Click the picture for the $29.99 deal on Windows 7

College students can get Windows 7 Home Premium for only $29.99 by going here.  The Office Ultimate Steal is also still available for students at $59.95 for Office Ultimate 2007.

Go to the interview.

(Clarification: The anchor is talking about the Community College Week number one rating for TSTC Waco in Engineering Technologies.  My post about that is here.)

Did I mention that TSTC Waco granted more Associate degrees in the engineering technologies than any other two-year college in the country?  Read about it here.

We are also are also 4th nationwide among two-year schools for Associate degrees in computer and information sciences and support, 12th in precision production, and in the top fifty in agriculture and sciences.

All of this is according to the June 15 Community College Week.

I like old cars and I hate to see an irreplaceable ‘59 Chevy destroyed.  It does illustrate what may seem counter-intuitive to some, though.  Crumple zones make cars safe.  Good, solid, stiff metal simply transfers the impact to the passenger compartment.

As you may have learned in high school physics, the time of a collision is very import to the force of the impact.  Intelligent engineering makes cars much safer with crumple zones and airbags which ’slow down’ the negative acceleration. Crumple zones are explained here. The money quote from that article is this:

Cutting the deceleration in half cuts the force in half. Therefore, changing the deceleration time from .2 seconds to .8 seconds will result in a 75 percent reduction in total force.

I have been hectoring my kids about this for years. There is a good physics discussion here.  If you read and truly understand the equation, you will never ride a motorcycle again.

Matthew Pevey greeted me and reminded me that he was a student of mine.  He is now a graduate of the Computer Networking & Systems Administration program at TSTC Waco.  He is also the Operations Supervisor at the new data center!  He has several other TSTC graduates working for him and hopes to have more before long.

I love what we do!

The Clearview data center opening is another reason to love what we do.  TSTC and the Texas Workforce Commission partnered to meet their personnel needs. Clearview is very happy with the graduates they hired after interviewing at the college.

Waco Mayor Virginia Dupuy cuts the ribbon surrounded by the Clearview partners and Sarah Roberts from the Greater Waco Chamber. (best snap ever from an iPhone 3G - I think it was the lighting)

This interior shot shows a room ready to be packed with super-dense blade servers.

The building, an old fallout shelter, is perfect for safe data storage.  They have ramped up the power (5 MW from 4 different circuits plus 2 backup generators - expandable to 15MW) and the cooling.  The fiber connections are ready to go.

For more about the new center, please read here.

UPDATE: KXXV Channel 25 has posted video from the event, including a short interview with TSTC high performance computing guru Walton Yantis (warning: an advertisement comes first).

Yesterday, we had the privilege to visit the founder and board of the IGNITE program in Fredericksburg, Texas. The high school rocketry program, founded by teacher Brett Williams in the mid-nineties, has spread across the state and is moving across the borders.  TSTC is looking for ways to partner with the IGNITE/SystemsGo program as it grows.

The learning is entirely project-based.  Students work in teams to design working  hybrid rockets that meet the specifications for each part of the curriculum.  It has been very successful.  To quote Mr. Williams:

This is a whole new way of teaching. We really are working on not just educating our students, but developing them for the workforce. Coming out of this high school program, these students will understand design and development, testing, analysis, and program management - all things the industry needs in the workforce of tomorrow.

Here are some pictures from our trip (warning - low quality iPhone snaps ahead):

Brett Williams (right) in his classroom discussing rocket science with TSTC System Chancellor Dr. Bill Segura.

Another view of the Fredericksburg High School “rocket room.” TSTC Waco President Elton Stuckly is pictured facing the camera next to Dr. Segura. You can see from here that the room is part of an old auditorium which has been divided into rooms.

Redbird 10, designed by high school students,  which will be launched at White Sands.  They are hoping for 100,000 feet.

Redbird 10 fin detail. The legs behind give you an idea of scale.  This a big metal bird.

The nosecone, designed and built by the students, will likely carry a university research payload.

Access to valve area where the N2O (nitrous oxide) oxidizer will be released to facilitate the burning of the otherwise inert solid fuel.  This system is much safer than a standard solid fuel rocket in which the fuel and oxidizer are permanently mixed together.

Failure IS an option!  These are the remains of a rocket that crashed at White Sands, possibly due to a failure in the system which releases the oxidizer.  The students have been doing a failure analysis.

All of the technologies required to build a rocket are vital to the United States as a world power.  Here we see an increasingly rare sight - a real machine shop in a high school.  A consortium of local machine shops also help the students with their projects.

Some thoughts about the program:

• It works.  The students involved are going on to study engineering and engineering technologies in college
• There was a lot of inspiration and determination to do the impossible on the part of Brett Williams
• The Fredericksburg Independent School District and the entire community had great courage and confidence to make this possible
• It can be, and is being replicated

As Mark Long of TSTC Publishing said while we were there, “It would have been a good idea anywhere, but it happened here first for a reason.”  Kudos to those visionaries who were willing to put hard work behind their visions.  Lives are being changed because of it.

*STEM is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math