I just beat the first dungeon in the new Zelda. Woot! I’m 7.5 hours into the game now. Only another 30-50 to go.

I’ve been told I need to make it known what my Christmas present desires are. If I have to make a list I’m sure I can come up with stuff, but there’s very little that I "need." Between my Wii and TV my entertainment needs are covered. Then I’ve got the dog to play with. I’m only on book 4 of 7 in the Dark Tower series, but then I’ve got a 6 book series by Robin Hobb to read. If you do the math that’s 10 books to read. I guess I need to do some serious thinking.

Thirteen more days of school until Christmas break.

Today Dodgerblues was talking about this new promotion by GMC. When you buy or lease an eligible vehicle you won’t have to pay more than $1.99 a gallon for one year. I glanced at the particulars of how you get reimbursed, and while it looks complicated, let’s assume for now that it’s as simple as only paying $1.99 a gallon for a year. So, is it a good deal, or crap?

If I put 12,000 miles with my zipcode for an H3, it says I would save $1250. Not too bad, but is that really what I’d save? Nowhere in their calculation do they say the price per gallon they use. They only say they are using the "State Average Price for Premium Gasoline." An H3 gets 16 mpg city, and 20 mpg highway. I averaged that to 18 mpg for the calculation.

City/Highway (18 mpg):

12,000/18 = 666.7 gallons (miles/mpg = gallons used)
666.7*$2.00= $1333.3 (gallons used*cheap price=total cost of gas under program)
$1333.3+$1250=$2583.3 (total cost+savings = cost without program)
$2583.3/666.7=$3.88 (cost without program/gallons used = assumed $ per gallon)

Assuming my math is right, they are assuming a regular price per gallon of $3.88! The average price of gas around here is only $3.30 right now for cheap gas. That overestimates my savings by almost $400, lowering it to about $865. Now obviously part of this promotion relies on consumer fear of rising gas prices, but their calculated savings is only a best case scenario. They overinflate the savings by using premium prices, which I’m sure not all the eligible cars require (car enthusiasts, feel free to correct me).

So I think the deal is crap, and here’s why. Unless you drive a TON (more than the national average) your savings aren’t huge (probably less than $1000). I don’t know if they’re combining this with other deals, but there are usually cashback deals which offer more in savings, and those are guaranteed. The other reason I think it’s a joke is because it’s only for one year. The crummy mpg of an H3 is going to kill your pocketbook over the long run, not just the first year. After a year of nice gas prices you’re suddenly stuck with a gas guzzler.

So what do you think, deal or crap?

Elementary – High School: Check
Bachelors Degree: Check
Math Competency: Check
Teaching Job: Check
Teaching Credential: In progress
Student Teaching: In progress
Beginning Teacher Program: 2006-2008

As I sit here finishing homework, I had to stop and look through everything I’ve had to do to become a teacher. Part of me doesn’t even know what it’s like to be out of school. Since I was 4, I’ve had a total of 6 months (not including summers) that I haven’t been in enrolled in school. While I haven’t enjoyed every minute of it, I know what an important road it has been.

I look forward to being a regular working person, where school is history and my job is what I do. I still have two years of a beginning teacher program (and I could complain about all the hoops teachers have to jump through), but maybe then teaching will be the only "work" on my plate.

I was bored here in my student teaching seminar, and I was very curious looking at the gmail storage calculator. It increases at an unbelievably slow rate, out to the 6th or 7th decimal place. I wanted to figure out just how much it is really increasing.

I did a simple experiment. I measured how long it took for the counter to increase .0001 megabytes, which was 26 seconds. I then found the number of seconds required for 1 megabyte: 260,000. Translated into hours, that is 72.2 hours. Into days that is almost 3 exactly. That’s right, storage is increasing at the startling rate of 1 mb per 3 days. That seems super wimpy. I then found the percent increase over an entire year and it came out to a 5% increase, which is a little more respectable sounding.

