Hot Surface Ignition

This summer when I on my big journey, my colleague and housesitter, Warren called me and asked me how to turn on my oven. After going through it step by step, we concluded that Warren was not an idiot and was actually doing everything correctly. My oven was not working and there was something the matter with it.

This morning I had PG&E come out and see if they could fix it. As Randy the serviceman entered, I told him what was going on and he immediately knew that there was a part that had gone kaput. Apparently what happened to my oven is a common. The "HOT SURFACE IGNITION" had died. That part is the element that heats up and glows and heats the oven to the temperature you set it to.

After taking out a couple pieces of the inside of the oven as well as the racks, we located the hot surface ignition and with loosened it with a few screws. However, we still have to disconnect that element from the power source and that took a bit more work. This entailed us moving the appliance away from the wall and unplugging it from the socket. After looking at the back, we determined that the disconnect of the ignition was not on the back, so we had to remove the bottom drawer and go way back underneath the range and unscrew a protective shield and there it was. We unclipped the ignition from the power source and this is what I need to replace.

The kitchen is an obstacle course at the moment.

The hot surface ignition element is found beneath the two pieces on the bottom of the oven and sticks out from the rear of the oven.

The hot surface ignition.

Randy was kind enough to stay by me as I disassembled each part of the range and told me exactly what to do when I install the new ignition and put everything back together. He told me that there was an appliance part store near my home, but I went and it was closed. Seeing is that I won't be able to get to an appliance store during the school day, I have had to resort to purchasing the replacement part from Sears online. The element will be delivered next Friday. That part, if you were wondering, costs $65.06 with taxes and shipping.

A blog posting will be in order when I actually successfully complete this task!

Come and check out Ernie's new glasses

I spent this evening dining with my friend Mary, her husband and their nearly one-year old daughter, Katie. As you can see below, Katie is just starting to walk (with help from Mom and Dad) and in a surprise, I found out that Mary is pregnant again, due in March.

Mary, Katie and Peter D. on a walk to dinner

We were celebrating a special birthday for Mary. Happy Birthday, Mary!!

So here's what you've all been waiting for. Here's me with Kate and my new glasses.

So, I went with a more modern look.

So, let me know what you think. I decided it was time to take a chance and go with something a bit more "on the edge". Hopefully, this choice doesn't have me going over the cliff!

Fallout 2004

A great Head-Royce School tradition is to send each class out on a trip at the beginning of the year. Each class, from 7th grade to 12th grade, goes out for two days to do things like kayaking, ropes course or if you're a 12th grader, whitewater rafting. It is a costly, and potentially high liability proposition to send out upwards of 500 students on these trips and I commend the school to it's continued committment to these trips.

This year the seniors, as well as their fellow faculty rafters, boarded the buses at school at 6AM. By 10AM, we arrived at the put-in point on the Middle Fork of the American River. I must note that for the last 8 miles of the drive I got what I term "Chapmaned". Let me explain. Our Head of School is named Paul Chapman, and he is a great, if not one of the best heads in all of America. He has been at Head-Royce for 20 years. He, like me, is an adviser to seniors, and he drove up to the river in his own car, but rode the last 8 miles on the buses with the rest of us. Lucky for me, he rode those last miles next to me. Paul likes to chat with his faculty. He remembered that I was a Geology major and kept asking me questions about the topography we were driving past. I did my best to tell him what I knew, but my petrology was always weak and I could never tell him what kind of rock we were looking at. In addition, Paul told me that he had heard from various parties that this particular trip along the Middle Fork of the American River was perhaps TOO wild for our students, and he was therefore doing some personal fact-finding. Lucky for me, the drive ended before he could begin to ask me things about curriculum or other school issues.

The Head-Royce seniors and faculty were divided into thirteen rafts. The trip was a total of 18 miles. In the first five miles there were class III and IV rapids one right after the other. The most stunning of them all was one of the first, called Tunnel Chute. Here is a visual...

