sailingpj
-
Content Count
471 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Articles
Store
Posts posted by sailingpj
-
-
"But of course, my dad used to say that sometimes I could be so hard headed that I really could win an arguement with a wall!"
I once dented a boom with my head, and still went on to win the race.
I notice a lot of "Alpha Dogs" in the local Sea Scout adult leadership. It is one thing that causes a lot of the problems that happen between various ships. I also notice even more of that in the youth. Especially the ones who are or used to be a boatswain. There is definitely a lot of verbal smacking down that happens in my ship. Much of it is disguised in humor, but once in a while you just have to say "shut up or I'm going to bring out the duct tape" (that is a direct quote from our current boatswain).
I would definitely say that scouting attract that type of personality. It is also a place where people who don't know they have that type of personality find out.
-
It is hard to describe. For me what I really liked was talking to all the people. I estimate the I talked to between 5000 an 10,000 people during the 14 days I was there. That is really cool. I am still in contact with people I met there. Because I went I now have friends in 6 states. I don't know of anywhere else that you can do that.
-
"Have a question for you though. By Engineering major I take it that you are in College, while your after school program is in middle school. Did you think some things fell into place when you went to college??"
Yeah a few things fell into place, mostly all the MLA stuff. I never really understood that until I took English at my first college.
I almost never see any students finished project. I am noticing this stuff while they are working. My job this past week has been to pace around the computer lab making sure the students are working and not just messing around. When everyone is working I will sit down next to someone and walk them through their mistakes. Most of the time all it takes is reading a sentence out loud and they fix the most noticeable problems.
A few times I have asked people what their thesis is and just gotten blank looks. Then I ask what the main idea is and get more blank looks.
I have only seen a couple students read at all. I know of a couple more who have talked about reading once or twice. We have ~150 students in our program.
Yes, almost all of them text a lot. Half of them do not have a computer at home, and they are the ones with the weakest skills.
-
The post I spun off from mentioned a writing beltloop. This is definitely a good thing. I have been working at an after school program for the past few months. This past week I have been watching kids in the computer lab. I am stunned at how weak their writing and typing skills are. These are middle schoolers BTW.
First off, the speed at which they type is painfully slow. I take whole minutes to type a single sentence, even when they are copying what they already wrote.
Second, they are already learning to use spell check as a crutch. I wouldn't mention it if they were using it for hard words, or words that are commonly misspelled, but they are using it for two syllable words. Then they just pick the first word on the list, and most of the time it is not the correct word.
These first two can be attributed to weak computer skills, but the third is definitely a problem. Grammar, especially simple grammar, is non-existent. Today I read this sentence that expressed three separate thought with no punctuation. The word choice made no sense at all. I attempted to read it out loud for the student, but was unable to. I simply could not make the words come out of my mouth in the order he wrote them; neither could he. There was no verbs, and no clear subject. I could even say it was a sentence because it began with a capital and ended with a period.
Unfortunately that was not the worst sentence I have seen while working at that school.
I have looked at some of the student work that is on the walls and grammatically it is not much better. I read a paragraph about Lincoln's assassination; out of the 8 sentences not one used correct grammar. That paragraph scored 24/24.
I am frequently chastised by my english teachers for bad grammar. Most of the time I don't notice what the things that they tell me I am doing wrong. I say this to show that I am not an expert on the english language. I am an engineering major, and I only have one more english class that I have to take.
These students are not making subtle errors. These kids are putting random words on the page, then shuffling them around until they kinda sorta make sense. They are in 6th-8th grade and making mistakes that I was taught not to make in the third grade.
I've ranted for a while now, so I'll get to my point. Schools need to be doing a better job of teaching english. What do you all think? Am I expecting to much out of 11, 12, 13, 14 year olds?
-
Jambo was totally worth the $2000+ that my family spent for me to attend as staff.
I hope to be able to do it again in 2013.
-
I know there are a few mother's here, so I want to wish you all a Happy Mother's Day!!!!
-
I worked for 3 years as a deckhand on a sports fishing boat. I spent a lot of time cutting bait, cleaning fish, cleaning the boat, washing blood off the deck and myself, all that good stuff. The first year I got sea sick every day we went out. The second year I got sick half the days we went out. The third year I got sick once.
Thought the sea sickness really sucks it never stopped me from working. Well, the puking did stop me, but only for the amount of time it took to hurl over the rail. Those days I got pretty good tips.
-
Did you ask your son to help? That is what my dad does anytime he needs technical help. For some reason he can follow the directions to the letter 20 times and not get it to work; then I step in, use the same directions, and just get it to work. He swears that I have mystical powers
I have noticed that most people under 30 have these same powers.
-
Yeah, like I said, we got the only participant award. It is going on the wall with all the rest of our participant/catboat awards.
-
If you go there you can download the boarding guide for the Ancient Mariner Regatta. That has the rules for this event.