I’m a nerdy math teacher now, so I do dorky math problems for fun! Any problems with my experiment Denise? I’m making the assumption that the rate of increase is perfectly constant, which it may not be. The number of subscribers also must factor into Google’s equation at some point. I do think it’s interesting that it comes out to a 5% per year increase…sounds like a company policy. Maybe that boils down to Joe Blow installing a new terabyte blah blah blah server every month. I’ll let Angelo tackle that one.

I’ve got $200 to spend at school, so I’ve been thumbing through an education catalog. There was a brain teaser/puzzle game that caught my eye called The Tower of Hanoi. It was made in 1883 by a French Mathematician named Edouard Lucas. The goal is to move the whole tower to the far right pole, moving one piece at a time, and never putting a bigger piece on top of a smaller piece. I’m going to buy a cool wood version for $12 that kids can attempt.

Here is a flash version. I got sort of close, but 270 moves later I gave up. I’ll wait for the wood hands on version.

We’re learning how to use NET MEETING! HAHAHA. This stupid program hasn’t been upgraded since 2000. There are tons of better programs out there like google talk. But most important of all, what the heck does this have to do with education technology? You are correct, nothing! Then we did mail merge, boring. He just said "Your gas bill, they do it with mail merge." HAHA.

I brought some math catalogs from work. I’ve got $200 to spend on stuff for my classroom, so I’m looking for stuff I could use. There are some cool things that can really help kids grasp different concepts. There are integer chips to visually show kids adding positives and negatives, overhead calculators, fun games, and a cool poster of Einstein sticking his tongue out. I’m going to buy a ton of small things so I can get lots! Yaaaay!

Mark it down, because in about 8 hours I will have survived my first 4 months as a teacher. I’ve enjoyed it, which is a big sigh of relief. I think that is a big fear for a lot of people when starting a career. The simple question "Am I going to like it?" I’m not sure I believe people that say "Do what you love!" and you will be happy no matter what. Personally, I love watching movies, playing videogames, and posting on this website…but I find it highly unlikely I will be paid for it anytime soon. I think it was Dennis Prager who said "If you can’t support yourself with your hobby, get a job so you can at least do your hobby," or something to that effect.

I know lots of my friends are still figuring out what they’ll be doing for a career during much of their life, and I know you will all figure it out. My best advice is to figure it out when you’re young, because it’s a lot eaier to change when you aren’t tied down. Second piece of advice, don’t pick an area that interests you, but pick a career "style" that matches your personality. Can’t stand being in an office all day? Don’t go into business. Hate kids? Don’t become a teacher. I don’t love math by any means, but I do love being my own boss (sort of) and spending the day with 173 crazy Jr. Highers. I can wake up for that every morning.

On Thursday night I started talking to my brother about how dumb blogger is, so we decided to share some hosting fees. Now I’ve got a fresh install of wordpress running, and so far so good. I’ve been able to transfer all my posts and comments from my blogspot site pretty easily. Now I just need to work a bit on some plugins and sprucing up the graphics a bit.

On Friday I took off for Palm Springs for my first math conference. Imagine a thousand math nerds from around southern California all covening to talk about math. I saw lots of good math tools and ideas, and even picked myself up a stamp and cool puzzle game. I also saw Ryan and my old 8th grade math teacher.

On Saturday night after I got home from Palm Springs we headed off to Stacie’s 10-year reunion. Now I know reunions get mixed feelings from people, so I was curious to see what it would be like. Honestly, it was kind of sad. There were only 140 people total, including alumni’s significant others. Out of 700 or so people in a graduating class, that’s all? I think the reason it was lame was because hardly anyone was there, not simply because it was a reunion. It’s no fun when people you actually enjoyed talking to in High School just don’t come. So my opinion on reunions is they can be fun, but that depends on who comes.

Now it’s Sunday and we have to get ready for the rest of the week. Have to be ready to teach, have stuff to eat, and try to make church tonight. Happy Birthday to my sister today!