On Tuesday members of the QKA Local team for the Open Architecture Classroom Challenge (Chad, Tony and myself) visited the Americorps tutoring and after school program at Meadowview Elementary School in Santa Rosa. We will be working with them to find ways to better use their portable classroom for their literacy tutoring and after school programs. As you can see by these pictures, we have our work cut out for us. Check back later for what our ideas are.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Following a crushing defeat at the hands of the far more experienced QKA golfers, the Mechanical Engineers at 15000, Inc. accepted a “pennies on the dollar” buyout offer in an attempt to settle their losses. Given this economy, Steve Kwok was heard to say, “Four lattes is about all their worth”. Early Tuesday morning sign painters were already removing the 15000 logo and replacing it with the patented QKA running man. Sadly, Terry Vion reported that the databases were not compatible and QKA would need to dump “Vision” and begin using the 1999 home edition version of “Quickbooks”. Carol was so relieved that she actually started to cry.
When we last saw Jay Takacs he was attempting to move Jim Theiss’s Pez dispensers out of his office. Jay said “I’m a Principal and you’re not, so get your candy out of my office.”
Reportedly the new firm name will be QKA/23 3000 (which is the new CSI numbering format for Mech. equip.) New business cards will be ordered shortly. Previous restrictions on job titles have been lifted, allowing Amy to finally be referred to as “Queen of all that she surveys”.
Stay tuned for further developments.
QKA is working on two entries into the 2009 Open Architecture Challenge. It is a design competition sponsored by Architecture for Humanity. The brief description is to work with a class of students and design improvements for their classroom to make it an ideal learning environment.
We have two QKA teams. Team International is headed by Sara Pirahanchi and is working with a photography class in Iran, taught by Sara’s cousin. Team Local is headed by yours truly and is working with the Americorps after school program at Meadowview Elementary, right here in beautiful Santa Rosa, CA.
Submissions are due on June 1, so check back for more details. Here’s the website
QKA has been a supporter of the Sonoma County chapter of Habitat for Humanity for several years. 2009 marks their 25th anniversary! Congrats to all of our friends at Habitat!
My fellow QKA’er Laura C. works in our Construction Administration department. Her daughter Aryana was in the office for a couple hours recently and had this to say; “Mom, everyone here is like family..isn’t there someone here that is not nice or that you don’t like??? AND you get FREE hot chocolate!!”. Laura says that if a 9 year old can get this from a few moments at QKA—then we must be doing something right!
NVUSD students see Giants game courtesy of QKA