Oh wait! It’s the light at the end of the tunnel they told me would come one day! I’m not talking about the light at the end of the tunnel in Third Day’s song (even though that’s a good light!), but I’m talking about the light that equals High School graduation!

Today was the first day of my senior year! I’m officially a senior at Lansing High School and going to be a graduate of the Class of 2011! This year isn’t going to be near as hard as the other years I’ve had because I’m only taking a couple more serious classes and all the other classes aren’t hard. I’m praying and hoping it goes by pretty fast so that I can graduate and start going to college and then start my career… Not sure why I want to get my teen age years over so quickly, but I do.

Shout out to all Class of 2011!!!!

God Bless,
Bradley

Another thing that has been keeping me busy is work, which if you’ve read my blog that’s working for my school district. Well, I just got my check in the mail today and it’s way more than I expected! I’m excited about that, but I think half of it is going to be gone cause of paying my mom and dad off.

Recently I’ve been spending a lot of time working on getting new features for my school’s websites. There are two main features that I’ve added, and you can see them from the picture on the left. The main feature is what I call “highlighted articles”. This is a scrollable list of articles that have been posted to the website, and it also can have pictures of the subject. I’ve ran into a ton of problems with this! I’ve over came a couple of them, but I’m still running into a couple of them. Another feature is the search bar at the top right of the menu. The positioning of this took more work than I had originally thought it would have, but hey I love a good coding challenge every so often! I also had to edit one of the Joomla! files to make the search appear in a different page than the front page. I’ve made a good amount more of changes to the site, but those are all little details that a majority of people will never know… Haha

I hopefully will be posting an article this week or weekend that has some good meaning behind it, and might get you thinking.. Who knows.

Bradley

So, you know how I have done my school’s website (http://usd469.net/lhs/)? I have also done the Lansing PTA’s website (http://usd469.net/pta). Both of those sites are based off the CMS called Joomla. I love using Joomla for websites because all that I have to do is create (code) the template and then install it and make it the default theme. Then train the people on how to update their website by creating articles and stuff. After I’ve done that it means that I don’t have to worry about updating their content myself, or I don’t have to worry about teaching them the HTML they would need to know to update the website.

You may also know that my 7^th hour is dedicated to updating the High School’s website, Twitter, and other websites we’re doing. I’m not the only one in that class, but I am one of the four. Mr. Wessel is the technology coordinator for USD 469 (my school’s district). I’ve helped him a lot with some server, website, and computer things. Well I decided to ask him one day if there was any chance that I could get a job helping him out or something of that sorts. That was before school started, so about four or five weeks ago.

As time has went on, things have went slowly but surely. First it started off with he didn’t know if it was actually possible since a couple of things. Then after he found out it was possible, we had to create a list of things that I could do or things that I would do with some quick training. So, after we had that done another problem arose – he didn’t know how they would be able to pay me if this went through. He finally figured it out with the help of some other people. Now after 5 weeks (or more), I see the light at the end of the long torturous tunnel! (Got that from a song lol).

This Tuesday (September 15th) I have a meeting with Dr. Bagby, Mr. Wessel, and myself. I was told that we would discuss my pay, the things that I would be doing and/or helping with, and hours. I think that I will be getting $10.50 an hour starting off with, but probably will only be doing a couple of hours a week (like maybe 6-8 hours a week or less or more). That’s not a lot compared to normal jobs, but hey I think the pay is good for a first job.

Please pray that God helps me and He gives me the correct words to say when I’m talking to them. I really want this job because it’ll be a good one and I’ll enjoy it. Sorry for such a long post, thanks for bearing with me through it!

God Bless,
Bradley

1. Strength and Conditioning
2. Spreadsheet/Database/PowerPoint
3. Earth Science G
4. Marketing
5. Pre-Calc
6. HTML
7. Working at USD469 District Office on the websites

My first hour is just going to the weight room on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Then on Tuesdays and Thursdays we do some conditioning workouts (basically running for a while). I’ve set a couple of goals for myself, one of them is by the end of September I will be doing 45 pound dumbbell flys. I’ve set a couple other goals for myself, but I can’t really remember them right now.

Second hour for me is pretty easy, except we are just reading a book and the teacher does nothing. I’ve learned a little bit so far, but not very much since it’s a computer class. Right now we are just ”learning” the spreadsheet part, which is we are actually learning Microsoft Excel 2003. I think it’s kind of pointless because I’ve got Microsoft Excel 2010 on my personal computer. I’m sure the techniques are about the same, but getting to all the options isn’t very close. The image above is a screenshot I just took of Excel 2010.

Earth Science G is easy right? Correct. Except the only problem is with my teacher and the way that he approaches teaching. My class is overfilled (which means that there’s not enough seats [desks] for all the students) and my teacher acts like he has a small class. He doesn’t teach much, yet when he trys to he spends time with one table and by the end of class he hasn’t gotten around to everyone which means a table (usually my table) doesn’t get taught. He also raises his hands whenever he wants everyone quiet. Well, that doesn’t work our too good because usually everyone isn’t looking at him, they are either talking to someone and/or looking else where. Also, his appearance isn’t the best and I don’t think he acts like a great teacher. His beard is very non-kept and doesn’t look like it’s been trimmed very much (or at all for all it matters). Overall I think that I’m not going to like that class… Sadly I have it all year.

I took marketing as a filler class and wish that I wouldn’t have because it’s hard and all we do is read and take quizzes. I’m not a fast reader so I don’t get the whole chapter completed before we have a quiz. Which means I haven’t been doing very good in that class. Tonight, for example, we had 6 worksheets to do. He only gave us a couple of minutes to do it in class. Thankfully I can do it before that class so I didn’t really have homework.)

Probably my hardest class of this whole year, is my 5^th hour. I went into this class knowing that Pre-Calc would be hard and that I would have a lot of homework from it. That has turned out to be true and we have our first test tomorrow. So, we will see how I feel about how I did. I honestly hope that I do good since it is our first test and if you get a low grade to start with it’s kind of hard to get it back up. Please pray for me!!! Lol

Sixth hour is the EASIEST class that I have had and probably will have. It’s also the most boringest class that I have taken because the whole class is like a review for me. Want to know what’s funny/sad? It’s the fact that the teacher looks to me for help when a student doesn’t do something correct. A couple of people in that class told me that I would be a better teacher than the one we have now. I don’t know how true that would be, since I’m not a very good teacher. Mr. Wessel would tell me to shut up because he thinks other wise since I showed him and three other people how to update a website using Joomla!.

You’re probably wondering what in the world my 7^th hour class is. Well, do you remember me posting a while back about doing a website for my school? If you don’t then you can read the blog post here. My seventh hour class is devoted to managing and updating the High School’s website (http://www.usd469.net/lhs/). It’s also a time period where I can learn more about Joomla! and other web applications. It’s a fun class (if you could even call it that), there’s only four people (excluding the teacher/leader). So far I’ve done the High School’s website and the Lansing PTA‘s website. Both are using Joomla!, thus I don’t have to worry about updating them myself. All I have to do is train someone on how to use Joomla! to post articles and such. Very useful web application for people who know ZERO HTML!!!

After reading this long blog entry, what do you think of my first semester or my junior year? Leave me a comment or if you want, do a @b_hilton on twitter.com with a comment. Thanks for reading!

Bradley Hilton