Blog Post #9 The Winter of 2010!!!!!

Well, I hope those who have been wishing for snow are happy. We got it! My car is currently buried under 22 inches of snow, I can't wait to scrape that off in the cold morning. We had a nice long fall and we were lucky not to get snow until december. I feel like our winter's are taken longer to show up but coming on very fast.

I'm exticed to experience the joys of winter once again. This morning it took me twenty minutes longer to get home from. I don't have any issues driving in deep snow since I have four wheel drive,but on the way I was lucky enough to get behind a snow plow going 15 miles an hour. You can't pass him since the snow is so deep and you can't see through the snow he's kicking up with his plow, so I just had to sit there about 50 feet behind him and match his slow speed.

I havn't had to shovel yet since my Uncle has a plow, but I'll be back in Sparta soon so I have that to look forward to. I hope everyone is driving safely this year, I've seen a few people who went into the ditch already. Playtime is  over, winter is here.

Blog post # 3 Summer Classes

Class is over in about a month, My last class is the 22nd of December. Recently we signed up for classes for the spring semester. In the program I'm in IT-Networking the spring semester would have had 19 credits which would have been pretty tough. Luckily though, I had already taken care of two of the geneds during this last summer. So, I didn't have to take Economics or Ethics. I put speach in one of my open periods so now I'm at 15 or 16 this semester. Since I took Speach off my 3rd semester that one went down from 18 to 15. I have a good schedule I go in from 9 am to 3 pm mon through thursday and I have Friday off. All thanks to summer classes

Personally, I'm never doing summer classes again it was kind of annoying going in from 445pm to 730pm, I couldn't work in the afternoon. Plus the classes were long, 3 hours or so. There were some benefits. Having only two classes helped me get an A in both of them. I was able to study for tests, do all the homework and passed both classes with over 100%. It's a good way to get some credits without too much work, and you don't need a parking permit in the summer, but the schedule is inconvienent.

Blog Post #6 My thanksgiving Break

When you think of Thanksgiving, what comes to mind? I think of a small dining room or kitchen completely crammed full of my family. I think of all my brothers and my sister and all their kids. I image a few of my aunts and uncles stopping by as well. This year that wasn't the case.

This probably has a lot to do with all my Siblings having their own family. They either had thanksgiving at their own home with their children or they went over to their other parent's house. The same could be said about my aunts and uncles minus the other parent part. So this thanksgiving I was surprised that it was just My parents and I. I was still full of a ton of good food and it was nice to spend time with my parents. I was just a little disapointed to not see all my brothers. Oh well, there is still christmas and since I'm the only one who showed up to thanksgiving I automatically get more stuff then everybody else. I wasn't told that, its just logic.

What else happened on my thanksgiving break? Well there was work, but you don't wanna hear about that.

Well I havn't had a coat thoughout the whole fall season. To save money I waited until the time was right to get a good coat. That time was Black Friday. At 1130am I went to Kohls, After getting lucky and finding a close parking spot in a packed parking lot I quickly went in and got my Coat and hat, which would have normally been $140 all together. There were forty people in each of the two checkout lines, but it moved so fast I got out in five minutes. I paid #52 and aparently save 90 bucks. All in all, a good weekend.

Blog Post #8 Blog Posts

Whoops.....

I underestimated the point-value of these blog posts. Now that my grade has been updated I'm MUCH more motivated to write these. Where before I didn't have anything to write about, now I'm more than happy to write about ANYTHING :). So the actual topic of this blog post is a brainstorm of possible Blog Post topics.

So there are many possible topics for blog post some are recomended some are not. Topics include: junk you see on youtube, recent or even not so recent news, junk you see on TV, books you've read, movies  you watched, what you did over the weekend, brainstorms of possible Blog Posts, and any worthless subject you can squeeze two paragraphs out of.

I am easily able to write about things I've seen on the internet, Television, books, or movies. And writing about random stuff is enjoyable because it can be funny (to yourself at least). I don't really like writing about news, mostly because other than the rare otter atack, it doesn't really interests me and I can write about something I don't find interesting. I also can't write about my weekend because I either didn't do anything that I can write about or what I did was just not something I can squeeze two paragraphs out of. And my MOST recomended topic: just start writing and go with it, For example, this blog post.

Blog Post #7 OTTER ATTACK!!!

