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May 07 Sarcastic OptimismYou know what the best part about the (literally) hundreds of blog posts by the "Costa Rican land for sale" webbot is? It keeps the hundreds of posts from Chinese manufacturing, on-line pharmacy, flea-biter, religious zealot, etc. from being seen. Unfortunately, those of us who have legitimate technology oriented blog posts also get lost in the deluge. <sigh> May 02 Post-AP Time AgainAs a teacher, my greatest academic challenge is my AP-CS (Advanced Placement Computer Science) class. I inherited this course a number of years ago, and have been fairly successful with about half of my students passing. Some years have been better than others, naturally, and I don't mind saying that this year's class looks like it will be my best yet. But the AP Exam comes next Tuesday, and the Seniors' (13 out of the 15 students) last day before finals is right around Memorial Day (5/28). So, the eternal question among AP teachers is "What do we do after the exam?"
For the past couple of years I've had the students use Visual Studio to develop PocketPC applications, some of which were rather neat (a restaurant tip calculator, Checkers, Risk, Tetris, and even a Missile Command game). But this year I decided to go a different route: Starting next week, we're going to play with XNA!
For the uninitiated, XNA is Microsoft's Game Development, primarily for the XBOX-360 platform. The REALLY neat thing is that the development happens inside the Microsoft Visual C# Express Edition (when the XNA Game Studio Express is loaded on top of it). Both the C# and XNA Express Editions are free to download, so other than an XBOX-360 USB controller or two the whole environment costs nothing.
I hope that this will be an outstanding experience for the students. I don't expect any blockbusters to come out of this (although the next Halo would be GREAT!), but I know that all of them will have a blast. They'll get to see a major league program (bigger even than the dreaded Marine Biology Simulation) (ask an APCS student or alumni), and they'll have to figure out all the bits and pieces before they can make any headway into creating a new game.
This should be a lot of fun. Watch this space for more information. April 15 FIRST Championship in AtlantaOh, what fun it was!
As I mentioned the other day, the FIRST Robotics Championship Competition was this weekend in Atlanta, GA (USA). About 350 teams gathered from (alphabetically) Brazil, Canada, Israel, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the United States to show how well they could build a robot that could pick up inner tubes and hang them on a tree. And yes, there were about 350 different ways to do this.
My school's team (Team 811) made a good showing of it. Our robot's specialties this year were its autonomous abilities and overall robustness. As previously described, during the first 15 seconds of the 2:15 match, the robots are on their own, without human control, and a scoring benefit goes to the team whose robot can hang a tube all by itself. We did this several times. To let you know just what this means, consider this: The teams competing in Atlanta were divided into four divisions (Archimedes, Curie, Galileo and Newton). We were in Newton along with 85 other teams, and there were 102 preliminary matches between Friday and Saturday morning. In the 75 matches on Friday, each with 6 teams on the field, I'd say that tubes were hung autonomously less than 20 times; we did it twice.
I say Sparky (our robot) was robust because our pit crew found they had a LOT of time on their hands. So very few things went wrong, and when they did they were generally minor. This compares to some years when transmissions had to be disassembled, or telescoping arms had to be restrung, or drive trains had to be retentioned, seemingly between every round. This speaks volumes for how far the team has come.
Anyway, on Friday we were in five matches, and we won the first three handily and barely lost the next two. (How do I define "barely"? Where a lot of matches had 20 or less points apiece, the fourth match we lost by a score of 118-132!) On Saturday, we split our two matches, finishing up with a 4-3 record and in 26th place. The good news is one of the top 8 seeded teams liked what they saw in us, and invited us to be one of their alliance partners for the Quarter Finals. The unfortunate news is that we lost in the best of three match playoffs, and were done.
I am full of pride with how well the team performed, both during Build Season when we constructed Sparky, and in competition. Well done, Team 811!
April 09 FIRST in AtlantaThis week the FIRST Robotics Championship Competition takes place in Atlanta. My school's team, Bishop Guertin's Team 811, will be competing with and against over 300 other teams from around the US and around the world. Should be a blast.
