Category: Education

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Lego League

I have been volunteering with a local Lego League.  Have you heard about them?  They use the Lego Mindstorm NXT which is robotic Lego’s.  You can go to their web site at usfirst.org and check them out if you are interested in what they’re all about.  Each year they have a challenge that has to do with the environment.  Last year it was alternative sources of fuel.  This year the challenge is on global warming and what you can do in your community to help.

There is a state competition in December and the team that wins there, goes on to Atlanta to participate in the World competition.  There will be teams from China, Germany and many other countries.  I absolutely love working with these kids.  These are our future engineers.  Not only do they win trophies, but they also can get schlorships to some pretty impressive colleges just because of their involvement with this so I feel very blessed to be a part of it.

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Meet Brutus

I received this from a friend of mine by email.  I thought it was interesting and important enough that I wanted to share it with you.  Animals are very important us as human beings and here’s part of the reason why. They don’t call a dog mans best friend for no reason.

Now meet Brutus!!!  Brutus is a GOOD boy!!!!

The K9 below is Brutus, a military K9 at McChord. He’s huge – part Boxer and part British Bull Mastiff and tops the scales at 200 lbs. His handler took the picture. Brutus is running toward me because he knows I have some Milk Bone treats, so he’s slobbering away! I had to duck around a tree just before he got to me in case he couldn’t stop, but he did. Brutus won the Congressional Medal of Honor last year from his tour in Iraq . His handler and four other soldiers were taken hostage by insurgents. Brutus and his handler communicate by sign language and he gave Brutus the signal that meant ‘go away but come back and find me’. The Iraqis paid no attention to Brutus. He came back later and quietly tore the throat out of one guard at one door and another guard at another door. He then jumped against one of the doors repeatedly (the guys were being held in an old warehouse) until it opened. He went in and untied his handler and they all escaped. He’s the first K9 to receive this honor. If he knows you’re ok, he’s a big old lug and wants to sit in your lap. Enjoys the company of cats.
K-9 Congressional Medal of Honor Winner

Thought you’d find this interesting. Talk about animal intelligence and bonding with humans!

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Getting cooler and I love it

Fall is finally coming and I am loving it.  I love to hunt.  Yes I do hunt with a primitive bow like my ancestors did. Yes I only kill what I will eat.  I’m sure someone will read this and wonder how I can kill Bambi.  Well Bambi is not real and hunting deer helps the herd to stay healthy.  Too many deer and there won’t be enough food for them.  They’ll get sick and diseased and slowly die off.  That’s not good.  By hunting them for food, you are keeping the herd stronger.

I hunt strictly by the rules.  I get my license and only kill bucks until doe days.  I prefer to get the old spike bucks so that you weed out the poor racks and build a herd in your area that is more likely to produce bucks with nice racks.  I put out mineral blocks for them through the summer to help make them healthier.  I do feed them apples and corn to bring them in to my stand but I also take care of them when it’s not deer season.  My ancestors taught me to respect the animals as they should be.

Deer season starts soon so I need to get out and practice a while to keep my skills sharp so I hopefully make a clean kill every time.  The last thing I want is for the animal to suffer any more than they have to.  IF I hit one and it doesn’t fall where I hit it, I track it down until I know the animal will either survive or I find it.  I don’t leave a badly wounded animal to suffer.  I would never do that.


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Historic sites and State Parks closing

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s office announced layoffs of up to 450 state employees and the closure of 25 historic sites and state parks. Fourteen state historic sites are scheduled to be closed October 1. Eleven state parks are slated for closure November 1.

Among these sites to be closed is the Black Hawk State Historic Site, in Rock Island, Illinois, which occupies much of the historic site of the village of Saukenuk. This was the home of a band of Native Americans of the Sauk nation. It includes the John Hauberg Museum of Native American Life. The state park is located on a 150-foot bluff overlooking the Rock River in western Illinois. It is most famous for being the birth place of the Sauk warrior Black Hawk. The disputed cession of this area to the U.S. Government was the catalyst for the Black Hawk War.