On my way to school this morning I was listening to the radio. They talked about a young man who was attacked by an otter. The young man who was about 17 walked into the pond in his back yard and recorded this otter who was swimming around doing all this cute stuff. Then he runs up and starts eating the kid's leg. The screams of the kid are kinda hilarious. You can watch the video below

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPcMpz3BCes

 Personally, I feel any small animal or rodent shouldn't be approached. They look cute but as soon as you get near them they'll either run away or eat your face. I'm sure some people who read this have either harrased a squirel and had it chase them. (I have) I say we should just plant land mines all over the edges of lawns and sidewalks to deter the furry fugitives from repeat offending. We should possibly allocate some of the resources of homeland security to protect the people from this internal threat.

Blog Post #5

          Many of you may have gotten the news of this recent email sent to all western students. A lot of burglaries have been reported recently, most were near but not limited to the downtown La Crosse area. They say the items stolen were commonly Tv's, game systems, computers and other high price electronics. It stated that the culprit most likely knew which houses were unsecured and even where most of the items were located in the apartments/houses. This was likely learned at parties in these houses and from friends.
          I've read some things on the LaCrosseTribune.com and I've found this to just be one of many instances in just the fast few months. Some were small scale burglaries, some were at a wider scale like this one. One man was even shot and killed in his home during an armed robbery. My Uncle who I'm living with said he used to drive school bus and drove the person who perpetrated this crime to school every morning.
        I recently moved here from Sparta and it surprises me how common these things are, not that long ago a girl shot up her boyfriends house before killing herself at he own home. I suppose it has to do with this being a larger city. Not long ago a few friends and  I were stumbling our way back to one of their homes after midnight and we were followed by two stranger's from main street to market street. We were able to loose them in an alley that they followed us into and headed home.
       I'm not sure what to make of this, bigger cities are less safe maybe? La Crosse isn't neccessarily a huge city although its much larger than my home town. I don't know what to make of it.  Compared to the US as a whole I suppose we might be better than average.
http://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-La-Crosse-Wisconsin.html

Weekly Blog Post #4

      Since I moved in to my Aunt and Uncles house to be closer to college they had to get rid of their 100+ TV channels. Now we currently have basic cable. Now, I know there are worse things and that people are suffering around the world, which I'll write about later because Im running out of personal topics, but I am really bored if I can't find anybody to hang out with. So first I spent some time excercising: riding bike, running, just getting outside to keep myself busy. Now thats its getting colder surfing the internet or playing my xbox will probably get old fast. Plus, I want to see the new South Park episodes, or maybe watch The Daily Show or Tosh.0.
    After considerable suffering I went back to one of my fundamental skills. Pirating cool stuff off the internet. So with a few searches and a little downloading I can get any episode of any show I want. Plus if I want to have I movie I can get that too. But, I also like to go to Family video and excercise my 1/2 off any rental discount. I have about $40 worth of coupons for popcorn and rentals as well. So if all goes well I should not be to bored this next semester. Praise Jesus

My Final Draft of my Narrative

This is a better updated version of my Narrative for this class.

                This last spring our family had a frightening experience. The month leading up to this family crisis, my mother had gotten kidney stones; she was prescribed a medication to help with the pain. Within two weeks from recovering from that my mother went in to the hospital with a serious case of pneumonia. The doctors gave her some medication and sent her home. What we later learned was that she had an Oxygen percentage of about 70%. According to other doctors I’ve spoken to, it is the policy of that hospital to admit anyone under 88% because a healthy woman her age should have had at least 95%. To have a percentage under 70 is considered life threatening.

                The next day, I had come home from high school and found the house empty and eerily quiet, not paying much attention to it I got dressed for work. As I was driving to work I got a phone call from my sister. She told me my mother was in the hospital there in Sparta and she was going to be sent by ambulance to Gunderson Lutheran in La Crosse. I remember hanging up and taking a sharp left turn towards the Sparta Clinic which was just a few blocks away. I got there within minutes and I entered the Emergency entrance and saw my sister in the lobby. She led me to the hallway to the Ambulance and I saw my mom hooked up to an oxygen tank as she was being put on a gurney.  I had learned that my sister in law went home and saw that my mother could barely move and her lips were blue. She convinced my mother to go to the hospital and by the time she got there my mom could barely walk.

                My mother assured me that she would be alright and that they’re just transporting her to a better equipped hospital, though in reality I had already learned that the doctors were not sure she would survive the ride there. I tried calling my friend so he could take my shift for me but I was not able to get a hold of him. I called in to work telling them I was not coming but they asked me to come in because they didn’t have someone to take the shift for me. My mother at the time worked at the same place I did and I remember her saying “It’s alright I understand that they don’t have anyone to replace him”.  Being upset I went into work without thinking about it, which I regret doing. If I encounter another situation where I have to work and a family member is in that condition I’ll call into work and tell them it’s not my problem if they have a replacement or not.