A view of a raft entering the rapid from the rear (top)

The rapid itself is no wider than the width of a raft necessitating that we all get down and make sure we hold our paddles up so nothing sticks out. The rapid is about 200 feet long.

The raft bounces hard at the bottom. Make sure to be centered low in the boat.

Right after the rapid, you go into a tunnel to recover and celebrate. Here is a raft coming out successfully on the other side.

You get the idea that the day is full of great excitement. Along the way, there were opportunities to swim and enjoy the sun and river. I will say that before lunch, I dove into the water voluntarily once, was pushed in by one of my boatmates (still unknown who that was to me) and then when our boat was doing a cool trick, I fell in unexpectedly.

After lunch there were more rapids, the most dramatic being RUCK-A-CHUCKY, a class VI. Yes, you read that right, class 6. We are not allowed to run that rapid, so much walk around. It is a rapid with a 35 foot drop. Unbelievable.

That night, we camped along the South Fork. Here is a view of the river from our campsite.

South Fork American River at twilight

After dinner, we had a slide show and then a great senior class talent show. It is amazing how talented these students are. We had singing and music. WOW. Afterwards, senior class president Nick Dantzker (my advisee!!) asked the students to recognize and thank people and classmates that they would never publically thank as a way to appreciate the class and to start of their senior year with a positive note. It was awesome, and there were tears. Some students said some pretty amazing things.

One thing that came out was the great bond that the lifers of the school have. These are the students who started way back in the fall of 1992 as kindergarteners. At that time, there were 36 and 25 are still classmates. Here's a picture of them.

Class of 2005 lifers

Congratulations to the lifers and all the class of 2005. Have a great senior year. It was a great fallout and do yourselves proud this year.

The first day of school

It's the first day of September, 2004 and it is also the first official day of classes for the 2004-05 academic school year. Because the 9th grade class trip left at 1PM, the entire Upper School's class day was shortened with each period meeting for 30 minutes instead of the usual 45. This year I teach three sections of Geometry, one section of Honors Geometry and one section of a new Math elective that will focus on Statistics in the Fall and Economics in the Spring. All the Geometry classes are for the ninth grade, so if you do the math, most of my days are spent with ninth graders, whom I love. The Stat/Econ class is for seniors and currently has an enrollment of five. I'm ok with the small number as it gives me much more freedom to experiment with how I will teach this class.

But one of the highlights of the day was advising, where the ninth graders I met back in the fall of 2001 have now become seniors and are looking out onto their futures. Here they are...

(Back row) Charlie L., Ryan P., Marshall M., Jeff D., Meghan B., Max S.

(Front row) Gretchen S., Becca F., Joanna L., Danny W., Nick D., Chen

(Not pictured) Matt P.

Tomorrow, the senior class embarks on the senior class trip, which will be raft the Middle Fork of the American River. This is the granddaddy of rafting trips in Northern California and I have been waiting to take this trip for seven years. You see, back in the fall of 2000, when my first group of advisees were seniors they were scheduled to raft the Middle Fork, but that year the hydrologists did not release enough water so we were not able to raft. I have heard no grumblings of a potential canceling of this years trip. I am so excited!!

On a totally different subject, because I had an afternoon free from teaching, I hauled the pieces of my chair to the upholsterer that came recommended to me and Linda (of Cortland Upholstery on Mission Street) came up with a plan to attach certain pieces to the chair and footrest themselves and others will be pillows. I have to admit, thought, that instead of going with leather, I decided to go with vinyl. I hope I don't regret that decision. The big surprise came, again, when she quoted me a price. $168. I was floored, as I was bracing myself to pay over $400. OOOPS, there was a mistake, Linda forgot to include something in the price and it came back the second time at $225. Still, far below what I was planning on and willing to pay. I should have my complete chair in a week and a half!!

