My girls are growing up. Nothing makes me happier than to see them meet new challenges, like with my middle child learned to right her bike "in about ten seconds!" on her sixth birthday. So far, my strongest test as a father has been listening to her say "I don't need any help anymore!" because that's the point. The oldest is in the third grade, and she picked up Andrew Peterson's book On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness at my suggestion. She wanted to know what grade level it was, and if there would be an AR test. Assigning books a 'grade level' and giving them 'AR tests' has got to be a scam, because the readers have now gamed into what is and isn't ok to read as a result. Oh, and you are only allowed to check out certain books at the library based on your reading level. At least that's what my daughter thinks. Checking out books based on a "grade level of reading" seems like a bad idea. My favorite book in the 3rd grade was an historical account of the discovery of various elements by scientists in the 17th-early 20th centuries by Isaac Asimov called The Search for the Elements. I liked it because it was science and history, and it belonged to my dad, and he said I should read it. I never took an AR test about it, and I mispronounced a lot of words along the way, but I learned and I liked it. Don't people like to read anymore? Don't people read things too hard for them to read because they want to be better at it, and they find the subject matter interesting?
Sorry for sounding like an old fogey.
News from the Station of KG4GVL, I discovered another blog, and put it under my blog list: RaDAR-America. It espouses an interesting concept, rapidly deployable ham radio operations. Here's a quote of this short blog post that concisely states the theory of the group:
Seeing as how the highest point in FL doesn't qualify for SOTA, I think this could be a wonderful excuse to get outside and do ham radio!...the difference between RaDAR and SOTA.
The summit is the operations destination of the SOTA operator. The journey to the summit (including, and back) is the operations focus of the RaDAR operator. For every five QSO's, the RaDAR operator is required to move (on the move QSO's are allowed as long as the five QSO rule is valid).
On the workbench, I'm working on a MOPA using a singe tube.
more on that later.
Soon I will be 36, more on that later as well.
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