If you do it make sure the head lashing is super tight. Get it tight, then tighten it some more. The like and spars should creak very loudly when they get spread. If it isn't tight enough one or more spars will slip and the whole thing will fall on someone's head.
As for the awards, it seemed to me that everyone got something.
The thing I am most happy about is that our crew of 7 out shouted two troops of 20. At evening flags on saturday they asked for everyone to do their cheers, and gave out stickers to the group that was loudest. We won the stickers.
-
You start with a 60 gallon barrel full (to 3 inches of the rim) of water. You also start with three wooden spars, a couple grommets, a few blocks, and a few pieces of line (all with very specific dimensions).
You tie the top of the spars together, lift them up to form a tripod over the barrel. Then you hook up the barrel to the blocks and lift it three feet in the air. Then you break it all down again. Time doesn't stop until all the gear is back in a certain area, and the crew is lined up and the coxswain calls them to attention. All the knots have to be tied a certain way, and if the spars slip, the blocks swing, the barrel swings, the person in charge of the the blocks lets go of them before they are attached to the barrel, if the spars aren't planted correctly, or any other dangerous things happen it is considered a safety DQ. If any of the crew (except the coxswain, and barrelmen) talk you get penalized. 30 seconds the first time, 60 the second time, and DQ the third time.
The time needed to qualify is 3 minutes, and a competitive time is less than 2:20.
It is dangerous because if someone doesn't do their job correctly the spars will fall, and those spars are kinda heavy, and they really hurt when they hit you in the head.
EDIT:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scuttlebutt
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qUXaO4AALw(This message has been edited by sailingpj)
-
Well, I just had an interesting weekend. My ship was invited to a camporee. We went up and ran a lashing event, competed in a couple of the other events, and showed off one of our regatta events. It was a lot of fun, and I learned a lot.
I must say, there is something I just don't get. They handed out some awards. Four 1st place ribbons, three 2nd place ribbons, two 3rd place ribbons, and one participant ribbon. Our ship got the participant. I get that. We were just there to have fun and show off a little. How does the scoring work to get 4 1st places? I saw no evidence of separate classes or anything like that.
Ok, back to my report of the weekend. We kinda scared the knot event people with how fast we tied all the knots. They told us the seven knots that we had to tie, then they said that we as a group just had to tie them once, and that there were books we could use, and that it wasn't timed. There was only one knot that we had to look up, and as soon as I saw it I knew what it was. A taughtline hitch is the same as a knot required for Ordinary. Everyone in our ship just grabbed a line and we were done the judges even knew we had started. Then a couple of us really started to show off.
In the afternoon we showed off Scuttlebutt for a couple hours. That generated some interest. They were amazed that we are allowed to run such a "dangerous" event. We kinda overplayed the danger though because half the crew I had running it aren't on my regatta team, so I had to stop it almost every other run for a safety DQ.
All in all it was a pretty fun weekend, and we can't wait to do it again. We also got a couple of troops interested in coming down to one of our regattas.
-
Apparently it was.
-
The domain scoutsdirect.com is for sale. To purchase, call BuyDomains.com at 781-839-7903 or 866-866-2700. Click here for more details.
-
A bug is a little oval patch, smaller than a quarter. It has the Sea Scout emblem on it. They come in black and white.
Here is a picture:
-
"Now I aint touching Sea Scout uniforms as there are 3 differnt types for both youth and adults"
And lots of ships I know don't use any of them. Or they combine them.
-
Thats a good point about the rain. How about wind? In the summer we usually have a fair amount of wind here.
-
Well I took a look at the Eureka website and found one I think I like. What do you guys think about this one?
I looked at the Timberlines, but they were a little smaller than I think I want.
-
Ok, I am looking at getting a tent for personal use. I want it so that I can do SCUBA diving without the expense of a hotel room. I am thinking about doing a trip up to Lake Tahoe, or down to Monterrey, or up a couple of the state parks North of San Francisco. I figure we can save some money by not getting a hotel room and use it to rent an extra tank or two.
What are your suggestion? I would like something that comfortably sleeps 2-4 plus gear. I don't think weight matters to much. I don't plan on carrying it very far. It would be good it you can stand up in it, but that really doesn't matter too much. It will just be a place to sleep between dives.
-
If there are any mechanics out there that would be willing to offer a little advice please pm me. I'm not passing smog.
-
Well, I just bought my first car last Friday. A '92 Toyota Celica GTS. This car is older than me, but so far it is running pretty nicely. No excessively strange noises, and it has turned on everytime I've asked it to. A little work and it should be a pretty nice car.
-
That is very interesting.
-
I hope they roll this out in time for me to earn it. Just because I want to ear an award named after a scientist and a Sea Scout. Both things I am very interested in.
-
When I click format this post all I ever get is a purple screen that pops up. I can't type in it or interact with it in any way.
Writing skills failing?
in Issues & Politics
Posted
It is already spilling over into the spoken language. I have heard people say "I lol'd."