A momentous day

This last day of August is not yet over, but it has already been a day of great discovery. Since I didn't have to be at school until noon (as a senior advisor, my advisees register after lunch) I played a quick nine holes with my friend Dave H. (Mom, Dave is the guy who had the 4th of July BBQ you and I went to last year, he has the really nice backyard.) Anyway, after our round, Dave tells me to pull into this sketchy looking grocery store called Pacific Super for dim sum. The store backs up directly onto I-280 and looked really run down. We walked in and immediately I was hit with that one-of-a-kind Chinese grocery store smell. If you've experienced it, you know what I mean. We pulled right up the glass cases with all the BBQ pork buns and such. I wandered around the display case and there it was, what I have been looking for here in SF for the past couple of years......THE VIETNAMESE SANDWICH. I have been looking for an equivalent to these sandwichs which I devoured in Seattle. As I sit here and I type, I am eating the one that I purchased. It is good since it was made perhaps less than twenty minutes ago. To pile good upon good, Pacific Super offers the buy four for $5 and get one free. How can my day get any better?

The REI Labor Day Sale

I spent this afternoon finally dragging myself to Costco to buy those bulk things that I need every six months. 36 rolls of toilet paper, the quantity one must buy of Costco's Kirkland brand, will last me an entire year. The most important purchase I make at Costco are the 10 pound bags of frozen fruit that I use for my smoothies. Along the way, I did pick up cantaloupe, honeydew, lemons, and grapes, all of which are of surprisingly high quality.

I bought most everything I wanted at Costco, but there are two items at Trader Joe's that I must buy at TJ's and no where else. I really like TJ's Rice Dream Soy Milk. It isn't flavored vanilla, which is what Costco only sells, unless I didn't see the plain soy milk at Costco. The second Trader Joe's only item is their low fat cottage cheese. Last year, after eating this particular cottage cheese, I then bought a Safeway brand and I simply couldn't eat it. I was and still am completely familiar with the taste of Trader Joe's low fat cottage cheese.

Costco and Trader Joe's are a hop, skip and jump from San Francisco's own REI store. I had received a flyer in the mail, perhaps one of the few times an advertising piece actually worked on me, about REI's Labor Day Clearance Sale. So I went over to see if there was something I might want.

I found not one, but TWO.

The first was something that I had been needing and didn't buy earlier because of its steep price.

My new REI Ultra Lite Waterproof (not water resistant mind you) Jacket

The original price was $125 and the sale price was $89.99. But for all of you who know that I am the KING of the fleece vest, an actual rainjacket is a breakthrough fashion move for me.

I then went to the shoe section and saw what I thought to be really cool looking running shoes, and they were on the clearance rack, AND they had my small foot size.

My new Vasque Lightweight Running Shoe

You'll note that I am on an orange kick.

So I went to the cashier to make my purchase. The rainjacket rings up as $89.99, just as I thought it would. Then the cashier scans the shoes. The tag on the shoe showed that the original full price of the shoes was $85 and the sale price was $49.83. But the price screen flashed $24.91. I told the cashier I thought that the $24.91 was a mistake. He then said that every price that ends in .83 is given an additional 50% off the lowest price. BONUS. I was so happy that I almost did the Snoopy dance.

The "nutjobs" (although beloved) I work with

Every year, during the opening faculty meetings, we as a faculty have a day where we have an in-service. This year, we had a woman speaking to us from Harvard's Project Zero about "How do we know we understand and how do we develop that?" So we started out by having people throw out the things they truly understand. Here were some things people understood:

"Baking Cookies"
"Bicycle Deraiulleurs"
"Newton's First Law"
"Softball"
"Israeli Folk Dancing"

Then my colleague (and Department Chair) yells "WOMEN"!!!

There he goes again, bringing down the house........

You know you really are a nerdy Math teacher when....

I decided that it was time for me to actually start ending my summer, so I went to work today. The school is empty and so I have the run of the place. I did, however, get a chance to see the scores of the 15 students that I taught in AP Statistics last year. I taught one section of the AP course for the first time here at Head-Royce and the other three sections were taught by my colleague Chris, who has been teaching the course for about five years. I know that I did not do as good a job as he did, but I still have to compare my students' scores to his. Scores are out of 5, 5 being the best.