                So I spent about three hours at work, I was nervous, frustrated and upset.  Two hours into it I had learned that the General Manager of the restaurant I worked at was visiting my mom because she was in La Crosse. That made me furious that she was there when I should have been, and within a few minutes I decided to leave and go see my mother. The thought that she might die while I’m nowhere near was what upset me the most. Just before I was about to walk out I got another call from the GM and she told me that my brother was coming to pick me up and take me to the ICU to see my mom.

                When we got to Gunderson Lutheran in La Crosse, the first thing I did was enter the ICU waiting room where my whole family was, because only two people could visit my mom at the time. My four siblings and their families were there, as well as many of my aunts and uncles. My family has always been very close and it was very comforting to have them there and learn about my mother’s condition. The first chance to visit her was about twenty minutes after I got there. I went down the hall to her room and found my dad speaking to her while she was lying in a hospital bed. I had never seen her that weak before, she was hooked up to oxygen and other machines to monitor her health, but she was awake and completely coherent.

                It was a relief to speak to her and see she was alright at the moment, although her condition was still very high risk. We didn’t have a specifically special conversation, I remember asking about what the doctors said and telling her I loved her. It was simply seeing her, making sure she was all right and letting her know I cared that mattered to me at that point. I had to leave because the nurses were going to medicate her and run a few tests. I returned to the waiting room in better spirits and spent most of the night with my family. There were many discussions, some about random things, others about my mother’s condition. We were all worried that the doctors said that the test results for my mother wouldn’t be ran till tomorrow morning and we’d get them later that night. One nurse told us my mother had Adult Respiratory distress. When we looked it up on the internet it said most that got that died a few days later. When we talked to a doctor he apologized and said the nurse must have mixed up what disorder she thought it was. He explained that that was merely what she thought it was and they wouldn’t know till the test results came in.  At about 11pm I went back home with my brother.

                Two days later my mother came home, soon after they took a sleep study and we had learned that she had a case of severe sleep apnea and the reason her lungs got so weak was that she wasn’t breathing in her sleep. The medication she was prescribed for her kidney stones relaxed her throat, but it was not supposed to be used by someone with sleep apnea, which we didn’t know she had.  When she vomited from the kidney stones fluid was getting in her lungs which coupled with the fact that her breathing was restricted when she slept was very dangerous and high risk.  Since then she has had to sleep with an oxygen machine next to her bed, she had this for a month or two. She got rid of that oxygen machine after her lungs healed and switched to a pressurized mask she has to wear in her sleep that forces her to breathe. She has to wear that indefinitely, but she is currently hoping to find an alternative that isn’t so uncomfortable. Her health is much better and she hasn’t been hospitalized since then.  We were able to almost immediately get the hospital to pay for much of the medical costs. She was sent home with a low oxygen percentage in her lungs when she should have had tests run. If that had not happened she may not have needed to go to the ICU.

                As I said she is doing much better since this last spring, but unfortunately this last week I got a text message from her saying she had been diagnosed with Pneumonia again. The doctors gave her medication and are running tests. She should be fine when she gets better but I worry if she could have chronic lung issues and if it could be a problem when she gets older.

Weekly Blog Post #2

I dislike creative writing, I never can think of something to write about. Being uncreative as I am I picked the most boring and redundant topic I couldn't possibly think of.

Todays Topic: The WEATHER!!

Tommorow is supposed to have constant winds of 30 mph and up to 50 mph. Stuff is going to be blowing around my yard and hopefully some of the wood piles don't fall over. Oh, and best of all, its going to be raining.

Thinking about this causes me to think about this winter. I have a 30 minute drive between work and school and my jeep is a 96 with 170 thousand miles. Needless to say it's got one foot in the grave so to speak. The winters supposed to be very very cold. Hopefully it doesn't have any problems starting, but I'm likely to have 2 or 3 times where its not going to happen.

Then there is the snow! My car has amazing four wheel drive so I will never get stuck. I prefer to use two wheel for driving to save gas. No matter what wheel drive I have there is one thing that always sucks....braking. As soon as I touch the breaks I slide towards the right. I've had some crazy near accidents during the last winter. Here's hoping for the best.