This year's competition, Rack 'n Roll, involves robots that pick up pool inner tubes and hang them on a large tree-like structure in the middle of the field of play. Six robots (three on the red team, three on the blue team) play in the 2 minute-15 second round, and scores are based on the length of rows of tubes hanging on the tree at the end of the round. But what makes the game REALLY intense is that during the first 15 seconds of the round, the robots run without user control.
Teams that can build a robot that can hang a tube on the rack during this first 15 seconds have a significant competitive advantage, because they start the round with points scored. In previous years, it was quite common for teams to score autonomous points; this year, however, the game's complexity meant that very few teams successfully score this way. Team 811, I am proud to say, is one of the few. In the Manchester, NH Regional competition last month, we had the entire Verizon Arena watching as our robot ("Sparky", named after a few unfortunate incidents during construction) hung it's tube all by itself.
Hopefully, our team will do well in the Newton Division (one of four in the Championships, along with Archimedes, Curie, and Galileo). There will be 81 teams from all across the US, 2 from Canada, and 3 from Israel! Can't wait.
I'll report more as time goes on.
The move has begunWell, there are over five dozen new entries from the latest blog spammer choking theSpoke. (Not that I've read the entries, but I think they're for online drugs.) Depressing, I know, but something tells me that no one will delete these entries (and the account that owns them). Of course, if they did disappear, it would give us long-suffering valid theSpoke users reason to hope that things will get better. Since it is, unfortunately, getting harder and harder to be seen on theSpoke, what with all of the annoying spamBloggers and all, I've started a new blog elsewhere. (If you're interested, you can find me here.) I don't know how long it will take me to fully move there, or how long I'll keep this one active. Some of that will depend on your responses and reaction. Feel free to stop by and chat. April 04 A new home for my blogWith a crack, splash, and the sounds of fizzing broken glass, I hereby christen this blog with the finest bottle of champagne I could find in IE7.
Live Spaces is now the new home of "Intuitively Obvious" (subtitled "Random musings from a former PC Software Engineer now High School Computer Teacher"). Three plus years ago or so I started blogging on another site (theSpoke), where I tried to speak to technology oriented students and teachers about the world as I see it, experiences I've had or were having, all from a point of view that I hoped would be intriguing and refreshingly different. Unfortunately, theSpoke seems to be quietly dying from neglect, so a new home was needed. Hopefully, many of my friends from there will find me here.
The stories you may or may not choose to read here come from an overly active imagination, could be based somewhat on events of the "real" world, and on occasion may involve people you know, heard about, or think you met once. The topics I cover are things that interest me, and include computers and programming, FIRST Robotics, my family and friends, and things that I think others might find occasionally amusing.
So welcome; I hope you'll stop by now and then. February 28 Yet another disasterBoy, it seems that the only time I get to write here is when something goes wrong. This week (Feb 26-Mar 2) is Winter break in New Hampshire, a time when all the schools take a completely unnecessary week off, mostly so that families will travel up to the ski resorts and keep the NH economy going. Anyway, bright and early (8:00am) Monday morning I get a call from school: There's a leak in a pipe in the computer lab office right over your desk. A half-hour panic drive to school revealed that it wasn't right over the desk, but did manage to soak a fair amount of papers, books, memorabilia, and a half dozen cases of laser printer paper. All in all, not very much was truly destroyed (most of the printer paper, in fact, was salvageable, thanks to the semi-glossy wrappers in the cases), but I did have to move ALL the furniture out of the office into the hallway so that the plumbers could come Tuesday and replace the seal in the circulating pump that was the source of the storm. Then on Wednesday I could move everything back. Okay, it's Wednesday, and the plumbers have yet to show. Now, normally this wouldn't be too big an impact, I mean, it is a vacation week and all. However, starting tomorrow (Thursday), the school's FIRST Robotics Team will be in competition a dozen miles or so north at the Granite State Regionals in Manchester. Furthermore, during the regionals we host a visiting FIRST team from Vermont, and their kids and our kids camp out for two days ... here in the computer labs! I don't know if things will be fixed by tomorrow; my guess is not. Which means I won't be in my normal camp-out location (my office), but may have to mix with the natives. I need a vacation! 8^) January 17 Ice Storm UpdateThe power outage took a mere 30 hours to repair, with a couple of yes-no-yes-no false starts, just to get your hopes up. I had just picked up dinner at a local take-out place, figuring it would be so much better than macaroni-and-cheese on the gas stove (the only source of heat I'd trust without electricity). We heat with propane; it was frustrating to have a bazillion BTUs of heat in my back yard with no way of accessing it! Anyway, once you "know" you've got power back, the first thing to do is turn the thermostat 5 or so degrees warmer than usual. Not that it makes the house heat up faster (it doesn't), but because once the house is warm again, should power go out it will take a tad longer to get uncomfortable. Yes, power failures make you think this way! Anyway, this morning I woke up not shivering; a nice long hot shower and I almost feel human again.
