RateMyProfessors

http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,68941,00.html

I love this idea, maybe this will get some of the profs that are just there to do research out of the classrooms, where they stink.  If you're just there to do research, go find a job in industry, academies are for students to learn, not sports, not professors pet projects, not clubs, and not social groups.

Robie believes universities would be better off collecting formal faculty ratings and disclosing them only to students.

Swapceinski, who got the idea to start RateMyProfessors following a bad experience with a professor at San Jose State, doesn't think that's a bad idea. However, he fears students would withhold negative opinions if the university is the one collecting evaluations.

But Robie insists there's a better solution than putting evaluations online for the world to see.

"What other job are your performance records up to public scrutiny?" he asked. "Just because many professors are being paid by taxpayers, does that mean they give up all rights to privacy?"

Absolutely, everyone in private industry has performance reviews where their employer reviews how they are doing, why should that be different if you are employed by taxpayers?  That means that the taxpayers should be able to see how you are doing in your job.  If you are going to take a position serving the public, the public should be able to find out how you are performing in that position.

Space Elevator

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/050923_spaceelevator_test.html

This looks pretty awesome, once someone actually completes building one, it will dramatically reduce the costs and dangers of getting people and materials into orbit, and once in orbit, you are "Halfway to Anywhere in the Solar System".  I hope to go up one day, and maybe even to mars if the price is right, can't afford that yet though.

Test picture blog

Ok, here is my first picture blog. This should be of an osprey nest I took over the summer while we were at Naylors beach off the Rappahanock river. If this comes out ok I'll be posting more. 

Weekend

Had a busy weekend, soccer Saturday, Sarah's birthday on Saturday, and
we went to the state fair today. The kids did well in soccer, Sarah's
team won 6-3, Brenna's team won 8-0, and Meagan's team lost 5-1. Meagan
got hurt twice, she caught one on her fingers, hyper extending her
wrist. Then she got hit in the eye, and then hit in the head while on
the sidelines. Not her day. Her wrist swelled some, but went down with
some ice. It was still sensitive to move this morning, but I don't
think she needs to go to the doctor. Deanna seems to think otherwise,
but we'll see how she does tomorrow.

The kids had a good time at the fair. We took the twins on the kiddie
rides first, then had some lunch, and then I took Meagan and Sarah to
ride on some big rides, Brenna didn't want to go, she's not big on the
roller-coaster rides. We got in 3 rides, then went back to meet up with
the rest of the group, and then everyone got to pick 1 more ride before
we went home.

My parents left for Michigan right after Sarah's party, they'll be gone
for a week up to the north woods.

I'm signing up for Picasa and Hello, so hopefully I'll be able to get
some pictures up on the blog before long.

Rick's 40th

Just got an evite to Rick's 40th birthday, should be fun!  He's one of my friends from the old Whitlock group, one of the quake gang.  He was the only one that consistantly had a chance to beat me.  Ahh, I miss the good old Quake days.  I added about 10 people to the list on eVite, hope I didn't over do it, but his wife said the more the merrier.

Soccer

Kids all had their first Soccer games yesterday, they all played well, but all lost.  Meagan got bent out of shape over it for a while.  I wouldn't mind if she lost a bunch, she needs to learn how to have fun whether she wins or loses the game.  I think she had fun playing, just got mad that they lost.  Brenna did ok, but she needs some confidence and to learn to go after the ball.  Sarah's team did really well, the other team had a ringer that kept running away with the ball and scoring for them, but we did ok, lost 5-3.  Sarah did good, she knows to go to the ball and which way to kick it.  The whole team needs to learn defense when the other team starts running away with the ball.  They all go running toward the goal, even passing the ball carrier, but don't know to kick it away from them!  We all had a good time, but it was a bit hot, got up to 34, and sunny with no shade.  I'm going to look for a couple goals to practice with them, one the big girls size and one Sarah's size.  I'm going to start leaving at 3:00 again, I was working some overtime to make up for the day I missed, I've made up all but 3 of it, so I can go in 30 mins early for a week and have it done.  Should be able to get in some practice then before we have to come in to let Deanna fix dinner.

RMS, etc.

Well, the RMS portal kinda fell through.  I didn't really have the time necessary to get the parts they wanted working 100%, and BigOak didn't get a chance to review it until the week before they wanted to go live.  RMS decided to keep the calendar part, and I refunded the rest of the money to them.  I'm still going to work on when I have time, but that won't be for a while I think.  Getting the house built is going to take quite a bit of time and attention.  I need to find time to go to dinner with a guy that contacted me middle of August about doing some freelance work.
We got the location for the house marked, and the loan stuff is going through.  The land should be getting percolation tested sometime in the next 2 weeks. I just got in touch with one of the people I used to work with at Albright & Wilson, and one of my friends from Patrick Henry.  They guy from A&W is down in Baton Rouge, LA, they came through the hurricane ok, lots of wind and rain, but they aren't below sea level.
I've been keeping in touch with one of the guys from Amentra that I worked with at NTelos, Rich.  We like to discuss politics, he sends me the dems viewpoint, I send him the reps.  We get into some pretty good discussions.  Haven't talked to the others that much, email once in a while.
I'm going to lunch with the old Dynex gang this Friday, haven't seen them in about a year now, will be good to talk with them again.  I went to lunch with the Suntrust gang when I first moved over to Wachovia, they're still putting up with the same old stuff.  Glad I got out of there, just wish i had done it sooner.
Wachovia is going ok, nothing too exciting at the moment, converting an app from MSSQL to Oracle, and can't use stored procedures, which is somewhat of a headache.  Dunno if they are going to keep me on after this project or not, we'll see.  One of the PM's there is looking to maybe form a startup after his contract is up, and may be looking for .Net people, not sure if I want to do that or not, but if it takes off there may be some money in it.