Narrative Draft

Michael Somers

Narrative Draft

                This last spring our family had a frightening experience which nearly lost us my mother. The month leading up to this my mother had kidney stones, which while painful is not exceptionally serious to one’s health. Within two weeks from recovering from that my mother went in to the hospital with a serious case of bronchitis. The doctors gave her some medication and sent her home. What we later learned was that she had an Oxygen percentage of about 70%. According to other doctors I’ve spoken to it is the policy of that hospital to admit anyone under 80% because anything under 70% is considered life threatening.

                The next day, I had come home from high school and found the house empty and eerily quiet, not paying much attention to it I got dressed for work. As I was driving to work I got a phone call from my sister. She told me my mother was in the hospital there in Sparta and she was going to be sent by ambulance to Gunderson Lutheran in La Crosse. I remember hanging up and taking a sharp left turn towards the Sparta Clinic which was just a few blocks away. When I got there within minutes I entered the Emergency entrance and saw my sister in the lobby. She led me to the hallway to the Ambulance and I saw my mom hooked up to an oxygen tank as she was being put on a gurney. 

                My mother assured me that she would be alright and that they’re just transporting her to a better equipped hospital, though in reality I learned that the doctors were not sure she would survive the ride there. I tried calling my friend so he could take my shift for me but I was not able to get a hold of him. I called in to work telling them I was not coming but they asked me to come in because they didn’t have someone to take the shift for me. My mother at the time worked at the same place I did and said I should go in.  Being upset I went into work without thinking about it, which I regret doing. If I encounter another situation where I have to work and a family member is in that condition I’ll call into work and tell them it’s not my problem if they have a replacement or not.

                So I spent about three hours at work, I was nervous, frustrated and upset.  Two hours into it I had learned that the General Manager of the restaurant I worked at was visiting my mom because she was in La Crosse. That made me furious that she was there when I should have been, and within a few minutes I decided to leave and go see my mother. The thought that she might die while I’m nowhere near was what upset me the most. Just before I was about to walk out I got another call from the GM and she told me that my brother was coming to pick me up and take me to the ICU to see my mom.

                When we got to Gunderson Lutheran in La Crosse, the first thing I did was enter the ICU waiting room where my whole family was, because only two people could visit my mom at the time. My four siblings and their families were there along with many of my aunts and uncles. It was very calming to have them there so I could talk to them and learn about my mother’s condition. The first chance to visit her was about twenty minutes after I got there. I went down the hall to her room and found my dad speaking to her while she was lying in a hospital bed. She looked weak and she was hooked up to oxygen and many other machines, but she was awake and completely coherent.

                It was a relief to speak to her and see she was alright at the moment, although her condition was still very high risk. We didn’t have a specifically special conversation, I remember asking about what the doctors said and telling her I loved her. It was simply seeing her, making sure she was all right and letting her know I cared that mattered to me at that point. I had to leave because the nurses were going to medicate her and run a few tests. I returned to the waiting room and spent most of the night with my family. There were many discussions, some about random things, others about my mothers condition and one was about how we were worried that the doctors said that the test results for my mother wouldn’t be ran till tomorrow morning and we’d get them later that night. One nurse told us my mother had Adult Respiratory distress. When we looked it up on the internet it said most who got that died a few days later. When we talked to a doctor he apologized and said the nurse must have mixed up what disorder she thought it was. He explained that that was merely what she thought it was and they wouldn’t know till the test results came in.  At about 11pm I went back home with my brother.

                Two days later my mother came home, we had learned that she had a case of severe sleep apnea and the reason her lungs got so weak was that she wasn’t breathing in her sleep. Since then she has had to sleep with an oxygen machine next to her bed. She got rid of that oxygen machine after her lungs healed and switched to a pressurized mask she has to wear in her sleep that forces her to breathe. She has to wear that indefinitely, but she is currently hoping to find an alternative that isn’t so uncomfortable.

               

Weekly Blog Post #1

Today's Topic: Smoking

  A lot less people smoke than before. Especially in younger people, only 1 in 5 highschoolers smoke apparently. But those who do usually started early. I started later than most, I was 15 and just about to get my license. My job sucked and I wanted something to deal with the stress. I started smoking very little at first, for a long time I'd maybe have two cigarettes a day and sometimes take weeks or months off from them. I never really saw what was so addicting about them. When I was 16 I was at 5 or 6 a day, I could stop for weeks at a time and have no discomfort or craving. Then when I was 17 I could buy a pack in the morning and have it gone by bedtime.

