danaleeling

Today the family went to the Southern Wisconsin AirFEST ! The show was awesome, with great acrobatic displays, an F-16 and the Blue Angels. The Blue Angels parked on the flight line in Janesville, Wisconsin. Three children from a distant land in front of an F/A-18 Hornet from the Stennis. My mother is in pink with the bag on the right. We were unusually fortunate. My mother led us up the flight line past the announcers booth to a taxiway that crossed the main runway. That taxiway turned out to be the point the Blue Angels lined up on as "show center" so all crossings were right in front of us, and all flights perpendicular to the runway went directly overhead. Truly awesome to be at the very middle of a Blue Angels flight demonstration, and my first time to be at the "crossing point." Dinner was at the Chinese buffet in Monroe, all-in-all a lovely day.

Shrue whacks away with the weed whacker. Unfortunately her tropically oriented husband did not recognize the native plants of Wisconsin. Nor did he realize that one set of thorny branches was different from another set (raspberries versus blackberries). Minus the berries the two were difficult to distinguish. All in all a rough sort of day. Horse riding time! We also took in Star Trek last night, an excellent ride for both the old Trekkie and the very newest generation.

Our new home away from home! Horses! How children are moved around the farm. He rode well for a first time driver, even backing the ATV up after coming to rest nose-on with a tree.

Jasper the donkey 2004 with my youngest on board.

Life for the young on Kosrae is an outdoor playground. Out on the reef there are fish and eels to be caught, surprises under every rock. A young Kosraean waits for her brother to find her something for lunch. The swimming hole at Piyuul is small but provides hours of endless entertainment. A summer evening is not complete without a game of "bat the tennis ball" A launch of children field the hits.

College of Micronesia-FSM held the spring 2009 graduation on Monday. A more complete set of photos is in a publicly accessible FaceBook photo album . Hedweag Thomas Miguel ready to graduate with a bachelors degree under the UOG/COM-FSM Partnership BA program. Maybeleen Apwong, Health Career Opportunities Program graduate. Faculty of the year Wilson Kalio with the shark mace and Vice President for Administration Joseph Habuchmai. Stephanie Fredrick, newly minted COM-FSM graduate with a member of her family. A future graduate from Dien, Kitti.

Marla cleans the Haruki garden , the only civilian Japanese cemetery on Pohnpei. The cemetery dates back to the 1930s . The cemetery is directly south of the FSM-China Friendship Sports center. Boys in the bush, Pehleng, Kitti in the background. Dexter, Redeemer, and Daniel. Cassandra and Aleen next to ilau , Clerodendrum inerme var. Oceanum. Judy poses with iuiu , Alpinia carolenensis , giant Pohnpei ginger plant.

The final laboratory of the year is both for fun and to expose the students to a whole new form of mathematical model called site swap notation. Nicole learns to juggle. Jake keeping three aloft. Divine Grace learned to juggle and then developed a whole new art form: Chuukese dance juggling. Here she is performing a Chuukese traditional dance while juggling.

Krystal and Tracy working on a plant in the Palikir ethnobotanical garden on 28 April 2009. Dana listens, Roxycindlina behind with a machete. Marla cleans up with a knife around a plumeria. Maryhellan studying for the final practical examination.

Moving into the cloud : integrating a Google docs presentation into a blogger blog. The image below is from the college restructuring retreat, Vice President Habuchmai at the podium. After three days, subgroup five made the following presentation to the gathering on restructuring options: New technologies such as email, blogs, and on line document sharing services such as Google Docs have the ability to flatten hierarchies. These technologies allow for participative organizational structures that span the globe, structures that would have been unworkable prior to the existence of the Internet. These technologies are often called "disruptive" technologies because of their potential impact on existing communication structure. and open communication. For instructors, one more benefit to students working in the cloud: no more "I lost my USB memory stick/flash drive/key and my paper/presentation was on it." You cannot "lose" Google docs!

His birthday kicked off a three day weekend that included... ... a school fair. The kids are up on stools whacking each other with pillows trying to knock the other kid off the stool. No lawyers required. Does anyone remember the rough and tumble life of Tom Sawyer? Somewhere along the way to risk reduction a Twainian childhood was lost as a possibility. Play hard, sleep harder. Pass out wherever you are sitting.

The college has an attendance policy which effectively permits six absences in a MWF class and four in a TuTh class, the equivalent of two weeks worth of absences. Anything beyond two weeks of absences, excused or unexcused, cause the student to fail the course. With next fall the college is shifting to a policy wherein the instructor sets the attendance policy most appropriate for their course. So with the sunset of the last term under the current policy, here are the statistics on my 56 students in two sections of MS 150 Statistics. stat abs count 56 min 0 max 16.5 range 16.5 midrange 8.25 mode 1.3 median 4.65 mean-stdv 1.29 mean 5.4 mean+stdv 9.52 mean/max 0.33 stdev 4.12 cv 0.76 Correlation -0.7 Absences range from zero to 16.5, with the 16.5 being a student who no lon...

A cumulus castellanus northeast of campus on the 29th of April. Upper level shear appears to be toppling the top. Altocumulus deck above campus. Another shot of the deck, rebalanced. Out west of campus another cumulus build seen just off the south end of the library. Hard to see, but the zipper-like bottom of this cloud consists of downward puffs in a pattern that repeats along the bottom of the cloud.

The whole family turned out for the College of Micronesia-FSM 5k. The eldest took first among the 12 and under. Bollie Ludwig poses with the first female finisher 12 and under. Ketson Kapriel with my son post-run. After I finish my joggle, I run back up the route and then trot in with each of my kids. Up route I caught up with two of the three, but the third slipped past me. When I reached Shrue back down at Spanish wall, she said the youngest was up ahead of her. Turns out she went straight up weather station hill instead of making the right at Namiki. After the run the flock adjourned to the Joy Hotel restaurant for the traditional post-run brunch. Purely tech note: The images represent an experiment in that they are being pulled from my FaceBook photos rather than being held by blogger in Picasa . Clearly this approach needs some work - there are cropping issues for the images. The images are unedited camera shots. Click on an image to see the full image. Post-script: manually twea...