Not all of you may know that Keith (production lead) is one credit short of obtaining his BSc in Botany.  How he failed that one credit is an incredible story.
Keith was doing a field project for his Structure and Function of Ecosystems course.  He theorized that he could tell the pH of the soil by the height of golden rod growing in the soil. He picked a patch of land near the EPA hanger (tells you how old he is — anybody remember Eastern Provincial Airlines?). This patch of land had a brook running through it.  Bennery Brook was well known for being very acidic (from the airport runoff).  It was well known that Keith liked to leave his homework until the very last minute.  This is what caused him to be out by the airport collecting golden rod samples at 11 p.m. the night before the project was due. He was merrily collecting and bagging his golden rod when all of a sudden, he was standing bathed in light so intense that it was as bright as the middle of the day! With hands over his eyes, he heard a voice say, “Put your bags down and put your hands behind your head!” He didn’t know what to do until he heard, “RIGHT NOW!” So he did as he was told. Six officers escorted him (in handcuffs) through the brush to a waiting car.  A few hours later, with the knowledge that he knew nothing about the swath of Marijuana plants a few paces away from where he was collecting the sample for his project, he was released. Unfortunately, by the time he got back to the campus he didn’t have time to finish his project. Alas he still sits one credit away from that @#$% degree! The irony is you can tell the acidity of the soil pretty accurately by the height of the golden rod.
What’s In the Pipeline:
  • Jan is working on our latest eLearning courses.
  • Keith is doing components for Slack and finishing up the website blurbs for Octobers CA releases.
  • Ian Smith is researching for our refresh of our Softskills courses
Tech topics:
  • Implemented new page branching feature, this allows editors to control where the next button goes in a course.
  • Implemented new action for WebHooks into the workflow system.
  • Fixed an issue causing videos not to display in the classic editor when adding then via the page builder.
  • Work is in progress on several custom projects.
Course Count:
 
Here is the official count of courses for both courseware and eLearning, broken down by Computer and SoftSkills.
Computer
SoftSkills
Total Courses
Courseware
281
161
442
eLearning
857
160
1017
 
Did you know:
With the release of Marijuana and the Workplace coming up next week, I thought that we might want to brush up on some marijuana (and hemp) facts if customers want to quiz us on our knowledge. So here are a few:
  • Industrial hemp plants are the same species as marijuana plants, but they don’t produce a substance called tetrahydrocannabinolic acid (THCA). The difference — a single gene switch that can be turned on to produce THCA.
  • Marijuana users eat on average 600 more calories a day (don’t look at me — they are also 33.5% less likely to be obese).
  • Unfortunately (for a few people we know) it turns out that marijuana slows the release of Viagra in the blood stream — but don’t worry Dave, it won’t stunt your growth!
  • In America, before the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act, marijuana was a common ingredient in medicinal compounds, and sellers didn’t even have to list it as an ingredient on the bottle.
  • In 2012, archaeologists created reproductions of Easter Island’s statues, trying to figure out how ancient people may have moved the iconic 4.35 metric tons heads from their quarry. By attaching three hemp ropes to the statue and having a team of 18 people rock it back and forth until it “walked,” they were able to move the hunk of stone 328 feet (100 meters) in less than an hour.