Peter Kupfer's Blog » Good Thing

Good Thing — 21 April — My Blog is News

Peter Kupfer — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 01:03:25 +0000

I found today that someone had started a site called lzhsnews.com which will have news of Lake Zurich High School (which is where I work). One of the news stories is that I have a blog. I was very flattered by the comments the author made about my blog and it made me glad that I have made a more concerted effort to occasionally update it. Here is the story:

LZHS NEWS via kwout

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Good Thing April 13th — High on Google

Peter Kupfer — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 04:20:49 +0000

Today’s good thing was seeing that when you search Google for presidential swing set, my blog comes up first. I never thought I would see the day that my blog would be #1 on Google for any search, but there ya go.

presidential swing set – Google Search via kwout

This post is copyright © 2009 by Peter Kupfer on April 13, 2009 at 10:20 pm from.
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Good Thing Recap — March 27th – March 31st

Peter Kupfer — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 21:04:02 +0000

March 27th — Had a nice time playing Mario Kart and hanging out at the Reagan’s.

March 28th — Got to see snow one more time this year. I love snow.

March 29th — Got to use the snow blower which is one of my favorite things to do.

March 30th — Bought three ceiling fans and now I get to try and install them.

March 31st — Got to spend a lot of time with Isaac today and is really close to get some ceiling fans installed.

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Good Thing March 26 — Reminiscing about Clay

Peter Kupfer — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 03:52:28 +0000

Tonight I was inspired to reminisce about my favorite Americal Idol contestant of all time, Clay Aiken. Here is a playlist (I love YouTube!)

This post is copyright © 2009 by Peter Kupfer on March 26, 2009 at 9:52 pm from.
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Good Thing Catch Up — March 20th – 25th

Peter Kupfer — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 03:14:19 +0000

March 20 — Spent a fabulous night with the Grace family and the Kane family. It was nice to spend time with other parents our age.

March 21 — The house was clean today before Gina’s Scentsy party. It was nice and will hopefully not be too short lived.

March 22 — I bowled consistently which is always good. Nice and steady scores for a 517.

March 23 — I updated the pictures on the digital picture frame in the living room. It is nice to have more recent Isaac pictures cycling through.

March 24 — Isaac went through an uncontrollable laughing fit while I was kissing him to go to bed. (Video coming soon.) I think my beard was tickling him.

March 25 — I had a good morning playing basketball. Not shooting really, but running and passing wise.

This post is copyright © 2009 by Peter Kupfer on March 25, 2009 at 9:14 pm from.
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Good Thing 18 & 19 March

Peter Kupfer — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 04:00:25 +0000

18 March — Today I gave a test over uniform circular. The test seemed to be well constructed as pretty much all of the students finished on time and no one yelled at me. Yeah!

19 March — We started the electrostatics chapter today. This chapter can be full of many unintended innapropriate phrases. Today, for instance, I legitimately said to a group, “make sure you rub those balls to get them ready for the next group.” They started laughing and then I realized what I said. Good stuff.

This post is copyright © 2009 by Peter Kupfer on March 19, 2009 at 10:00 pm from.
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Good Thing March 17th — Selective Twitter Status

Peter Kupfer — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 04:23:46 +0000

I have started using Selective Twitter Status for Facebook. This allows me to control which tweets I send that end up as my Facebook status y adding a #fb to the end of the tweet. I think this will really help me use Twitter more effectively. One of the nice parts of Twitter is the sharing links and other pieces of information that I wouldn’t necesarily want to make a status update on Facebook. This application is very helpful and is a good thing.

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Good Thing 16 March — Time Warp

Peter Kupfer — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 05:08:14 +0000

Today’s good thing was watching a new TV show that my students suggested to me, Time Warp. The basic premise of this show is that these two guys take high speed (which means high frame rate so you can watch it back in slow motion) video of various science type events. While some times slow motion is overdone, according to Entertainment Weekly online, this may be the only acceptable use of slow mo. The episode I watch tonight involved watching various objects being blended including seven butane lighters (which did eventually combust), juggling chainsaws, and a old bar trick with a beer bottle which really a great example of the power of vacuums. (Not the cleaning kind, but the lack of anything.)

The one criticism my students had, I would agree, is that sometimes they reshow the slow motion clips too many times. After a while you start to feel like we get the point and they are just dragging it out.

Here is a clip of a famous drummer Mike Mangini on Time Warp with a high speed drum solo. This guy can drum at 20.1 beat/second. PER SECOND! Holy crap!

Here is the general trailer for the show.

You can find more video on the Time Warp site, http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/time-warp-mind-bending-motion.html, and on YouTube:

This post is copyright © 2009 by Peter Kupfer on March 16, 2009 at 11:08 pm from.
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Good Things March 9th – 15th

Peter Kupfer — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 04:33:14 +0000

Wow, I have been super busy and I going to get caught up on my good things list:

9 March: Isaac is getting so close to walking it is awesome. Most recent video.

10 March: Finished my teaching portfolio and it made me feel like I had accomplished something over the last four years.

11 March: Got home and Isaac crawled right at me, really fast. It made me happy!

12 March: I found out that I get to stay at Lake Zurich next year. This is quite exciting for me as I didn’t want to leave.

13 March: I received so many positive comments after finding out that I got to keep my job that I was very, very overwhelmed with happiness.

14 March: I had 9 hours of sleep which is really unusual but it was nice.

15 March: Played a lot of guitar hero with my brother, wife, and future sister in law. It rocked! (And so did I!)

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Good Thing #32 — March 8th — New High Score

Peter Kupfer — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 00:07:05 +0000

Today included two great moments.

First, I bolwed a 242 which is my new high game. This included one open, so there is still room for improvement.

Second, at the bowling alley, my student Liz gave Isaac the biggest non-mylar balloon I have ever seen and he was thouroughly amused.

We also went to eat with my Dad and Rhoda and while at the restaurant, Isaac started crawling on the table and getting us all napkins. Thoroughly amusing!

Isaac with Napkins

This post is copyright © 2009 by Peter Kupfer on March 8, 2009 at 6:07 pm from.
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