Dad’s birthday on the farm

Well, it was my dads birthday yesterday…  I picked up katie from the minneapolis airport yesterday and then drove down to the farm.  We worked around the farm a little bit.  Dad and I worked on putting a new depth finder in grandpa’s boat. We got most of that finished up and I took off to a near by field to see my cousin Erik.  He was working on mowing hay.  I hopped up on the tracker and visited with him while he was working until the mower broke.  :(  We then headed back to the farm for the party.

We barbecued some burgers, and then made home made ice cream to go with the fresh strawberries and German chocolate cake.  It was all very tasty.

Here is dad blowing out the candles on his cake.

[QUICKTIME http://bbryson.com/bill/files/2006/06/dad_candles.mov 320 300]

Will you follow in Locks footsteps????

For all you lost lovers out there, and I know there are a few of you. Someone has built the very thing that many of us have wondered about while watching NBC’s hit tv show. There is now a timer on this website that needs to be reset every 108 minutes.

I found this in a digg.com article.

Enter the code every 108 minutes (Ajax LOST hatch)

The timer on this addictive little website will reset every 108 minutes aslong as someone, somewhere enters the code ‘4 8 15 16 23 42’ into theprompt. So far the counter has been reset 584 times!

So the million dollar question is…..

willl you punch in the numbers??

Surprise!!!

Mike Svir was is having his golden birthday tomorrow June 27th. Amanda (Mike’s wife) has been working up a surprise birthday party for him for the last couple of months. We had it last saturday at an indoor water park in Baxter. Erin and I drove down for the event. We didnt make it in time for the surprise, but he seemed pretty surprised that we were showed up.

It was a lot of fun hanging out with Mike and Amanda. It has been a long time since I’ve really been able to hang out with even Mike, let alone him and Amanda. We are going to have to make these rendavous happen a little more offten.

We spent the afternoon at the water park going down the slides, sitting in the sauna, and swimming. In the evening we went back to Mike and Amanda’s new house. Its a very nice house with a big yard, in what seems like a really nice neighborhood. We sat out on the yard and had dinner with his family and friends. It was a very nice day.

Here is a picture of the four of us..

I was showing off photobooth a little, here is a few other people….

Lane, Helene, Mike, Jed, Amanda, and Myself

Lazy Days…

Well, I am really in summer mode now.  I went golfing with Jim (Erin’s dad), Bill, Rick, and Glen (Erin’s uncles) Monday night.  We only played 9 holes.  It was a lot of fun.  I enjoy golfing.  Mostly be cause I am outside walking around.  There is of course the sport of it, but I am pretty laid back when it comes to the rules on golfing.  My cohorts were a tad more restrictive when it came to the rules.  Like when I tee-off, and it goes flying into the woods and have to get another ball and tee-off again.  I wouldn’t count the first one because, well, I can’t find that ball, and I’m starting from the same place there is no need to count it right??  :)  So out of the five of us Jim came in first and I came in last.  The other brothers were interspersed in between. 

Right after the game, Jim and I raced home to catch game seven of the Stanley cup finals.  Edmonton vs. Carolina.  Jim and I were rooting for Edmonton because really should a place that far south have a hockey team let alone win the cup?  Well Edmonton really didn’t play well the first two periods.  They turned it up a notch in third, but it wasn’t enough.  They ended up losing 3 to 1 after Carolina scored an empty net goal with less than a minute to play.

Unlike a normal summer day for me today I got up at 8:30 in the morning.  I
think it was partly the sun shinning in the window onto my face, and
the fact that I really needed a shower.  :)  After the golfing and the hockey game I was wiped out, and crashed.  So I felt all grimy when I woke up this morning.  So I got up and played a little nintindo.  That’s the thing to do these days.  After that I watched “A history of violence” which was kind of an interesting movie.  I had never seen it before, and would recommend it if you don’t mind a little violence, and are into movies that are a little different.  After the movie I was sufficiently awake, so I hopped in the shower and got cleaned up.  Then it was back to the nintindo.  My goal while Erin is gone is to beat Super Mario 3 with out warping.  I beat it last week with warping, so now I am trying to go through all of the levels and beat the game.  I had a great start a couple days ago.. Actually before the golf game, but I paused the game while the golfing and the hockey game were going on.  I didn’t want to stay up late playing, so I left it when I went to bed.  Unfortunately the power went off for a split second in the middle of the night, and the game was reset.  So I started over again today.  I got all the way to the last world, and stopped to eat dinner.  Someone must have bumped the console because the game got corrupted, and I had to reset it again.  :(  So for real tomorrow I am going to beat that game.  I have to get a lot of rest.  It takes a lot out of you to sit down and play all of those levels back to back. 

So I guess thats the plan for tomorrow.  Play nintendo, watch movies, and possibly take a trip into town to find a high speed Internet connection to do some software updates and download something for work. 

Flock

I just downloaded this new web browser called Flock. It seems really cool. It has built in blogging support. I am testing it out right now. If this works. I may try switching over from firefox for a while, to see how everything works.

