Okay, because sometimes it's fun to celebrate your neutrinos rotating in the wrong direction (which is an old in-joke with someone who probably doesn't even read the blog, but anyway...) this is my life since Friday:
* Wake up feeling very warm; suspect catching one of three versions of flu rampaging through the school (the district ran out of subs!)
* Realize it's Friday, and therefore it's very likely that one of my staff will not be at school
* Get to school and find out that, lo and behold, there will be no Aide J
* Somehow survive the morning, begin special Friday afternoon routine (clean the classroom, clean the desks, play board games), when PH hits another student (Drama Queen, of course) for the first time all year
* Allow Bulldozer to help me prep for the following week, as I've promised Patrick a couple of hours at Disneyland (he wants to video the fireworks with his new video camera)
* Wait for Drama Queen's...someone (her family is really messed up)...to pick her up. That someone, G., is late, so we wait for quite some time for someone to pick her up
* Get home, tell Patrick that we will have to wait, as we've missed our pre-rush hour window for leaving
* Fall asleep while watching The Ark of Truth, on Sci-Fi HD, where it looks purrty.
* Wake up in time to see cute scene at the end where Sam gives Cameron the cookies she baked for him
* Have disappointing dinner
* Watch Dollhouse
* Go to bed, and have very weird dream where (I absolutely kid you not) I dreamed that Disney replaced the flume ride part of it's a small world with some kind of rotating scary train ride. Went to City Hall to complain, where a cast member confided that (kid you not) new Disney board members, including Ben Browder (??!), had tried to vote down the change but were overruled.
* Wake up with a very bad headache
* Laze around in the morning and eventually take very hot shower in attempt to get rid of headache. Both fail.
* Have lunch, walk outside, and want to rip eyeballs out of head due to the sun
* Motrin starts to work, go to grandpa's house for laundry (he has a functioning dryer...ah, luxuries) and to update his computer (he's on a 3-week long cruise)
* Anal side of me takes over, and I suggest that perhaps we should start his car one more time, as we only drove it once
* Turns out Patrick didn't close his door all the way (which we didn't see 'cause the dome light doesn't work) and the car's battery is very, very dead
* AAA guy says to drive it at least an hour, without even the stereo on, to recharge the battery (it was that dead)
* Pull out of driveway, unsure of whether to go for a drive up or down the coast, face west, shriek at sight of setting sun, decide to have dinner at Downtown Disney
* Dinner, though it takes a while, is very good. Turns out ESPN Zone's Caesar salad is almost -- and, perhaps, equally -- as good as Planet Hollywood's (my all time favorite, and, yes, I know it's a very weird place to have The Best Caesar Salad Ever, but it does)
* Stop at Wetzels for pretzel and soda to munch on way home to stay awake, discover huge line, go to Marceline Confectionary (fancy word for outside-the-park-extension-of-Main-Street-candy-story) instead for a small bag of taffy
* Encounter large line there, too, but assume (incorrectly, as it turns out) that the Disney cast members are used to this and will move the line through with alacrity
* Eventually make it to very long tram line, even though it's after the fireworks and before the park closing
* Patrick gets grumpy and decides it's my fault that there's a line for the tram (yup)
* Eventually make it to car, where we spend five minutes figuring out that I am not, in fact, in charge of the size of the line for the Disneyland tram system
* Start driving home, only to see traffic advisory that the 5 North is down to one lane from the 110 to the 2. Having experienced this once before (can you say, leave Disneyland at midnight and get home at 4 a.m.?), quickly head over to the 101
* And immediately stop dead
* Crawl forward for several miles, see a CHP officer running a traffic break, which then dissolves and things open up
* Try to listen to KFWB for traffic info and discover an hour-long informercial (what the bloody heck?) and listen to KNX instead, which insists there are no traffic issues on the 101, but that there is a fatal accident on the 170
* Revise plan again (was attempting to avoid 101/405 interchange due to emergency road repairs I'd heard about) to proceed up 101 to somewhere that looks promising to cross back to north end of valley
* Turns out the work is done, head up 405, get very sleepy, and get off to head west across valley on city streets in order to make me pay more attention and (hopefully) stay awake
* Drive up to grandpa's house, click button to open garage, and...
* ...the garage goes up about six inches, then back down
* Repeat 10 times, to no differing effect
* Give up, drive grandpa's car home, collapse into bed
* Straggle out of bed, shower, go to lunch and grocery shop, come home, make News-2-You video, and hope that maybe the neutrinos have turned around.
Showing posts with label D'oh. Show all posts
Showing posts with label D'oh. Show all posts
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Monday, February 09, 2009
Bad Nerd
So, somehow, I missed the fact that Amazon was going to announce the Kindle 2 today.
(Did we know that Amazon was going to announce the Kindle 2 today? I looked for Kindle 2 rumors on a whim about a week or so ago, and everyone agreed it was imminent, but I don't recall a date anywhere.)
Let me start by saying that I have owned both the first generation Sony Reader (the 500) and the upgraded 505. I don't own the third generation, touch screen, backlit 700 -- and after the firmware upgrade to the 505 that gave additional font sizes, I don't really see the 700 as a compelling upgrade. Judging from the unit I played with in Borders, the back light, even when it's not on, decreases the contrast of the display -- and if my batteries are going to run out, I'd rather it be the user-replaceable book light batteries than the Reader's internal battery.
Let me also say that I've always been a voracious reader -- and a voracious re-reader. There are novels, as well as a select few fan fiction stories I've found on the Internet, that I've read at least 10 or more times. One of the most challenging things for me as a teacher is that I rarely have the mental wherewithal to read in the evenings.