COMMENTS FROM theSpoke: re: Ice Storm Update @ Wednesday, January 17, 2007 12:27 PMGlad to hear the power is back. 30 hours is a long time. My house (much older than yours) would have been too cold to stay in after that long. I really need to get this transfer switch hooked up so I can use my generator correctly. re: Ice Storm Update @ Wednesday, January 17, 2007 1:44 PMGlad to hear it! Fortunately, my power was only out for about 6 hours, but I remember back in 1996 when we were without power for 4 days!
January 16 Ice Storm: Life Without ServicesAlfred wrote about the recent ice storm here in Southern New Hampshire. It really does make the world look pretty, but there's another side to it as well. I was home with the kids yesterday, so I knew that around noon the power flickered, and then went out. It came up briefly here and there throughout the afternoon, and around 3:00pm it came on for about 90 minutes (just enough time to send some EMails!), but around 4:30pm it went out for good. It's 9:30am the day after, and it's still not on. Now, the temperature is around freezing (32F / 0C), but my house is only 11 years old, and was constructed to the latest (at the time) insulation standards; the term "super-insulated" means that it will keep things comfortable for a LONG time. My house is one of nearly 200 built in the same development around a decade ago. Unfortunately, some things weren't built as intelligently as they should have been. The 200 homes have phone service fed from a single junction box (about 1/2 mile from my home), and that junction box has only a back-up battery to keep things going during minor power glitches. Which means that around 6:00pm our phones went dead. If history is followed, somewhere today we'll lose water service as well. SOMEone in the neighborhood knows the tale that you should keep a slight trickle of water going if you lose power in the winter, to keep the pipes from freezing. What s/he doesn't realize is that with our super-insulated homes, pipes will take over a week to freeze (assuming constant sub-zero for that long!). Also, the local water company pump-house needs power to provide water, so it doesn't take long for the water supply to be exhausted (at which point the trickling water trick won't work anymore!) The last time we had a storm this bad (back in '96), the home was dark for three days. I hope things are better this time.
COMMENTS FROM theSpoke: re: Ice Storm: Life Without Services @ Tuesday, January 16, 2007 10:19 AMGood luck! Let me know if you want to borrow my generator. re: Ice Storm: Life Without Services @ Tuesday, January 16, 2007 10:55 AMHow about just a long extension cord?
December 21 Merry Christmas!Okay, so I'm a few days early, but ...
So, to each and every one of my readers (both of you), may God's Peace shine on your lives, and may health and happiness be yours through the New Year!
COMMENTS FROM theSpoke: re: Merry Christmas! @ Thursday, December 21, 2006 2:59 PMAnd now the days start getting longer. Yea!!!! re: Merry Christmas! @ Thursday, December 21, 2006 6:02 PMMerry Christmas to you, too!