Score_____My Section_____All Four Sections
1 __________4 _________________8
2 __________3 _________________9
3__________ 0 _________________10
4 __________6 _________________24
5__________ 2 _________________12

So, how does one analyze whether or not my students scored in a proportion that is within reason of the entire four sections? Run a Chi-squared goodness of fit test of course. DUH!

After having to go back and teach myself the calculation, it comes up that there is s 25% chance (pretty good) that my distribution of scores would happen by chance given the distribution of all four sections combined. In other words, given the four section distribution, if we randomly took 15 students from that pool, there is a 25% chance that my distribution could have occurred. At a 5% significance level (meaning if the chi-squared percentage turned out to be under 5% and I should therefore think that my teaching was WAY substandard), my students scores are well within reason. WHEW!

A Legend in the Making

My friend, Matt, lives a dual life. His passion in life is playing and performing on his accordian, dressed up as Kielbasia, everyone's favorite Polish Grandma Lunch Lady. Here's the portrait that was painted of Kielbasia:

Kielbasia

Here's Kielbasia's website. Check out her upcoming performances!!

The welcome home committee

I pulled into San Francisco at 3PM Friday August 20th. After doing a quick unpacking of the car, I opened the backyard the was welcomed home by these two....

Amelia (Mimi) and Isabel (Izzy) S.

The first words I heard were, "Ernie's home!!!" Luckily for me it was a "kiss and hug" day. These two girls (my neighbors nearly six year old daughters) are smart to limit the number of "kiss and hug" days so I can never assume that I'm going to get my share of affection. Smart cookies!

We rough housed and then played the math game where each one of us puts out from one to five fingers and then the two girls have to add up the total number of fingers on all three hands.

What a great way to return home!

Friends, Friends, Friends

This one takes a bit of set up. I graduated from The Lakeside School in Seattle. This past year, one of the administrators at Lakeside retired and the person who replaced her is the husband of a (now) former colleague of mine at Head-Royce in Oakland. Jennifer N. (aka The N), sadly, left Head-Royce in July and moved to Seattle with her husband Darryl and son Darius.

Jennifer N. (Darryl was at work and Darius was napping)

Lakeside is housing them in a house across the street from the entrance from the school. Here's a look at their house (these next two pictures are SOLELY for a certain blog reader that would hold me accountable for depriving said reader were I not to include pictures such as these)>

The N. new home

The view out their living room window is the main Lakeside School entrance

Jennifer and I spent an hour rehashing things, gossiping and making sure that she is getting a good lay of the landscape in Seattle. After Darius woke up, we took a stroll on the Lakeside campus and I schmoozed with the administrators, who although not the same ones that were there when I was a student, all know me from when I tutored Lakeside students during my year of recovery in Seattle. Just keeping the lines of communication open in case I ever desire to return to the Pacific Northwest.

I left Seattle Thursday morning August 20th. Before I hit the road for California, I went to visit my friends John and Kari G.. John and I were roommates in McMahon Hall at the University of Washington back in 1988-89 the year I went to the UW. John, like my sister, is an architect. He has been self-employed but is now working for a small firm. Now, John (and Kari) has always amazed me with his ability to design and build things. About five or six years ago, John and Kari purchased some land on Bainbridge Island, in Puget Sound.

The ferry that runs from Seattle to Bainbridge Island with Safeco Field in the background

They build their own house. Amazing!!!

The G. in front of their self-constructed home

John has always had some amazing ideas and there are some really cool design elements that I think are awesome. One is that instead of having one large refrigerator, they have a bank of four waist level college dorm room refrigerators. One for drinks, vegetables, etc. It's a pretty cool idea. I expect nothing less than totally neat things from John.

Kari, John (holding 6 week old Evan), Julia and Duke the dog

Ernie and John (it's been 16 years since Freshman year)

It's always great to catch up with Kari and John and we do it way to infrequently, but I appreciate the couple hours every couple of years nonetheless.

Leaving the Puget Sound region, I drove south along I-5 into Oregon. My best friend from high school, Dean K., is a travelling salesman and in talking with him we discovered that we were going to intersect each other on I-5. I was driving south and he north. We decided to meet at the Seven Feathers Casino at milepost 99 in southern Oregon.

