Happy Thanksgiving!

YTVotD

Not that anyone watches music videos anymore (or that MTV even shows them), but have you ever wished that the words to the song would describe what's going on in the video? This series of "Literal Videos" does just that, with pretty humorous results. They kind of even remind me of that Yatta video parody.

There are three song videos done in this "literal" style: Tears for Fears' "Head Over Heels," A-ha's "Take On Me," and my favorite, Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Under the Bridge."

Million Dollar (Indian) Arms

Many of you all may have already read about this (I'm sure Sky and Frank were on top of this ages ago) but it's a pretty cool story so I'll pass it along to our vast readership.

"The Million Dollar Arm" is an Indian reality TV show where 30,000 contestants competed to throw strikes at 85+ mph. The prizes were a $100K prize with a trip to the US to train and try out in front of MLB scouts for a shot at a major league contract. The show/contest was sponsored by a SoCal sports management company to try and find untapped baseball talent in a hugely populous country. The two guys that ended up winning, Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel, both threw javelin in India and had never picked up a baseball prior to this contest.

Anyways, these guys were both just signed by the Pittsburgh Pirates to minor league deals! Whether it's more smart baseball management move or marketing ploy/ merchanidising opportunity I can't say, but good for them! And... they have a pretty hilarous blog that they've been maintaining during their trip to the US. Their humility, excitement, and unique cultural perspective makes for some real funny entries. Here are some of my favorite lines from their blog:

"Tonight we were celebrating the Halloween Holiday here in America. we are not sure what the holiday comes from, but kids dress up in all kinds of crazy outfits and then go to houses asking for sweets. if people in the house no give the sweets then the kids put toilet paper in their trees."

"The American Football players are so big and have such huge muscles you would not even believe it. Each time they hit each other we are told it is like being in a car accident. These men hit each other many times per match. praise Allah that we have won a baseball contest and a not a football one. i don’t think we could even take a hitting once."

"We went with JB sir to breakfast at a great American breakfast eatery called Dennys. Rinku ordered a breakfast aclled the Lumberjack. We now know that a Lumberjack is a person who works as a tree cutter in the forrest so they must eat a lot of food. this breakfast was quite huge. It had eggs, bacon, sausage, ham, potatos, breads, and pancakes. I had French Toast and both meals were very fulfilling."

"Monday our greatest dream is coming to us. We both get contract to play pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates. We are so happy and excited it is unreal. We are thanking the Pirates and will work very hard to make them proud of our results. We right away went to the internet to locate Pittsburgh on map. It is in north east part of USA and looks like very good city."

There's a lot more, so go read it for yourselves. Congrats Rinku and Dinesh, hope to see you on the field for the Pirates some day!

Birthday Scavenger Hunt

Last weekend, as part of a party abstractly billed as a birthday party for both myself and our friend Mikey (yes, both of us celebrate on Nov. 13th!), Kate organized a photo-scavenger hunt. It was quite a fun, free, creative activity. We had three teams of 3-4 people each, a list of 15 things to photograph, and a couple hours in which to do it. However, this wasn't exactly your standard scavenger hunt. If you've ever played the game "Apples to Apples" it was somewhat like that - each "item" on the list was a phrase or vague description of a scene highly open to interpretation. At the end of the hunt the three teams showed their photo-answers and we voted on the best submission for each item. Enough of the explanation - here are the 15 list items we had to photograph, along with the winning photo for each one:

1) Best use of a beer:


2) "I can't believe we all fit in here!"


3) Someone in handcuffs


4) Group member getting wet (that's Kate)


5) Best use of a political sign (video entry!)


6) Most creative pyramid


7) Friendliest stranger


8) Most artistic garbage


9) An unusual perspective


10) Entire group mid-air


11) Best graffiti


12) Can you find us?


13) A reflection


14) Spell something


15) Best re-creation of a famous work of art


As you can tell, there is a lot of room for unorthodox interpretation of some of these. For example, one group used the same photo for #13 and #15. If you'd like to see all the entries you can check out the photos here - the files are in order and the filenames indicate list number and group (a, b, or c). Feel free to submit your ballot in the comments. Good job everyone - Mikey, Dustin, Marc, Bailey, Kate, Rich, Kathy, Cara, and Alex! It's a great idea for a fun party event if you are looking for one for a group of people!