December 14 Post AP projectYes, the AP-CS exam is almost five months away, but I still wonder what to do after it's done. For the past two years I've had my classes do Pocket PC application development. A few months ago, however, my son wrote me from the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs to suggest a better idea: XBOX game development. He worked out all the details, the costs of equipment (have to have an XBOX 360, with enough XBOX 360 controllers for all students, etc.), subscriptions, etc., and presented it in a very persuasive document. I must admit, I've been mulling it over for two months. I've even dropped hints to this year's class that we need a really great idea for the Post-AP timeframe. Well, what should arrive today but a blog post from Alfred. Looks like I have not choice, I'm going to have to look into this.
COMMENTS FROM theSpoke: Dream Build Play @ Friday, December 15, 2006 6:03 AMIf you haven't downloaded the v1 release of XNA Game Studio Express yet then this contest may be an incentive. Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information from Alfred Thompson
December 02 Word processing: How far we've come!In my classes, it is fascinating to see students today who have no concept at all on how good things are today. Now I know this will make me sound old, regaling the days when I had to walk to school, up hill, both ways, bare foot through the snow (even in the Winter), but bear with me for a moment. In 2006, we all have blindingly fast computers that are GUI based, powered by multitasking operating systems, running an unbelievable assortment of multimedia enabled applications. But it hasn’t always been this way. A mere 15 years ago, GUI was a new term, multitasking was largely accomplished as an OS add on (called “Windows”), and multimedia applications were rare if they existed at all. Five years more and the Mac was still new, graphics were still a neat (and expensive) add-on to PCs, and multimedia was just the sound that you could produce on the standard 2” speaker. A few more years back, and even GUI didn’t exist except in the dreams of some at Xerox. The applications that we take for granted today bear little resemblance to those of a generation ago. Take the word processor, for example. Not too many years ago computer screens were text only, with 25 lines of 80 characters; 43 lines if you had the right video card and could stand the “small print.” Your display wasn’t what was called WYSIWIG (“what you see is what you get”), and you didn’t have a zillion fonts to deal with. If you wanted bold, underlined, etc., you had to use special screen indicators to show this. For example, a popular program called WordStar had a display that (if printed) would look like this:
Imagine for a moment a keyboard that only had the “standard” keys (those you’d find on a typewriter) and a Ctrl key; no function keys, no numeric keypad, and no cursor / navigation keys. How would you scroll around a large document? The WordStar “cursor diamond”: Ctrl-D for right, Ctrl-S for left, Ctrl-E for up, and Ctrl-X for down. Ctrl-F went to the next word, Ctrl-A the previous word, Ctrl-W scrolled one line up, Ctrl-Z scrolled one line down, Ctrl-R was page up, and Ctrl-C was page down. Want more? Ctrl-QD went to the end of the line, Ctrl-QS to the beginning of the line, Ctrl-QE to the top of the page, Ctrl-QX to the bottom of the page, Ctrl-QC to the end of the document, and Ctrl-QR to the beginning of the document. (Yes, it may seem foreign, clunky at best, but this interface was so effective that it was emulated by countless other programs, including other word processors, and even Borland’s Turbo Pascal!) You can say that word processing 20 years ago was nothing compared to what it is today. But, when compared to a typewriter (the dominant technology of the day), it was light-years ahead. Just think: you could SAVE a document to edit later (Ctrl-KS). You could search for specific text (Ctrl-QF), and even rearrange text within a document (Ctrl-KV, but only after marking the text to be moved with Ctrl-KB and Ctrl-KK). And, when you were all done, you could send the document to the printer – just make sure you had your dot-matrix or (if you could afford it) the daisy-wheel printer attached; there weren’t thinks like ink-jets or laser printers around back then.