The Seven Feathers Casino

I love playing blackjack, but it's always just much more fun with Dean because I taught him how to play and I love watching him play "correctly". He's learned well, plus he is just so animated and fun at the table he makes the experience more fun for everyone at the table. I put $50 on the table and an hour and a half later I walked away from the table with $225.

Dean and I then partook of the buffet, which was fine, but our server was a kick. Sandi was OUT OF CONTROL. Let's just say, we hit it off and she took home a large tip.

Dean and Ernie with our server Sandi

We arrived at the casino at 6:30PM and left at 9:00PM. What fun it is to have some great friends!!!

Golfing with your parents' friends

On Monday morning, Mom, Dad and I (me totally asleep in the back seat) took a mini-golfing trip to the Northwestern corner or Washington State. My Dad, you see, is an AVID golfer. Rabid might be the more appropriate word. He hits the driving range nearly everyday and plays in what seems like more leagues than I can keep track of. It drives him a bit batty that I can pick up the game three or four times a year, not practice a lick, and still beat him pretty handily. It's been like this since I've been in high school. Things held true to form this week.

My Dad's friends all are turned on to golf and now they organize these excursions to play different courses across the Pacific Northwest. Our course on Monday was called Homestead something or other. Here's a picture of the group of golfers that played...

Golfers before the round starts

After the round, all of us drove across the Canadian border to eat Chinese food in British Columbia because, as EVERYONE knows, the Chinese food in Canada is infinitely better than what we can find here in the United States. You want to see Asian people get a bit rowdy? Here you go...

Imbibing gets things going

The next day, we all went to a different course, this one called the Shuksan Golf Club.

Dad makes the blog

The aforementioned Mt. Shuksan

So Dad and I played to a tie for the first six holes of the back nine. At this point, Dad was getting pretty excited at the prospect of beating me (at least for the back nine). All I knew I had to do was play my game and eventually Dad would choke. And wouldn't you know it, BOOYAH, Dad goes into a tailspin and I take the back nine 44 to 45. I played very well on Tuesday, shooting an 86 to beat all golfers.

Olympics Slothfulness

I will fully admit that I wanted to resist laying on the couch for days at a time watching the Olympics. The desire was there to be active, do my own thing, to resist the magnetic pull of the music, but I have succumbed. AAGGGHHH, I can't HELP but watch. One saving grace, however, is that here in Seattle, with basic cable, we are able to get the Canadian coverage, which is much more complete and obviously less American focused. It is sad, however, to constantly hear the anchor go, "So, how did our Canadian athletes fair in (fill in your favorite sport here)" and have the reply be, "Well Anchor, I am sorry to report that our Canadian athlete in this event failed to make it out of the qualifying rounds, a real disappointment for that athlete". Further down the line, it is even much more tragic to hear "Well, it really looks like our Canadian federation really needs to take some serious evaluation of its training method and the state of athlete development in Canada."

Check out this site.... All I can say is, I LOVE THE INTERNET!!!

Oh god, I failed the evil test.....

How evil are you?

Mom makes the blog

A casual day here in Seattle highlighted by a haircut.

The famous Mom

Grandpa

My grandmother watching the Mariners on our family's new big screen tv (and I mean it is BIG)

Here's the view of the backyard.

At sunset

The sun has set

Wonders of the Northwest

As I travelled along the northern edge of our country, I have had the opportunity to reacquaint myself with my beloved Seattle Mariners. They SUCK this season and since I paid attention to them closely back in May/June their roster has completely changed. During my travels across North Dakota and Montana, the Mariners are playing their cross plains rivals, the Minnesota Twins. Therefore each night, I turn on the tv in Dickinson (aligned with the Twins) or Butte (rooting for the Mariners) and watch the game. The Mariners won both nights.