Can you hear it?

Im sure most of you have heard about this by now, its been in the news, and in the talk shows, but if you haven’t here is your chance.

Apparently kids are using a special ring tone for their cell phones. Its a tone that British police would use to break up student riots. This tone can only be heard by younger people. Scientists say that adults start to lose that range of their hearing around the age of 20. I am youthfull enough I guess since I am able to hear this annoying noise.

Can you???

[QUICKTIME http://www.bbryson.com/movies/ringtone.mov 320 20]

Wisconsin Dells

April, Trisha, Erin and I piled into the car and took a little 7 hour drive over to Wisconsin Dells.  We were meeting up with Steve and Amy who are friends of the girls to spend a few days in the largest grouping of water parks in the world.  We are staying at the Polynesian Resort Hotel which has both an indoor water park and an outdoor water park.  We spent some time on the lazy river and went down a few of the slides yesterday.  We went out to dinner at Mexicali Rose which is right on the water.  After dinner the rest of the crew went to watch a water skiing show, while I went back to the hotel to watch game 5 of the Standley Cup Finals.  Edmonton was down 3 games to 1.  They ended up winning last night in overtime.  Edmonton had one person in the penalty box, so they were short handed.  One of the Edmonton players stole the puck at the blue line and went in and scored the sudden death game winning goal.  It was a pretty exciting game.  Game six will be played Saturday at 8:00 PM Eastern in Edmonton.

Today we went out for breakfast at iHOP, before we headed out to the pool area.  Steve and I were using the smallest tubes and going down the water slides.  We were a little big for the tubes and were getting dumped at the bottom of the slide.  We were able on occasion to stay right side up.  We also went down in a double tube (Steve and I)  which makes you go really fast down the tube.  We flipped on that one too.  April and Amy went up to the room to get showered up.  Erin, Trish, Steve and I went to the indoor park and sat in the sauna for a while.  I really like saunas.  I am excited to have one up in Unalakleet next year.

Sounds like we are heading out for dinner right now.  MooseJaw is the resturaunt of choice for the evening.  I am planning on wearing my MooseJaw shirt this evening.  Maybe I’ll get some free food.  🙂

Presentation at EduComm2006

So there I was sitting on a balcony over looking the Florida coastline.  I look at my watch 1:45 AM…. Ouch, I present in 7 hours.  Back to the computer I send my concentration.  Flipping between a keynote presentation and google earth.  What a great way to show everyone where we actually live.  Here is what I ended up with.

[QUICKTIME http://www.bbryson.com/movies/fla_bssd.mp4 320 260]

After heading to bed at a little after 2:00 A.M., Chick began to snore. I was already a bit wired, and was having difficulties falling asleep.  So I got up and went back out on the balcony and fell sound asleep on the swing out there listening to the waves crash on the beach.

At 5:00 AM, chick got up and came out to check email.  I got up and took a shower hoping to be revived for the day to come.  John, Chick, Mia, and myself piled into the car at 7:00 and headed to the convention center just outside of Orlando.  We were of course in the middle of rush hour traffic, so it took us quite some time to get there.

Mia and I presented at 9:00 A.M.  The presentation went really well.  Mia counted 30 participants in the session.  We talked about our student broadcasting team, and all the hard work they do.  Then talked about audio and video podcasting how it can be done in the classroom as an alternate assessment incorporating differentiated instruction.  We then talked about how podcasting could be used as a powerful staff development tool to push out pdf documents, or examples on how things should be taught, filled out, or interpreted.

The session ended up taking the whole hour.  We showed them some clips from a couple of the broadcast as well as some footage from the Iditarod coverage the kids worked on.  At the end of the presentation we had quite a few people come up and tell us how much they enjoyed the presentation.  So that was nice to hear.  We had some good questions about some of the procedures we have for creating the podcasts, and what we do about liability.  I think we may have even made a few contacts for next year.  Cross your fingers.  I am really hoping to start up a national student news broadcast next year.  It would be pretty revolutionary.

So after our session was finished we went down to the exhibit floor to wander around all the booths.  It looked like there were quite a bit more booths than were represented at MacWorld this year.  And the booths were huge. Everyone had gigantic projector screens and flat panel TVs and staff.  Vendors must have spent a fortune to be part of this conference.

We did find something really cool.  Tanburg is selling a “portable” dish system for video conferencing on the road.  We are interested in getting one we could use for next years Iditarod coverage.  It would allow us to do live broadcasting from the trail. This dish collapsed down into its own box, and can auto set up in 90 seconds.  If we find the money for this unit, we would ditch the trailer, because how many roads do we have around us any way, and put it on a sled system, so we could pull it behind a snowmachine, or a dog team.  We would really get the Iditarod Trail Committee excited if we were able to pull that off.  They were already not too impressed with what our students were able to produce this year.  They feel that is cuts into the profits they should be making off of the event.  Heaven forbid our students learn while attending an event that goes right though their villages.

