Computer grades

Im surprised….. Looking back over my old blogs does not show up one on the topic of how we ‘bribed’ Terry to start putting in some effort at school.
So here is a rough outline.

Terry was getting C’s and and the odd B in his first year of high school. In other words, average to above average.
He was doing it with zero effort at all. Not doing homework, not doing any study for the exames, just showing up at school. Thats it.
All well and good to be be passing, but we knew that a little effort now pays off down the track.
So we started to try and prod him a little.
Different methods were used. To no effect. Not even offering him money for better grades was winning him over.
Long story short, one night he was complaining about the frame rate of one of his games on the clucker computer he was using. A little light went on in my head.

“So heres the deal mate. I will build you a kick ass gaming computer if you get me straight A’s.”
“How kick ass?”
“Dude, dont question my geek.”
“Righto. Your on.”

And so with that, he got my good computer, and I got a laptop.
His grades went through the roof. Straight A’s for the most part. Hes doing two Advance Placement (AP) classes and two collage level classes. A little annoyed with the lack of long term savings and the amount of money spent on pixels, but for the most part, hes kept his end of the deal.
Over time, we have expanded and upgraded the PC to keep things moving along for him.
I have been more and more disappointed with the laptops ability to keep up with my photography and other work.
So. I brought the Mac.

This then is the reason why I am loading Win7 on the Mac.
Computing wise Im just trying to get back to where I was about 3 years ago.

But the story does not end there.
What of Terry and his grades?

Observe the power of the bribe……

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Its pretty cool to see your sons name up in lights.

I have a lot more to say about the education system and the student of the month breakfast that we went to with Terry, but thats another blog for another day.