Great Expectations. (Not the book)

Expectations for growing the big one! I expect there will be some dedicated individuals and some not so dedicated, about 20% to 80% respectively. Only time will tell.

Now, I expect my pumpkin plant will perform to the maximum level of its genetic capability or else... If we make the assumption the genetics of these plants are "reasonable" for getting a large pumpkin, all else is left to the growers, environmental conditions, and any limiting factors such as nutrients, water, sunlight, carbon dioxide and such.

For me, I'm happy to be a part of the PSC Local 5740 and have a plant at the farm. I'm not sure if anyone else from the class is in the group, as they all seem to have joined with other groups. I don't have my expectations very high for others participation, unless of course this pumpkin is the biggest, at which point the whole endeavour will have been a group effort which I'm totally fine with!

I'm also happy to have a plant at the farm because even though I have one at home that will be planted outside this weekend and lovingly nurtured with a thermostatically controlled heating cable and a nice heavy Agribon frost blanket tent.... At any time my house may sell and I won't be taking the pumpkin with me (tears). Therefore, I expect the likelihood of my house selling will be directly proportional to the effort put in, size of the pumpkin, and nearness to maturity.

See the effort? Thermostat, 150 W cable (on full time about $.60 a day to run!) And a beautiful little plant with a true leaf.

Group Facebooking

The title says it all. Yes? No? Good? Bad?
I think the properly done group Facebook page is a real swell way to keep a group in contact. Take for example our giant pumpkin group Facebook page here.
Well that may not be the worlds best example. I'm not a big Facebook user and neither is Dr. Jones so we can all blame him if something doesn't work right on that page.
The Utah Rocketry Club Facebook page is a pretty good example I think. I'm not sure if you can see it or if you have to join/be accepted to the group to view it though. The nice thing about a group Facebook page as opposed to a website, is you can easily make updates and so can the other members of the group whereas a website is more or less static. The exception here is if a website has a forum you can participate in or if the website IS a forum. That being the case, Facebook in my opinion becomes irrelevant as users just post and do updated in the forum.
Like it or not, I think social media is here to stay. I would like to consider myself an A1 Luddite, but even I check my Facebook account on a daily basis! Although I will admit, to throw directed advertising off the trail, I'm "from" Zimbabwe, "live" in Timbuktu, and graduated from USU class of '51! Take that FB advertisers!

PowerPoint Presentation Pet Peeves

Yes, PowerPoint presentation pet peeves. Straight from Scooby Doo almost. That's a whole lot of alliteration! I'm not sure if this is supposed to be about pet peeves while making MY presentation or pet peeves about watching other presentations so I'll just go with the "others".
The worst possible thing I've ever seen in presentations and I mean the WORST are animations that people think make their presentation "unique". If the animation demonstrates a principle or pertains to the presentation in some useful manner, that's fine.
The other thing I hate in presentations are the transitions. There are a host of different "fun" transitions you can use from one slide to another. What's the deal with that? Why can't you just go from one slide to another. Once many years ago, I watched the motorcycle movie Easy Rider. You know, Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson, and the absolute COOLEST chopper of all time. Anyway, in that movie the scenes change by flashing back and forth between the scenes. I always think of that when I see" fancy" slide changes during presentations.
Me personally, I would much rather watch a plain black and white presentation with a presenter who was engaging and knew what they were talking about than a fancy presentation. In the animated movie, Robots Ratchet gives a multimedia presentation about the future of Bigweld Industries. While the song Eye of the Tiger plays, the footage rolls, and Ratchet speaks, the eyes of those watching the presentation dilate and they appear to be zombies. That's how I feel during a fancy presentation.
So, no animations, no transitions, and we will have a great time and I may even learn something!

"unique"
"fun"
"cute"
"fancy"

Definitely not me!

On Writing a Paper

This post is supposed to be about my experience writing my paper. Well, I didn't like writing it if for no other reason than the information I was looking for does not exist, at least in the specifics or generalities I was looking for. My paper was a review of sorts regarding techniques used to grow prize winning giant pumpkins. I really wanted peer-reviewed material but it was not to be had. Sure there are plenty of papers about various aspects of pumpkins being produced for oil from the seeds or papers about pumpkins for food. I only found one that related to giant pumpkins and it was basically a history of what's been done and a call for people to do some research into the various factors that make these squash outrageously huge. Now if I were more of an academic sort and would be pursuing an advanced degree, this would be something I would like to look into further. As I am just wanting to finish school and contemplating a major career change (from meat manager to electrician) I'm pretty sure I won't be doing research any time soon, at least in a formal setting.