COMMENTS FROM theSpoke: re: Word processing: How far we've come! @ Saturday, December 02, 2006 5:06 PMYou forgot that to print you had to make sure your blazingly SLOW serial cable!! re: Word processing: How far we've come! @ Sunday, December 03, 2006 11:15 AMActually, very few printers back then were serial. Most were parallel, which was remarkably fast for the day. More often than not, the speed was the factor of the printer, not the computer, although without the luxury of a "print buffer", you couldn't tell the difference. re: Word processing: How far we've come! @ Sunday, December 03, 2006 2:07 PMAm I the only one old enough to remember the ASR33? http://www.pdp8.net/asr33/asr33.shtml No screen - just paper. Paper for output. Paper tape for input and output. And a real bell - no electronic sounds at all. Text edditing on one of those was interesting let me tell you. Talking about the old days @ Sunday, December 03, 2006 3:37 PMI read a resume recently where the job applicant told of his 7 years of professional experience. It read... What if what you see is not what you get @ Friday, December 08, 2006 1:43 PMI read a resume recently where the job applicant told of his 7 years of professional experience. It read Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information from Alfred Thompson
November 30 I blinked, and a month's gone by!The other day it occurred to me that I haven't blogged in a while. Today I looked, and found that it's been a month since I added anything! I'm shocked. There's nothing wrong, other than life is doing it's best to fill up my every waking hour, and quite a few of the non-waking hours. Since I last typed here:
And that's just the highlights. Yeah, it's been a busy few weeks, but on the good side, I've got a bunch of other thoughts that have been collecting in my mind to write about. Hopefully, I'll get to them before I forget them.
COMMENTS FROM theSpoke: re: I blinked, and a month's gone by! @ Thursday, November 30, 2006 12:40 PMNo time to work on the car in the garage? :( re: I blinked, and a month's gone by! @ Thursday, November 30, 2006 2:37 PMWhich car? The 1996 SUV with it's dashboard apart waiting for a new heater core, or the 1960 MGA needing EVERYthing rebuilt? re: I blinked, and a month's gone by! @ Thursday, November 30, 2006 5:08 PMI mean the MGA. When you have time for that I'll know you have a life again. :-) Maybe when the youngest goes off to college you'll have time.
October 28 Where I've beenLeveraging off of Alfred's post, here's my world-wide travels (Boy, this is getting some use on theSpoke!):
My scuba trips to Aruba, Bon Aire and the Cayman Islands don't show up too well. Here's my US travels:
Spousal-Mandated Disclaimer: I've only driven through Delaware, Maryland, and Wisconsin, never stayed there; I've only driven into Montana (a rather large state really) a few miles, just far enough to buy groceries while camping in Yellowstone; I've only been in Tennesee while changing planes; and I've only really STOOD in Alaska, as the plane refueled on the way to Tokyo. Almost all of the other states I've stayed at least one night, and some places weeks to decades. Neat web tool. October 22 Mentor someone!Recently I was asked if I'd mentor a new computer science teacher. I've never met the person, and all communications have been through EMail, but both of us have learned a lot in the process. The teacher drops me an EMail whenever they find themselves stuck with a bit of code and how to explain it coherently, or when a student asks a question and the teacher doesn't have an immediate answer. (Fortunately, I've got EMail running pretty much all the time, and so far I've been able to reply within an hour or two. So, okay, the other teacher profits by having a mentor quasi-near by to ask for opinions, help, or advice. I also profit, because sometimes I learn something myself. Once in a while I'll get a question that I sort of know the answer, but in researching the problem I learn something new, or perhaps learn that what I thought was correct is wrong (or more often, obsolete!). But even if I don't need to research answers, I learn something with every question: I learn another point of view from students. No matter how many years I teach I will ALWAYS see new students each semester. When you start taking your own knowledge for granted, you'll start forgetting how you learned that knowledge. And when I forget what my new students don't know, I'll do a poorer job teaching them. So take the opportunity to mentor someone. You'll never know what YOU will learn!
COMMENTS FROM theSpoke: re: Mentor someone! @ Sunday, October 22, 2006 9:17 PMMany people don't realize what an act of generosity mentorship is. Not everyone is cut out to do it. But, for those who can, it is a very rewarding experience. re: Mentor someone! @ Monday, October 23, 2006 8:24 AMI agree. I even have a mentor, one of my teachers.