  After I graduated I spent this summer and early fall working and going to college, smoking has been a small relief and a big burden on my wallet. I soon realized that I spent far too much money, smoking over a pack every day was expensive as well as unhealthy. Before, I could stop smoking for any period of tiem whenever I chosed, this year has been more difficult. I tried to save some money and bought a carton for 50 dollars. I bought that three wednessdays ago, and It just ran out this sunday. Surprisingly despite having more cigarettes it caused me to smoke less, I've decided to switch a somewhat nastier brand of cigarettes that I won't want to smoke as often.

 My goal is to permanently quit smoking soon, I want to do it "Cold-turkey" but I am considering other methods, its been too much of a burden on my finances and I would prefer to have better health.

 
This video talks about something called Tinkering School. It's a place where kids can go for six days and work on whatever they choose. They're given real tools and build bridges, forts, and one group even made a Rollercoaster. All of these projects are designed and built by the young children who go there with minimal help from the Faculty.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/gever_tulley_s_tinkering_school_in_action.html

    I wish I could have gone to the school in this video. I've always enjoyed learning in a hands-on environment. Learning by doing is a very effective way to not just to learn but also to remember. The kids who went to the tinkering school didn't just learn how to build something with hammers, drills, and nails. They also learned how to plan out a large project. Any serious undertaking requires that you be ready to improvise.

       Sometimes when you set out to construct something, nothing you planned on doing works out. You can't be afraid to mess up or make mistakes, and you have to be able to come up with something new using what is available to you. Most importantly, you need to maintain a calm positive attitude no matter how daunting the task can become, because it takes motivation to accomplish something in order to make a creation that is truly great.

    I went to a lot of Tech classes in high school but none of them really instilled the values of improvising, self-planning and problem solving. Every project, assignment and test was laid out with precise directions and any wandering from those directs was going to affect your grade negatively. I found I learned the most when the teacher made the mistake of giving to few directions and not explaining how to use something like a computer program or sometimes tools. While some just waited until another student asked the teacher to explain to the class I enjoyed experimenting with what I didn’t know.

   

     It is my personal belief that the best teacher is you. By experimenting you can not only learn what is at hand but it is better for your mind to observe what’s around you and decide on that, rather than just doing what you are told. There is obviously a downside to this. Things often go wrong, don’t work out, and hell you’ll probably break something. But mistakes are great teacher’s as well.

Blog Post #2

   The topic of this blog was to be something about my weekend. Unfortunately, I worked two 10 hour shifts this weekend so I didn't really get to do anything, well thats a lie, but I didn't do anything appropriate to write about in this blog. Which brings us to today's topic; Time Management.
   Sometimes I feel like I don't have enough time to do my homework and have any fun between working and going to class.
   Any Western students reading this blog should hopefully remember what we were told at Orientation. The speaker told us to be careful about overcommiting ourselves to work and other activities outsdie of school. Each class is supposedly going to take two hours of study and homework time for every hour of actual class time. I have 15 credits and my five classes have about 18 hours of class time. So someone with 18 hours of class needs to set aside 54 hours a week for school. This part has a lot of math so bear with me. There are 168 hours in a week, so I subtracted my 54 hours a week for school, and 56 hours for sleep if I sleep 8 hours each day, finally I subtract my 33 hours a week for work. That leaves me with 25 hours of free time.
    After working that out I'm actually pretty happy, now I know I have enough time to do my homework while I'm working and going to school full time. Since I have that 25 hours of free I know I have no excuse when I don't have my homework and errands done. Well, I do have one excuse: I didn't feel like it!
UPDATE!: I just found out my job worked around my college stuff, now I work only one weekday for 4 hours and then I work 5pm to 6am (not that bad for me I've done it for months at my other job.) on friday/sat plus one shift on sunday. Now I can sit on my butt weekend nights and somehow get more hours.

Introduction

My name is Mike Somers. I'm from Sparta, Wisconsin, and I just recently moved here to La Crosse this august. I'm enrolled at WesternTC in the IT-Computer Networking program. I've just started my first semester at Western, although I did some summer classes this last season. Most nights, I'm working at perkins on highway 16 as a cook. I try to use my time when I'm not working, going to school, or doing homework to hang out with my friends and enjoy myself. I'm not sure whether I'll enjoy this blogging assignment, I'm gennerally not a fan of writing, but it is definitely something different than writing assignments I'm used to doing.