other morning. Of course I still have to do my blog every day to inform exactly how I am doing for multiple purposes. So todays project was to take millions of pictures around my neighborhood. Why? Well I am to be creative with all of these pictures which out of about 50 I chose 5. So lets go over these

Opening up is a picture of my favorite place in the entire complex. Even though I love my small house I have one spot outside that I just love. It is a small weeping willow behind an abandoned house. I used to come to the house with my friends and we would hang out around this tree. Up next is me as I noticed that I have not really had an accurate picture of me on this blog yet. I may have a creepy smile and some really annoying hair but I think that this is one of my best pictures that I took today. how could I ever hate myself? So up next are just some interesting places and some pictures. Up next is our next door neighbors arrangement of pumpkins. I have not really met a person that doesn't like a jack-o-lantern. This was just clever and cute so I had to add this little picture. I also took a picture of one of the strangest colored houses I have seen that I had access to taking a picture of. I have seen weirder then this K state colored house but I thought that since I see it almost every day I might as well take a picture. Other then these few pictures I have one more that intrigued me. The picture is focused on the one tree that should have lost its leaves by now but still has all of them. Either way it is still a pretty good picture

Relief!

So I have made an agreement with dad and Kristi! I am allowed to do things that are much easier then cleaning the garage for electronic time. For example helping Kristi bring boxes up to her apartment this weekend will earn me one extra hour of electronics. Another example is that if I ride my bike for 30 minutes I get 30 minutes more on the electronics. I can also make an agreement with the parents for extra chores which can each earn me a different amount time depending on the difficulty of the chore. I think this is going to be a great compromise between us as they want me to get some sort of workout while I get more electronic time!

I also finished all of my work this week! The thought is that I have worked my butt off today to finish all of my math work but that was done and now I am finishing up the day with my blog. I won't have anything to worry about this weekend as today is just a day to relax and enjoy myself. Nate is going to be gone this weekend for this weekend to go see his friends so the computer upstairs is open if Zoe isn't on it. So I can play some games with my friend right in my house. I can't wait for my actual weekend to begin!

Things have really been looking up to me this week. The compromise with the parents, all of my work finished against the odds, and Kristi isn't in the hospital again! There really wasn't a chance of Kristi in the hospital this weekend but either way there was the possibility. Either way this week has been great. The best part of it all is the fact that I haven't burned down our house yet!

Friday = Make Up Work

So I didn't get all of my work done so far but I am actually pretty happy with this. This will give me something to work with when I wake up tomorrow. All the work I haven't finished is simply the math work. Now I know it is kinda sad how I don't have this work done yet but it was going to happen with form of work or another. You all know how everybody has that one subject that they aren't that great at. Well for me that would be math and I knew people that would struggle with English, Science, Or Social studies. We have all been there at one point or another.

Kristi still hasn't made it back from Made To Serve yet but I am waiting for her so that we can edit my first draft of my paper. I think that she might be a little bit surprised that when they wiped my computer that we had forgotten to hook up my computer to the printer again. So I can't print the papers myself so I will have to send the paper to Kristi and have here print it. So as long as my computer doesn't crash I should be able to get this done by the end of the day.

My main struggle other then school is finding out how to get all of my electronics time in without cheating. For example using my time without going over the time that all electronics are supposed to go off. Or another example is getting on early and constantly lying about how long I have been on. Besides that last idea never works because Kristi and dad always know when I am on. Mainly because Kristi will count and check how long we have been on from when we start. I was thinking about working for extra time but then I would have to work into my schedule how much work will I need to do to balance the rest of the day. And the work will not be easy at all. For example one of the jobs might be help clean up the garage. I don't want to really help with that when I could be upstairs in my bed. So I think that would be a no.