W.I.P.

Work In Progress...  Been playing around with Sketchup and have managed to learn myself a few new tricks.  Gotta love Sketchucation and all of the cool rubys and plugins you add on to Sketchup.  A few months ago I downloaded and printed this engine from Thingiverse.



It works great, but I've wanted to design my own engine for a while now so here's where its at.  I thought it would be cool to make them "stackable" so this is my expandable air engine.  The idea being you print one, and it runs off of compressed air like the one above.  If you wanted, you could then print another long block that could be plugged in behind the first, but with the piston and valving running at a different timing- 180 degrees out, 90 degrees out, whatever.






Little hard to understand, but heres a shot of the rotary valve.



Still working on getting tolerances figured out but its close to actually running.





Getting closer.  At the rate I work on projects I might be done by June!  Of 2018...

That time of year.

Yup-  Mother Nature messes with our heads and the rumor mill starts churning 'em out.  Seems like every year about this time whispers of  "change" start trickling out from somewhere.  REALLY hoping the changes made work out for the best.  We learned today that almost every single administrator in our district has been moved around.  I honestly have nothing to say on the matter-  I don't see the big picture and don't have any idea what the plans are for the future. 

Really going to miss some of the ones that are leaving.  In addition to the administrative musical chairs, we are loosing a few good teachers to a well deserved retirement, which is good.  Just sad to see them go, especially the ones who weren't invited back.

On a more interesting note- the district also announced that they are planning on creating a "Vocational High School" in the next year or two.  Whatever that means.  I'm definitely interested in seeing where that goes and being a part of it, albeit from my position in the middle school as a feeder program.  Have I mentioned that I *love* my job?

Also had a chance to talk to our superintendant about the possibility of an option to getting a masters degree.  Had an idea, or maybe someone gave it to me in my search (man, my memory is getting as bad as my Dads!) that maybe I could take classes at a technical college or the like and get certified as a journeyman in some specific trade.  He (the super) seemed intrigued by the idea of petitioning somehow to get the journeyman's certificate to count AS a Masters degree!  I would still love to take additional education related classes- can always learn how to be a better teacher- but I think the experience and skills I would learn would be a WAY bigger benefit to my students than a degree in Educational Technology.  We'll see how that pans out.

Now, if we could just GET RID OF THE STINKIN SNOW...  Finally managed to get the new tires on the ST- just in time to have it sit in the garage and wait.  Had beautiful weather 2 weeks ago, spring break last week was decent enough that I got all the trees pruned, the tiller on the tractor, and the garden spot rotovated.  Then Sunday we wake up to 5" of the white gunk.