There is already so much of the Native American way of life gone forever and now this?  Why can’t the white man see what they are doing to OUR countries deep rooted heritage?  We all are now Native Americans and these things must be kept to teach our young of the way of life of Our nation.  Our nation we ALL call America which is made up of many tribes from all over the world.

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Top Ten Words Not To Use On Your Blog Title

I am finding myself looking around at other people’s blogs and finding out some wonderful information that I am finding useful in my newbie stage of blog writing. One such site that I visited today tells of the Top Ten Words Not To Use In Your Blog Title and they are the following words, according to a blogger on the web-site of Businesslogs.com

The top ten names to avoid:
* blog
* life
* weblog
* world
* from
* journal
* news
* thoughts
* with
* daily

Interesting food for thought that I wanted to share here.

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Solar power news

According to an article I read on a Reuters web-site, a study was written by the Clean Edge and environmental nonprofit Co-op America that has declared that solar power will be cost competitive with fossil fuels like natural gas and coal by the year of 2015.  I think that this is the best news I’ve heard of concerning this issue in a while; I’d certainly like to see a whole hell of a lot more alternative energy sources developed and expanded as well!

Wouldn’t it be great to see solar energy, wind energy, and gasoline made from algae to be our every-day energy sources!  I’m sick and tired of the constant price increases of gasoline, and being held hostage by the companies and countries that are raking in obscenely record profits from their oil.

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Memory issues

My good old dependable Dell laptop seems to be full to the rim.  I now definitely need more space on the poor old guy.  I didn’t know that much about memory issues, like how much one should have or how much I might need so the one I got only has 18 gig of memory.  At the time it was just fine when I first got it but now, it’s totally full.

Once more the Internet will come to my rescue and will be the most useful tool that anyone could ask for in researching something like this.  Good thing too because I don’t know very many people that know anything more about their computers than just using the email capabilities of it and of course how to download games and stuff like that.

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Sky Dogs

I do on occasion have a few friends and family members come by for brief visits time to time. I enjoy the children that are brought along and  I do have a way with children. My house is full of interesting and unusual artifacts that it doesn’t take long to get a kid interested in a certain piece or a collection of the various Native Americana items that are so fascinating and hold many interesting stories and myths inside them.

I even have a few books that I enjoy telling them stories from, for some of the ones they can sit down long enough to really pay attention and listen too.  One of my favorites just so happens to be about my own people of the Indian nation and it is called, “Sky Dogs”, and was written by Jane Yolen.

When horses first appeared to the Blackfeet people, they thought the strange animals were large dogs sent as a gift from the sky – from God, creator of all things.

It’s a good story, if you run across a copy I urge you to pick it up and give it a read. It is a short story of our people and how they came to know of horses.

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Go Trusted

I was told about an on-line company by the name of Go Trusted which provides you with a fast and easy way to keep your identity in check with the capabilities of hiding your IP address while protecting your privacy and safe guarding your important data that we all now keep our fair share of on our computers.

Easy enough to check out by going to www.GoTrusted.com. They offer a 7 day free trial, and if you want to keep their service it is only $5.99 a month, which is a good price to pay for all that they offer to individuals and small business alike.

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Hybrid Cars

Hybrid Cars are something that all of us should be looking into these days, what with all of our energy concerns, and rightfully so.  There are plenty of Hybrid Vehicles to be found, and the Internet of course can be a valuable tool in finding a Hybrid Car that will help in this energy crisis that just isn’t going to go away any time soon, I fear.

Just by using the World Wide Web to locate any type of product is saving gasoline, although computers do rely on electricity and/or batteries, right now the price is right for that privilege, but of course nothing is coming cheap these days.

I’m a strong believer that we all need to do our part in going GREEN and do everything that we can do on a daily basis to help save this earth, it is the only one that we have. I’m thinking that my next vehicle will be a Hybrid and it looks like I have some researching to do on that subject, I’m just thankful that I am connected to the informational highway with my good old Dell laptop.