My First Published Patent Application

I guess I can call the mom and tell her to add another entry to the baby book. Baby's first published patent application. Its for a
Scanning Apparatus and System for Tracking Computer Hardware. I wrote a lot of the content myself and did the diagrams.

This whole thing came about when my wife's laptop was stolen from her car one night and I developed a way to find it. I tried out my new idea and found the laptop in less than a half hour and put the guy in jail.

For the full PDF patent application that was published by the USPTO, please click the link below:

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20090210935.pdf

David Groos and His Linux Classroom Project (and me) Make It Into The Minnesota Business Journal

getSTEM, David Groos, and the Growing Communities of Scientists Project make it into the Minnesota Business Journal.  If you haven't heard of this project it is a great effort by teacher David Groos to bring technology into his classroom affordably by using Linux and LTSP  Read the article here.  I have to say, I was more than a little elated to see that this type of thing is getting press.  Not to mention they mention my name in the article :)

Check it out!!:  http://www.minnesotabusiness.com/0p349a2857/do-you-get-stem/

getSTEM + Linux in the Classroom = Awesome!!!

[caption id="attachment_67" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Ahh,  the sweet smell of success.... and toner "][/caption]

I recently had the pleasure of helping David Groos with a Linux networking problem specifically with setting up LTSP (Linux Terminal Server Project) with multiple NIC cards and subnets. I heard about this through my wife who works with Inetium in Bloomington, MN.  They are partnered with a group called getSTEM.  getSTEM is dedicated to helping educators find help, guest speakers, or just about anything from ordinary individuals and companies.  It's a great resource and is specifically dedicated to promoting the areas they call STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math).

David is currently trying to further his district by bringing Ubuntu Linux into his science classroom. I really admire this initiative, and I feel that open-source software could dramatically change how technology-based education works in school districts. Because the software is free and works on machines that are a bit older, this could easily save districts millions of dollars in computer hardware and software.

I encourage people to look at David's blog and see what he is doing to change the way technology-based education. If you are interested in hearing about my contribution, the specific link is (http://groosd.blogspot.com/2009/03/fixed-network-and-thus-printer.html)