After walking around the exhibit hall for a while, and talking to the different vendors, it was moving towards the time for John to present.  So we headed up to the room he would be presenting from.  He started up at around 3:40 and went for an hour.  His crew was a little more subdued than the ones Mia and I had.  He would ask if anyone had any questions, and they would just sit there.  Pretty lame.  I think John did a great job presenting, and the information was very valuable.  I hope they were able to see how relevant it is for what they are doing in their schools.

After he was finished up we decided to head back to the condo.  On the way out there was a new conference getting started that had reserved the same convention center for the evening.  There were some interesting people they were paying t great people at the door.  Chick shot this photo, and I figured I’d share it with you all so you can see how crazy these big cities can get.

That’s right a lycra body suite.  Who wares something like that?  Better yet, who picks that out and says hey we should get some girls to wear these at our next conference to be greeters at the doors.  Pretty crazy.

We were stuck in rush hour traffic on the way back to the condo as well.  So by the time we made it back it was almost 7:00 P.M.  We went out to a sea food restaurant for dinner.  The food was tasty, but wiped me out since I was short on sleep.

Sounds like tomorrow we will be doing some more work.  I fly back to MN on Saturday.  I don’t know if I’ll get to do anymore fishing before I leave.  I will have to take off before we would have the chance to get out, and I don’t want to stop a fishing trip in the middle of it so I can catch a plane.

All for now…. Time to hit the sack.

Fishing in Florida

Today was quite the day. After getting into Johns condo at 1:15 AM last night. We stayed up talking until three in the morning. We were up at 7:00 AM the next day heading out the door for a day of fishing. We got the boat put in the water,

fueled up, and out to sea we headed. We went about 30 miles off shore, and started fishing. On our way out we came across a few schools of flying fish. It was really cool. I tried to get a picture of them, but wasn’t successful. It is amazing to see these fish fly out of the water and cruise about a foot above the surface of the water for longer than seems natural. I had seen pictures of flying fish, but seeing them in person was really a treat.

Fishing in Florida is a little different than other fishing that I have done. Fishing down here you use out-riggers to help keep the lines from getting tangled. When you are salmon fishing you need to use a downrigger or a pink lady. When you are fishing in Florida you don’t use either. The lure skims across the top of the water. The fish that you are catching come up to the surface when they take the bait. Sometimes they even come flying out of the water when they strike. We had four lines out at once. When a fish hit, Chick and I would take turns reeling them in. Chick went first and caught a Bonito Tuna, which were about 8 pounds.

They are really interesting fish. They are very solid. When you grab a salmon it has some squeeze to it, but that is not the case with tuna they are like a brick. The next fish on the line I took and it turned out to be a Barracuda, which we don’t eat, so we threw it back. It had really long razor sharp teeth. The next fish on was a huge Mahi Mahi. Chick fought it for a while, and then passed the pole off to me. I fought it into the boat, but at the last second it dove under the motors and the line broke. 🙁 We fished until 2:30 P.M. when the ocean started to have some bigger waves, and a few storms were starting to pop up. When we headed in, Chick and I had each caught a King Mackerel, and a Bonito Tuna.

When we got back to the marina we had the boat lifted back out of the water and put back in its storage place in the boat yard. We did a quick job of cleaning up the boat because the marina was closing and we didn’t want to get locked in.

Back at the condo we hopped in the pool to wash off the salt from the ocean. We interspersed that with a little hot tubbing and then went out to dinner.We ate at a place called “The Sandy Grill” Its a little hole in the wall place down by the beach. They had 35 cent oysters and shrimp since it was a Tuesday night. I ended up getting a Baja Bowl which is like a taco salad, except it has rice, black beans, chicken, sour cream, and guacamole. It was pretty tasty… I also stole a couple of Rebeccas oysters.

It is now 10:00 at night, and I am wiped out. I think I am going to head to bed and see what tomorrow brings. To see more pictrues of the trip check out the Florida section of the gallery.

Quick Post

After a fast 6 days in Cook, I am sitting in the Hibbing Airport, which is now one of my favorite airports due to its extremely fast free internet connection.  I am on my way to Florida for the week. John, Chick, Mia, and I will be presenting at Educomm 2006.  I have worked up a little flyer for the session Mia and I are doing.

Today before I left the lake, I hopped on line and bought my Florida fishing liscense.  We are going fishing early tomorrow morning.  John said that we may be able to catch  mahi mahi, sailfish, wahoo, marlin, and whatever else might be swimming off of the Florida cost.

Erin and I celebrated our first annaversery yesterday.  Crazy that a year ago today we were flying out to Hawaii for our honeymoon.  It has been a really quick year.  We spent the day out on the lake tubing and getting some sun.  I got a bit of a burn.  Trisha asked me if I ever get a tan, or if I only turn red.  I am starting to wonder myself.  We’ll see how that all works out this summer.

Well, Im going to work on a little keynote for the presentation on Thursday.