On Wednesday the 11th, I left North Dakota and trekked across eastern Montana. There is nothing more boring that having to drive across eastern Montana. There is nothing to comment on except the great meal I had in Billings. My friend Dean, a travelling salesman, covers Montana, so I called him and asked him where to eat in Billings. Q Cuisine, again like in Fargo, had amazing hip decor (like you'd find in SF or NYC) and it's sirloin with truffle sauce was excellent. I had a second wind after dinner and drove the three hours and spent the night in Butte.

Butte is, perhaps, the most economically depressed of all the Montana towns. It has a long mining history and is still reeling from some of the pollution caused by it.






Looking down into the Butte valley






Mining equipment right in the heart of Butte

Fifteen miles outside of Butte, stands the world famous Anaconda mine. This mine was active until 1980 and has the largest open pit mine in the world. The mine is known for its landmark tower, in which the Washington Monument can easily fit into.






The tower at Anaconda

After driving through scenic western Montana (not to be confused in anyway with eastern Montana), I drove through the 70 miles of the panhandle of Idaho and entered into my home state of Washington. Washington, like Montana, has a flat arid eastern portion and a mountainous, greener western portion.

The palouse of eastern Washington State

The agricultural productivity of eastern Washington is based on the amazing Grand Coulee Dam. The word coulee comes from French and is defined as "a deep gulch or ravine with sloping sides, often dry in the summer".

In 1933, FDR, signed a piece of legislation that began construction of this great gravity earthen dam to be built in the north central part of Washington state on the mighty Columbia river. It was to provide flood control, irrigation to the farmers and hydroelectic power. In 1942, it was put into service. Here is a great historical overview of the Grand Coulee Dam. It is still the largest hydroelectic dam in the United States and number 3 in the world.

The Grand Coulee Dam, a mile long

A view of the Grand Coulee Dam from the rear

The water in the river behind the dam stretches for 150 miles and is named after Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

The 32nd President of the United States

Roosevelt Lake

For those of you who want to see eccentric America, here's something I saw as I was driving through the town of Electric City, WA. Yup, that's its name.

Windmill Garden

Lastly, as I drove out of the area, here's a parting shot of the coulee region of eastern Washington.

Shiprock

It is now time for a week with Mom and Dad...

24 Hours of North Dakota

After leaving the Twin Cities on Tuesday morning, it was a three hour drive to the northwest on I-94 to reach the Red River, which serves as the border between the town of Moorhead, MN and the metropolis of Fargo, ND. I pulled off I-94 and toured around downtown Fargo. I found a surprisingly hip looking restaurant on the ground floor of the Hotel Donaldson. I had a surprisingly good burger.

My home away from home in North Dakota

It is 350 miles across the length of the state of North Dakota and I cruised along for an entire afternoon (listening to The Bourne Legacy) until I reached Dickinson, ND which lies approximately 70 miles east of the North Dakota/Montana border.

Beautiful amber waves of grain

About 10 miles west of Dickinson, lies a road called The Enchanted Highway. Along this 30 mile stretch of road, residents have constructed huge sculptures. Here are two that I saw:

Flying Gulls

Jumping Deer

These are HUGE sculptures. I was so sick of driving at that point that I now regret not driving down the 30 miles to see the other four sculptures.

After a good night's sleep, I headed west to see tour the Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

Theodore Roosevelt National Park

When Roosevelt was in his early 20's, a NYC guy, he spent a couple summers here in Western North Dakota hunting and living. He actually started up a business here as well. Over the course of his lifetime, he saw the bison that he hunted become nearly extinct. He saw that the place he loved slowly change and it was this that instilled in him the sense of resource conservation that lead Roosevelt to establish our National Park system. This area of the North Dakota Badlands was set aside as a reserve in 1946 and eventually was turned into a National Park in 1978. Here is a little of what Roosevelt saw:

Roosevelt's beloved bison

Prairie dogs

A thriving praire dog metropolis

Most people travel THROUGH North Dakota. Even though I didn't spend a great deal of time here, I did experience a bit of the amazing sense of space that draws and keeps people here. To give you a sense of how wide open it is, the entire state has 630,000 residents. San Francisco, the city, has 760,000 residents in its 49 square miles.