Outer Heaven

I've had it today and need to vent.

Our school district uses a program from Skyward called PaC, basically a large program that allows you to digitally manage students, finances, report cards, grades, etc. I was originally deemed curator of this massive suite of applications, so I've been maintaining it these past three years. This program is the bane of my existence.

It is:

- Overly complicated. I think Skyward wrote the program and Webster used it, then decided that it defined the word complicated. You cannot possibly imagine how many buttons, options, settings, and absolutely arcane menu layouts this program has. If I have trouble using this how the heck are teachers going to get it!?

- Way too big. For one person to get to know this program it would be a full-time job. Adobe Photoshop is easier to learn than this!

- Expensive. You do not want to know how much taxpayer money went to pay for this monstrosity.

How can this be fixed and Skyward turned into a gem? SIMPLIFY. The developers and managers at Skyward need the K.I.S.S (Keep It Simple Stupid) method branded to their skulls. Get rid of the ridiculous backend and give me something I can completely manage from a web browser. Fix the pathetic excuse for a gradebook, it's way too complicated and confusing. Take a cue from Apple: LESS IS MORE. Also, let me edit grades, classes and settings anytime I want. Locking me out until next year's class creation due to grades being entered is SAD.

I should also mention that I hate being a perpetual beta tester. Our school did not spend massive amounts of $$ to test your program for you. If you have unfinished applications, don't release them or offer them for sale until they are DONE.

About the only thing that is barely decent about Skyward is the financial end of things, it seems to be somewhat stable however still overly confusing and complex. If you are a school district do yourself a favor and look at the myriad of other [better] products for student management that are out there. You will save $$, hassle, overtime, large tech support fees and not having the staff nail you to the cafeteria wall (where I am typing this from) everytime the grades don't print out right.

About a week ago I had ordered four 3 cell 11.1v 1250mAh lithium-polymer batteries from a fairly new online company called Common Sense RC. These batteries are from the budget line, and run $31.50/pair. I have spent many hours combing the web and magazines for decent lithium-polymer battery deals and found Common Sense RC to be the best so far. They offer many batteries of all different cell counts, discharge rates and voltages.

As I mentioned above these batteries are 3 cell 11.1v 1250mAh batteries with a continuous discharge rate of 8C. They weigh 85 grams, just slightly more than the stock NiMH battery on E-Flight's Blade CP helicopter. When compared to the popular (for Blade CP owners such as myself) E-Power batteries from HeliDirect that feature a lower 7C continuous discharge, are 15 grams heavier and cost $1.99 more Common Sense batteries are a no brainer.

The budget line comes with a female Dean's Ultra connector and a balancing connector. Since the Blade CP uses JST connectors I decided to create some cables from CheapBatteryPacks.com's Adapter Creator. In order to connect to the E-Flite 4-in-1 I needed a male JST -> male Dean's Ultra adapter made, and the Adapter Creator made it extremely easy to do so. You could also "hard" convert your 4-in-1 by soldering a male Dean's Ultra in place of the female JST.

Flight time with the 1250mAh battery was clocked at 23 minutes with my Blade CP (stock other than 8T E-Flight motor and JCS Hobbies' Plasti-Blade). My thumbs nearly fell off during this time doing lots of forward/reverse flight, hovering and fast altitude changes in an attempt to wear the battery down. The flight time is so good I'm kicking myself for buying four of these batteries as two is *plenty*. If you are an intermediate heli pilot these batteries will allow you a massive amount of practice time.

While browsing their website today I noticed they are now offering 20C continuous discharge batteries. That's a little extreme for me at the moment, at least until I get one of those fancy Kyosho Caliber 400 helis.

So whenever you are on the lookout for some new lithium-polymer batteries give Common Sense RC a look, you won't regret the price or the performance!

Revision 1.0

Had an interesting episode already this morning in which someone had removed all of a teacher's work files for the year on the server. At first I was annoyed that I had left delete permissions on that particular folder, then I was even more annoyed that a student would even attempt to remove a year's worth of work files. After steaming for a bit I remembered I had setup Acronis True Image to run an incremental backup nightly on the server, so I quickly mounted the earliest image of the week from my workstation and restored the files. This saved me an enormous amount of time with a file recovery program trying to track down the deleted files and folders. I also didn't have to dig through a pile of tapes and restore the entire server, True Image just mounts the image like another drive on my workstation and I have full access to the file system. In less than 3 minutes I had everything recovered and made a teacher very happy.

Kudos out to Acronis for the fine product!

Apple has released a piece of software called Boot Camp that allows users to install Windows XP on a seperate partition and boot it. Wait a minute, better read that again. At first glance it seems like a late April Fool's joke however it's perfectly true. If you are an owner of an Intel based Mac you can download the public beta of Boot Camp and try it for yourself. The download includes all the necessary hardware drivers to make your Mac run Windows XP without a hitch.

Pretty nice gift from Apple eh?

This is always a slow month for Wisconsin (especially northern Wisconsin) so there isn't a whole lot of new and interesting things to discuss. I did order a few lithium-polymer batteries and a charger for my Blade CP. With the snow melting quickly it won't be long before flights outside will be the norm. The batteries I ordered were from Common Sense RC, 1250mAh 3-cell packs (8C discharge). They should keep the helicopter in the air for around 20 minutes which will be plenty as my hands cramp since I'm not used to heli flight yet (requires constant attention).

This afternoon I decided to start working on getting my car ready for this spring/early summer. I'll be buying a new battery from Odyssey along with changing out the spark plugs, changing the oil and replacing the fuel filter. Once I get it all polished up I'll post a few photos along with more details.

Other than that next week is the end of the third term for school, so I will be busy running around making sure the grades print out properly (which they never do). My only consolation is that it's getting nice outside, and I can always escape for some fresh air.