Author Archives: scottsoapbox

Gore’s Green Power

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I got this from a source close to the Tennessee Valley Authority:

Anne Paine, Reporter for the Tennessean in Nashville, asked if there has been an increase interest in the Green Power Switch Program because of news stories about Al Gore’s electric bill for his Nashville residence and his use of green power to meet most of his energy needs. She also asked about TVA’s generating sources of green power and when Gore first signed up for GPS. We said there has been a significant increase in GPS signups for the month of March 2007 over March of 2006. We provided information on the GPS generating sources and referred her to our web site. We confirmed that the first request from Gore officials about GPS was August of 2006. We told Paine that TVA completed the GPS process for the Gore residence in August 2006, but she would have to ask Nashville Electric System when the first electric bill with GPS charges was sent to the Gore residence.

FYI – Gore bought the property in ’02, so it’s not like he just moved in and wanted to do his part to save the world nor did the Green Power program only begin in August 2006 – It’s been around for awhile. The timing of it all – the request in August 2006 – I’m sure it had nothing to do with him thinking about running and wanting himself to look good or with his movie that is going to save the world.

– The TVA “Insider”

TCAP Excellence

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Here is a great example of Government efficiency:

We are taking TCAPS this week and there was a problem with a question. Now evidently, instead of just throwing the question out when scoring the test they chose the MUCH SIMPLER option: Notify every single middle school in the state of tennessee, and then have the message relayed to every single middle school
teacher in the state of tennessee.

Here is the simple solution offered by the TN Department of Education:

Teachers,
Once you have completed testing this morning. Please have 8th grade students with version 7 test booklet make the following correction. Have them check page 62, question #36 in math and make sure they bubbled on the answer sheet correctly. If a student chose an H or G as the answer to question #36 they need to do the following: (G and H are reversed–have students bubble H in H and G in G) If a student did not chose and H or G answer, then they do not need to do anything. Please read the attached e-mail from the state department. Please let Mr. XXXX know if you have further questions regarding correcting this test booklet and answer sheet error
Thanks
[administrator]

– XXXX (TN Middleschool Teacher)

UPDATE:

Evidently answer G and answer H are BOTH FALSE!  So we had to make sure that students who missed the question got scored missing the question with the appropriate incorrect response.
– XXXX (TN Middleschool Teacher)

Sounds like we need to help out some people in the government — maybe a new bureaucrat left behind program  ;)

Uh, Move That Door Over Here…

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Alright, the first installment of the great DIY pics we’ve been getting. One of the big problems with the living room/kitchen was the double small door arrangement they had going on. There were two 32″ doors on each side of the room. Which A) is silly and B) made both rooms seem closed off.

Our solution was to close one door off while widening the other to double its orginal size — essentially moving the other doo next to the first. The difference was dramatic. The rooms are now more open while at the same time having more usable wall space. And the cool fluted door trim is pretty sweet as well.

Some of our widening frenzy spilled over to the adjacent door which was also made 4″ wider. That was the most we could change it without it becoming a huge project. I think the change it made is still significant. Well enough talk here are the pics: