Because cheating is good?

Well, no. Cheating isn't actually good. We all know that. But even when I was a teaching I knew that it was silly to ask kids to memorize things that could easily be looked up. The focus should be on making connections, thinking, learning to learn, and learning how to research and locate the material you need for the moment or the project. Memorization is something that should be left to the mentats. Oh common! You don't know what a mentat is? Seriously, you should read a book.

Today I ran into one of those situations where I didn't have a clue how to figure something out. And for the life of me I couldn't figure out how to do something that I'm sure my 7th grade math teacher would kick me for. Good thing I can't remember who that person was huh? The problem at hand was trying to figure out how to turn a value I had for a duration in seconds into a duration in hours. Yup, I had to figure out how to turn something like 1.5 million seconds into hours. Do you remember how to do that? Anyone?

*chirp*


*chirp*


Yeah, I didn't either. So, I called my local math geek, my good friend D. I knew he'd know. And he did. Can't for the life of me remember how he got there, but it had something to do with dividing by 3600 for some reason. It's good having smart friends. :)

But then I had a thought. There's a web site for everything right? There had to be a site that did this kind of thing. Guess what? There is! Is it technically cheating?
How cool is this --> http://www.calculateme.com/index.htm?

From any value to any value, this site rocks. Pretty lame attempt at advertising for car insurance, but I'll overlook that for getting me the info I need.

So who needs to be smart? Just need to know where to look it up. Sorry D, you've been replaced. :)