My mum and I talked about the Apple versus F.B.I. situation that is happening. We had different opinions on some things. My mum thought that it was good that Apple gave the F.B.I. the info for the iPhone that they needed and so did I. We talked about the skeleton key too. I think that even though we don’t have much privacy in our technology, and since we live with all the hackers, we should be able to keep that little privacy. So I think that Apple should not give the F.B.I. the skeleton key. My mum thinks that since we have so little privacy, it will not make a difference.

We also talked about the Ransomware in the hospital in L.A. We both thought it was really bad, and that they should not have to pay $17,000 just to get their info back. When I first heard the fact that they had to pay, I thought I would not if it was me. Then I thought about actually being in their place, and thought that I actually would pay. My mum’s hospital stuff actually did get stolen. Records from several years got stolen. That was when she had me, so there was tons of her information in her files. That is a little scary to think about. We both wish there were no hackers in this world.

Gun violence is random shooting, not related to war, or hunting. I think gun violence is very bad, because if you have no reason the shoot, you shouldn’t. In our assembly  Obama talked about having to have a licences and a background check to own a gun, but even if you own one it does not mean you will use your gun for good. You can still just shoot randomly. I think if there were not guns in this world, even for police, it would be a lot safer. Even if there still are other weapons, with a gun, you can shoot from far away. And if the target does not have a gun, then you don’t have a big risk of getting shot. With a bow and arrow you can shoot and get shot, but you can’t hide one. A gun however, you can hide, and just bring it out when you want.

My mom, dad, and I were talking about the NRA and the 2nd amendment. The Second Amendment is “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”  The NRA stands for National Rifle Association. The NRA is a association that backs up the 2nd amendment. It keeps the rule that you have the right to bear arms. My whole family thinks that nobody should really need a gun. Our world is not safe with guns, and they are not good.

One day in d.lab we were turned into computers. I was the BIOS first. The BIOS is like the bouncer to a party. They decide if something is important, or if it can wait. The user chose a action to do, then the peripherals (keyboard and mouse) found it, and gave it to the BIOS, and they gave it to the CPU, to give it to the hard drive, to find the matching one, and pass it to the RAM (random access memory) which held it, and it went all the way back around to the beginning to get it to the user.

Next I has a peripheral, and it was really hard. When the user told you to do something we would have to find the card with that command, and give it to the BIOS. The user was sending in commands really fast, and we had to find them, but there were also cards coming back out to give to the user. So if you got the ones coming in and the ones coming out mixed up, you could give the user the wrong one. (That would be bad!)

After that, I was a hard drive for a tiny bit. I think that was the hardest job. You had to get the command card, then go through your bin of cards and find the matching card. You had to hustle, and you could not have the cards on the table. (They had to be in your hands, or the bin.

I would have liked to try to be the user, because you could make it easy, and send them in really slow, or make it be more like a real computer, and send them in really fast, because a computer is really do A LOT, A LOT  of things every second!

Middle School is great so far! I like that we can just we can just walk to our next class when we are ready. It makes me feel super independent and good. A thing I am not enjoying is that our P.E. classes are so short. I like all my classes so far. I really like Humanities. I have always liked social studies. We are watching a video called History of the World of 2 Hours. It is really good. I like music a lot too. I did not think I would like it as much as I do. I am in morning band, and I play the clarinet. I was going to play the trumpet, but then after a while of thinking I decided I wanted to play the clarinet. I liked the way it looked, and how it sounded. My favorite class is art because I like the teacher and I love art. I like lunch in middle school, and I like recess too. I am having so much fun in middle school so far!

One of the books I read this summer, is called Beyond The PawPaw Trees by Palmer Brown. It takes place in a magical land, in a magical past. Some of the places in the land that Anna Lavinia crosses include a train, a dessert and a little village. The main characters are Anna Lavinia,  her father, and her Aunt Sophia Maria. The challenge for Anna Lavinia  in the story is getting to Aunt Sophia Maria’s house. To be able to do this Anna Lavinia needs to cross the magical land between her and her Aunt Sophia Maria. Along the way she finds a key that is very important to her family’s story. Another challenge for Anna Lavinia is trying to find her father, who chases rainbows. Anna Lavinia has not seen her father in a long time, and neither has Anna Lavinia’s mother. On her way to her Aunt’s house she encounters a cliff, and she sees a little walled town below. She thinks her Aunt may live down there.

Something that changed the direction of the story the most was magic. Anna Lavinia was stuck at many points and the magic of the world helped her. An example is when Anna Lavinia was stuck at a cliff and she needed to get down to be able to continue her journey to find her Aunt Sophia Maria, and magic (with a little help of her umbrella) helped her float down safely. Anna Lavinia made some very big decisions and explorations. She explored through the magical land which could be very dangerous. Here are two examples from the book, “She thought she would try something else, because perhaps only the stones acted that way, so she opened her carpet bag and  found the fat woman’s tea cozy and tossed it out beyond the cliff. The tea cozy was so light it would not go dawn at all. A jar of pawpaw jelly went down well, a little slower than the stones.”  Another example is “Then she took a deep breath and jumped of into the air… Gathering her things together, Anna Lavinia commenced walking towards the strange walled town, which seemed to be farther than it seemed from the cliff.” Anna Lavinia’s challenge of getting to her Aunt Sophia Maria, gets resolved and makes it there safely with three new friends, a camel, a parrot, and the “thobby”. But will she ever find her father?

I enjoyed this book a lot. I liked this book because it is very descriptive. For example, when she gets to the little village, the author describes what the village looks like very well. I also liked it because I read another kind of old fashioned book called Pippa Passes (I also recommend it) and it was very good so I tried another old one. The last reason I liked this book was because I tend to like magical realism books because I can relate to the realism part, and the magic give it a fun twist. I think a reader who likes old fashioned books and magical realism will like this book. I think this because as I said before this is a magical realism book, and it is old fashioned. This was a great book. I give this book 5 out of 5 stars! *****