500 miles

I have now officially passed the 500-mile mark on my new bike! I've had it for about 10 weeks, so I'm averaging 50 miles/week. So, assuming all of that was travel that would have otherwise been done via car (it wasn't, but whatever), and a car that gets 25 mpg, I've saved about 20 gallons of gasoline. With gas at a (now liberally) estimated $3/gallon that gets me to an amazing $60 saved... so yeah, I've still got a ways to go to "pay off" my bike. Let's not mention how much I've spent on bike accessories (hint - probably more than $60).

Did I mention that I like riding just for the fun of it?

Egged on my First Day of School

Tom reminded me yesterday that it has been, like, forever since I posted about what I've been up to. And there have been big changes, certainly worth posting about. So, here's my news.

I finished up 3 of my classes about 3 weeks ago - they are front-loaded in the semester so that people can student-teach in the end of the semester. I think it is a good design, because I was quite ready to be done with them. I still have 2 classes that meet regularly, but they're not so bad.

This first semester, I am technically doing my "Phase I Student Teaching", which for most people means that you observe a teacher's classroom for two periods a day for 6ish weeks and then take over (1 period a day) for three weeks on your own. Usually your "master teacher" gives you lesson plans and materials. I was all set to do this, and had started my observing period at one high school in San Jose, when one of my SJSU professors asked me if I'd be interested in a long term sub position at a different San Jose High School.

So I volunteered. The Physics teacher I am temporarily replacing is having surgery and is going to miss ~4 weeks of the end of this semester. He teaches 2 sections of AP Physics (no calculus) and 3 sections of Junior-level Physics. The teacher and administrators seem very happy to have me - they were preparing lesson plans for a non-Physics substitute, which is an extremely daunting task. Especially when there are two sections of AP classes to consider.

Last week I started attending and assisting in classes full timeso that I would be up to speed by the time the teacher had to leave. I started teaching 1-2 classes a day (using his lesson plans) so that I could get the butterflies out and start getting to know the kids and get comfortable in front of a class.

So as of today, I was on my own. I wrote my own lesson plans for two different "preps" (or class titles) and taught 5 sections all by my lonesome. I'm exhausted, but happy - the day went as well as I could have possibly hoped for.

I didn't want to start a new unit today, so I decided that Fridays would be "fun Physics" day, where the classes do some sort of hands-on activity that reinforces the material from the previous week. We were just finishing up a unit on momentum, so today we calculated how much impulse (change in momentum) was required to break an egg.

We broke lots of eggs today. Nearly 4 dozen when all was said and done. We dropped them, crunched them in our hands, smushed them under weights, bounced them off of sheets, and even threw them at walls. I took an egg-bath at least three times over the course of the day, but I have a few students that got it even worse than I did. At least they were warned. And through it all, I managed to keep all the kids under control, interested (I think), and hopefully even learning some Physics.

So now I am home, showered off, and happy not to be smelling of egg. I am already smothered under a mountain of grading so I'm going to sign off for now. Later, gators.

Halloween Happenings

Did everyone else out there have an exciting Halloween? I heard of some pretty good costumes from some of you. Here's some of how we spent our frightful weekend!

Last weekend we heard there was a Halloween Pet Parade in our town of Sunnyvale, so we took Banjo over to check it out. Here's Kate and the 'Jo with the parade marching down Murphy St.

Even the music was dog-themed! (And from this highly festive community marching band - they even had a keg that they rolled around in a converted popcorn stand with them, you can see it at the end of the video.) Check it out for yourselves below:



Thursday we went to our annual Pumpkin Carving Party hosted by Rachel and Adam. Kate and I did Calvin and Hobbes this year for our pumpkins (last year was Bert & Ernie). Adam is a graphic designer by trade - can you tell which one is his?

You may remember Adam's Einstein pumpkin from last year, too - quite impressive. Here's our two in place to welcome trick-or-treaters at our house.


After handing out candy for a while we went to a costume party with some softball friends. Aside from our Jack & Jill (went up the hill...) costumes, there were some pretty good ones, including

• Hillbilly couple (complete with 8.5-mo. pregnancy, I [heart] Palin tatoos, fake cigarettes, and fake bad teeth)
• Hippie couple w/tie dye and afro
• Sorceress
• Wonder Woman
• Sarah Palin (of course)
• Cloudy with a chance of showers
• Mario (of Nintendo fame, complete with huge white gloves
• Joe the plumber
• Construction worker
• Surgeon
  

Here are the girls:
And the boys:
Hope your Halloween was as full of treats as ours was!