I got to blow the dust off of my networking skills a little bit today. I teach an introductory networking course and I used to be a system administrator/networking pro, but honestly my skills get a little rusty if I don’t put them to the test once in a while.

Sometimes my networking students wonder why I make them do labs where they must manually configure all of the TCP/IP settings when DHCP will do it automatically. Without knowledge of how to set things up manually, I would have been unable to solve a real-world problem today.

What I thought would take me an hour wound up taking nearly 3. Terry, down at the hardware store, asked me to hook his laptop up to his store’s network using wireless. Terry’s always so willing to help out Wendy & me with stuff that goes wrong around our home (most recently it was the lawn sprinker system), I was hardly in a position to refuse. I had already taken the day off for jury duty and I didn’t know when I would have time otherwise, so I agreed to look at it this afternoon.

The first hour was spent just figuring out what he had, and learning circuitously that the wireless router wasn’t configured & working as expected. (Hmm, I might have thought to ask about that part up front!) He could always get the Internet to work through the wireless, but he couldn’t see the store server, where his merchant programs & data reside.

He already had a router connected to the DSL, and this wireless router was really overkill. All he needed was a simple wireless access point. And that was what I struggled with for quite a bit longer than I should have. The router created a separate network, and was preventing access to the store network through it. How could I make the router act like an access point?

My final solution was to configure the wireless router in this simple manner:

1. Set the WAN side to Autoconfigure with DHCP and leave it disconnected.
2. Configure and connect the LAN side to the store network.
3. Configure the laptop with a static IP also on the store network.
4. Enable security settings.

Setting things up this way, we bypassed the routing part, only utilizing it as a wireless access point. I spent a lot of time looking for settings in the D-link router config to try to disable routing, but found no such option. Once I figured out that I could get away with hooking up only the LAN side of the router, and the laptop would still talk to it, I was set. Initially, I tried letting the laptop use the router’s DHCP, but when I did this, the laptop was configured to think that the wireless router (which wasn’t connected on the WAN side) was the gateway to the Internet, so the Internet wouldn’t work. The workaround was to use a manually configured IP with the correct gateway address.

It took a lot longer than it would have back in my glory days of networking, to be sure, but it’s good to know that once the cobwebs are blown out, I can still solve real-world networking problems from time to time. I never wanted to be one of those “theory only” professors anyhow. Hopefully doing little projects like this will ensure that I am always able to function in the real world as well as in classroom or laboratory.

My ears perked up recently when I learned that the Forsyth Library at Fort Hays State University has been working to digitize the Apollo document collection of the Kansas Cosmosphere. This video is from the press conference announcing the online publication of documents from the Apollo 1 accident investigation which once belonged to Jack Swigert and were given to Charlie Duke who donated them to the museum.

Anyone interested in NASA history and the Apollo space missions should check out the online documents here: http://www.fhsu.edu/forsyth_lib/digital/space/

Emily and I had the amazing opportunity last week to meet Charlie Duke, Apollo 16 astronaut at the Kansas Cosmosphere. Charlie describes the experience of viewing the entire Earth at 16,000 miles from space.

Science Girl Em & I are back from her week at Space Camp at the Kansas Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, KS. Yesterday was parents day, and I followed her and cousin Andrew around with the video camera. While I watched them perform their Lunar Base Mission, all I could think about was

Why isn’t school more like this?

The lunar base mission was performed by the kids in several tents interconnected by a series of tunnels. Cameras were placed inside of each tent so parents could view what was happening inside during the mission. Control panels with working switches and lights were placed in each tent, and each camper was assigned a role; Emily was the base botanist (highly appropriate because she & I often work together in the garden.)

The kids are given a mission checklist to follow, which includes a script to follow for communications with each other and the teacher acting as CAPCOM (Capsule Communicator) using handheld radios.

In my weird brain, I began to envision an entire school year taught inside of little play tents. These kids were learning teamwork as well as working on communication and literacy skills. There’s no reason a teacher couldn’t come up with all sorts of math & science activities to do inside the tents. They could learn all about life sciences; what does it take to survive & thrive independent of any outside assistance? Everything from growing food to recycling could be covered.

I think a really creative teacher could do the entire curriculum in this environment. Social studies, music, literature could all be incorporated into the lunar base experience. After all, if astronauts were actually living an extended stay on a lunar base, they would live complete lives, it’s not only work. They would need entertainment and mental stimulation. The kids could research what the ISS astronauts do for entertainment during down time.

Yep, I think I would have liked school a lot more as a kid if I could have went to a “lunar base” once in a while. Congratulations to the Cosmophere on an outstanding learning experience.