October 09 Climbing Eagle's PeakMy oldest son (Will) is a sophomore at the United States Air Force Academy. Each year the first weekend of September is Parents Weekend, and this year we decided to bring our other kids out with us. When we told Will about this, he suggested we make a family hike up Eagle's Peak. So Mrs.I (Mary Eileen), Tom, Michelle and I spent the month of August climbing a number of peaks in New Hampshire to prepare for the climb. Our climb went wonderfully: 2-1/2 hours up, 1-1/2 hours down. The pictures do more justice than I could ever tell.
For a better resolution on the pictures, check out my Gallery (If you ask, I'll tell you which is Will's dorm room!)
COMMENTS FROM theSpoke: re: Climbing Eagle's Peak @ Monday, October 09, 2006 9:03 PMooooo...pretty! re: Climbing Eagle's Peak @ Tuesday, October 10, 2006 2:34 AMNice pictures! The last two look a little scary, looks like there is a vertical fall all the way down to the base level. re: Climbing Eagle's Peak @ Tuesday, October 10, 2006 8:09 AMThe top-most few hundred feet are a sheer cliff (visible in the first picture), but fortunately the trail takes you up through the cleft on the right, and you make the final ascent from the far side. Lots of hiking over rubble, but not a vertical climb.
September 26 Why English?Alfred's got an interesting blog entry that describes a web site where you can here an English paragraph spoken by hundreds of people from different places around the world. It is facinating to see how far from "the norm" a speaker can be and still be understood. Years ago a friend of mine once suggested that English is as close to a universal language simply because it is extremely easy to speak it badly. In other words, a person with very few English skills (either grammar or pronunciation) can pretty much make themselves understood, even if they stumble horribly. In some other languages, the rules of grammar or pronunciation are so rigid and complex that straying from the norm makes it impossible to be understood. (I recall learning that in some Oriental languages even the inflection used can dramatically change the meaning of words.) And, of course, this brings to mind a quote Star Trek (the original series): "Language, what an amazing invention. You're all so dependant upon it, but are any of you its master?"
COMMENTS FROM theSpoke: re: Why English? @ Tuesday, September 26, 2006 5:41 PMYay Mr. I! I like the quote.
September 11 The new year beginsWith the start of the new school year, I'm once again filled with a sense of the future and what is possible. I have one of my school's largest APCS classes, and even though I've managed to scare one of them away, I'm thrilled with the spirit and excitement I see. Even my other classes (Microsoft Office classes for the freshmen, and a mixed-year Visual Basic class) are populated with students who I see as some of the enthusiastic and nicest I've encountered. I am psyched for the year ahead of me!
COMMENTS FROM theSpoke: re: The new year begins @ Monday, September 11, 2006 10:54 PMSome days I really miss teaching. I feel good that the students coming through my old classroom are in your hands though.
August 12 Microsoft Fingerprint ReaderMy school has a FIRST Robotics team, and during Build Season (typically early January to late February) we have students who spend tons of hours after school working on our robot creations (software, wiring, hardware, drive train, etc.). We have always struggled to keep track of the hours that our students spend, partly to know who really contributes (and therefore should be rewarded) and partly to know when to tell a student to go home and get some sleep. For the past few years we've had various mechanisms which included typing in the student ID number (a six digit number), and some program (usually VB based) would record who was going in and when they arrived / left. I say "various mechanisms" because it always seemed that the programs were usually written by a student, typically a senior, and they had some bug(s), and when the bugs were identified the author either graduated or lacked the desire to fix it, so the program would be rewritten, etc. Recently, one of our students heard of a Microsoft Fingerprint Reader for sale, and the other day I told him to purchase the fairly inexpensive ($50) device for the team. He got the reader on Thursday night; Friday (yesterday) I directed him to a website offering an SDK to read the reader (he already found it!), and this afternoon he had it identifying fingers. (THIS is why I love teaching students programming!) I told him today that I would be sending him a specification of what I wanted in the logging program, so that we could try to avoid the pitfalls of previous programs; as I told his father, this will be his first REAL introduction to professional software development. I don't think it will be too long before Team 811 has the niftiest time recording program in all of FIRST. (Of course, once perfected, we'll make it available to all of the teams ...) But it really makes me smile when I see the next generation get excited about programming.
COMMENTS FROM theSpoke: re: Microsoft Fingerprint Reader @ Sunday, August 13, 2006 12:21 AMSounds like a great little project. having seen some of the previous projects it will be interesting to hear how this one works out with a little more product management than some of the previous ones. Good luck!
August 08 The Technology of Giving BloodWarning: If you're at all squeamish about blood donation, you might want to skip this one. (Not graphic, but unusual). I gave blood today. For those not old enough yet or haven't had the desire, this is the simplest and yet most altruistic thing you can do with an hour of your time. People out there will literally live (or not!) based on whether other people like me roll up their sleeves. If you are old enough and are able to do so, EVERYone needs to get into the habit of doing this a couple times a year. As they say, there is no substitution for the red stuff we call blood. Okay, off the soapbox. I've given 83 times before (yes, over 10 gallons!), and as I drove up to the blood drive today I thought it would be just like all the previous times. It wasn't: I was asked if I'd be willing to do a "Double Red" donation. Never having been asked before, I inquired, and found that they were going to take twice as many red cells, but also that they'd return the plasma part. Doing so meant that some patient would be able to get the benefits of two units of blood without as big a threat from rejection, and I'd be able to escape some of the dehydration issues. A win-win, and it would only cost me a few extra minutes of my time. So I agreed, and after the usual heath checks (to try to make sure my blood won't get the recipient sick), I was hooked up to a neat machine. Now, in the 83 previous donations, they'd stick me with a needle that went via a tube straight into a pint (actually 500ml) bag (1 unit), and less than 10 minutes later I'd be done. This time, the tube went into a device about the size of a small suitcase (maybe 15" x 20" x 10", or 40cm x 50cm x 25cm), where the red cells were separated from the plasma. Somewhere in this mass of dials, buttons, and tubes was a centrifuge, and since the red cells are heavier than plasma, they'd be forced to the outside of the spinning cylinder. The plasma would be removed from the center of the centrifuge, and stored in a separate bag. After about 10 minutes, the system stopped, the blood pressure cuff on my upper arm deflated, and the plasma was reinjected back into me through the same needle! Then it went back into "withdrawal" mode again, taking the second unit, and then reinjected the plasma again, and the donation was done. (Some neat parts of the experience included the fact that the reinserted plasma was slightly cooler than it was when it left me, so I had a very strange experience of being cooled from the inside. In addition, the plasma had a tad of anti-coagulant mixed in it, which made my lips and tongue tingle in a strange way.) From a techie point of view, this was a great experience: Here was a fairly complicated process of taking and returning (and taking and returning) precious bodily fluids fully in the "hands" of a computerized device. The attending nurse told me that the system actually took note of the number of red blood cells that were coming out of me, and adjusted pressures and rates accordingly to maximize efficiency. That's an awful lot of really impressive coding showing itself, or rather, NOT showing itself. As I frequently point out, some of the most advanced software written is the stuff you don't see. Here was this truth in spades. So get up and give life today, and take a look at the 21st century while you're at it!
COMMENTS FROM theSpoke: re: The Technology of Giving Blood @ Tuesday, August 08, 2006 4:31 PMAmazing what they are doing with technology these days. So does this count as pints 84 and 85? Do you get a special something when you donate 100 pints? I really need to donate again BTW. AlfredTwo re: The Technology of Giving Blood @ Tuesday, August 08, 2006 11:18 PMYes, actually, this counts as both 84 and 85. Proof of this is that I can't give again until November! (For the uniformed, the American Red Cross requires you to wait 56 days between donations. When you give Double Red, you have to wait 112 days.)
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