Wednesday, we toured and filmed the Ohlde Dairy at Linn, KS. I always enjoy telling these kinds of stories because people these days have little idea of where the food comes from, even people living right here amongst the food being produced. It seems to me that milk cows have it pretty good as far as livestock lives go. They live in hotel-like conditions, with sprinklers & fans to keep cool, soft bedding, plenty of food to eat, and three times a day going for a walk to the milking parlor to be milked. My favorite part was watching the cows walk in and line up into position. They all automatically turn their backsides toward the machine so they can be milked. It was almost like watching a circus act of trained animals, seeing them do that trick.

When I was a kid, I once milked my uncle’s Jersey cow, but that was many moons ago so it was a real treat to get to do a little milking myself yesterday. A lot different than when I was a kid. Gloves were required, not so much for my benefit but for the cows. Have to keep those udders clean and germ-free.

Today I interviewed Bruce Graham, the lead instructor at the Cloud County Community College Wind Energy Technology program. We have a brand new wind farm here in Cloud County, and plenty of people, myself included, have been wondering about those gigantic wind turbines. He shared a lot of good information.

Tomorrow, I will be heading to Hutchinson to the Kansas Cosmosphere to film the Space Camp that my daughter Emily is attending there. She’s been gone all week and I’m looking forward to seeing her.

Give me some time to get all of this stuff compiled and edited & I will be sure to share some video clips with you. It has really been a video-riffic week!

Geocaching is a game played the world over, using hand-held GPS units to locate “hidden treasure” with known latitude & longitude coordinates that are posted on the Geocaching.com website. While you would think that knowing a “treasure” lat & long would lead you right to it but it isn’t quite so simple. The GPS will guide you to the general vicinity, but it is up to the geocacher to physically locate the hidden cache. These caches are often camouflaged or hidden quite stealthily. On some of the more challenging caches, I have actually been to the location multiple times before I was able to locate the treasure.

A geocache typically contains a log book for the finder to sign their name in & date the entry so people who come later can know who came before. Some caches contain goodies for the kids, such as little toys & nick knacks.  You are supposed to trade items, if you take an item, leave an item as well. My kids enjoy the toys as much as the hunt for the cache.

You can log your “finds” in the Geocaching website, so you know where you have been and when you were there. Once you find a few caches, you might even want to think about placing your own cache and enjoying the visitors who visit your “treasure”. For more information about geocaching, check out the FAQ’s on the Geocaching.com website.

I think you will find that the game is educational and lots of fun. Many caches are placed near sites of historic or cultural interest. This video was filmed last year when we first got my GPS. I had it saved on my computer but am only now getting around to sharing it. It shows the 6th principal meridian reference point marker from which all of Kansas and Nebraska were surveyed in the 1800’s. It also shows a nearly forgotten Pioneer Graveyard, where some of the earliest settlers were buried. Enjoy.

I’ve been doing a little housekeeping on my Flip camera this week. On it, I found some videos from the 2009 Kansas Sampler Festival that was held in Concordia, Kansas. I recorded some music as well as an old-fashioned Kansas Cowtown shootout. Enjoy!

Down Home Music

wild thing

Shootout

I recently rediscovered this book. Here is a sample called, “What I learned in school“. Take note of what he writes about the 3rd grade. I had that very experience myself. Although I was never sent off to the special room in the basement, I vividly recall being demoted from the “silver” group to the “brown” reading group.

I think the teacher’s 12th grade comment also provides us some vivid insight into how creativity is valued in the classroom.

Now, just for fun, check out the “Teacher’s Guide to Words that Make a Kid Snicker”

Wheat harvest is going strong & will soon be winding down. Shot this short video with a Flip camera:

This fireworks display in Hanover, KS is one of the best in the state:

I’m really having fun working with the digital media. We have some more great projects in the works. Today I did an interview with a 91 year old gentleman who attended the same country school as my grandma who just passed away last month. It was fun to reminisce with him & learn a bit what it was like to attend a one room schoolhouse. His grandfather, his father and his kids all attended the same schoolhouse that he & grandma did. I will share more from that interview after reviewing and editing the footage. Stay tuned…

Sunny Slope 1928-29 Students

This week should be pretty interesting. I have an interview scheduled with Laurence Conrow, a classmate of my grandmother’s at Sunny Slope School in Wakefield, KS. My mother found this class photo among my Grandma’s belongings. I’m hoping that Mr. Conrow can identify the pupils in the photo, because there isn’t a roster that says who is who. My grandma & her sister both attended the school this year.

I’m looking forward to learning more about country schools in Kansas this week.