So having the Reader, which I can keep in my purse to grab a few pages here or there -- not to mention bringing weeks' worth of reading material on trips for less than a pound -- has been a real boom. It's been as transformative to my life and how I enjoy reading as the iPod was to how I enjoyed music.
The Kindle 1 would never have won any design contests, at least in my opinion (though I'm willing to admit that perhaps I'm biased towards the first device I own -- and am perhaps corrupted by the Apple minimalist design philosophy) while the Reader -- especially the 505 -- has always been slick and sleek.
But the things that kept me looking for Kindle 2 rumors, the things that had me wondering if, somehow, I could scare up some tax refund money, were two simple things: (1) you can buy books on the fly, using Sprint's EVDO network; and (2) Amazon's Kindle store has a number of older, classic Star Trek books (before Paramount moved in, took editorial control, and basically said that nothing was allowed to change by the end of a novel) that I really, really like and would really, really like to purchase legitimately.
Of course, they are available on the Internet for those of a mind to find them, but I try to be honest in my dealings.
(Remember that thing above when I said I'm a voracious re-reader? If you counted only Spock's World, Q-In-Law, Dwellers in the Crucible, The Vulcan Academy Murders, Doctor's Orders, The IDIC Epidemic, The Entropy Effect, Uhura's Song, The Romulan Way, and Vendetta, I would imagine that would account for something like 150 novel readings in my life time. The bolded ones alone probably account for 50. Also, pardon me for not linking, but that's a lot, and Google is your friend.)
So when I checked Twitter tonight and found Molly Wood tweeting about a Kindle 2 review, I was...flummoxed.
The Kindle 2 sounds like an incremental upgrade, at least from the CNet review I read, but that's rather what I expected. As you can tell from the generation numbers, the second generation (505) of the Reader was a "mere" +5 from the original 500, while the vastly redesigned 700 warranted a +200.
In other words, think software updates. Way, way back, long ago, upgrading from Netscape 3.3 to 3.4 was a very minor change, while Netscape 4 became something totally different.
If I'm remembering correctly, the actual readable screen size of the Reader and Kindle are the same, but the large plastic casing around the Kindle makes it seem smaller to me. Perhaps that would change if I could actually play with one for a few minutes, but one of the disadvantages of Amazon being an Internet-only operation -- as useful as it is in most situations -- is that there are no brick and mortar stores like the Sony Style or Borders stores where I've seen the Reader.
I like the fact that the buttons have been rearranged slightly, but I don't like that the Kindle 2 has no expansion slot.
(That said, my Sony Reader will play mp3s as well, and I've never loaded a one -- I would never want to drain my reader's battery by listening to music (that's why I have an iPod and a 9V battery pack for it) and I've never come close to filling up either its internal memory or the 1GB SD card I added to it, and the Kindle comes with 2 GB.)
The Read to Me feature is awesome, though. I've used my own computer's text-to-speech capabilities to make "audiobooks" of certain things but it would be nifty to have a device that could read something to me on the fly -- especially DRMd books, which are exceedingly difficult to make work on my computer.
I'm ambivalent about the keyboard. When I had a Rocket ebook reader (yes, I've been an ebook early adopter for years), it had a pen and limited handwriting recognition, and I did occasionally look up words in the dictionary (sward, for instance, is one I remember getting the gist of from the context but wanting to know for certain). But I can't really say I've missed it on my Reader. Obviously, it's necessary for browsing for books on the fly, but I think it adds to my impression -- again, probably psychological and almost certainly false -- that the Kindle's screen is smaller than the Sony Reader's.
The photos here show that the Kindle is nice and thin, and I like the styling on the back -- which makes me wonder if the people designing the front and back ever talked to each other. I'm not sure I can articulate what I don't like about the front...and I might not feel that way if I'd ever seen a real one...who knows?
Six text sizes is nice, but a recent firmware update to the 505 increased the options for that as well, so that's not as compelling a feature as it used to be.
According to this review, the Kindle 2 now reads .doc and .pdf files -- I'll have to investigate more to see if it's natively (and, if so, how you get them on the device -- see below) as about 2/3 of my content is non-DRMed .rtf files such as my own stories, stories I've downloaded off the Internet, and so on. If that's the case, that's a major deletion the "minus" column in my mental comparison scale for the Kindle.
Finally, we hit one last thing.
The Sony Reader does not work with a Mac natively. There are 3rd party options, but they do not work with the Reader's DRM, which means that I can't purchase a book from Sony and put it on my Reader unless I boot into Windows -- and, if you've been reading my tweets, you'd see that my latest attempt to do so is not going so well.
So, there again, until I someday upgrade my laptop -- to, say, one of the nifty new unibody Macbooks -- and then install Windows, I don't buy or add books to my Reader as nearly as often as I would like, and am completely unable to do so, say, on a long trip.
So where does that leave me?
Unfortunately, back where I began. I'm slightly tilting more towards the Kindle side of the equation -- because, usability issues aside, I feel more secure in Amazon's support for Kindle long-term (because its business is so huge and diversified, it can afford to support a niche market product like the Kindle, where I'm not sure how long Sony would be able to do so), and because Amazon actually carries a lot of books that I would buy, that are not available from Sony's store.
Huge draws: Read to Me (text-to-speech) and WhisperNet (on-the-go buying).
Minor draws: Long term, it might be safer to buy proprietary-formatted, DRMed books from Amazon than from Sony.
Drawbacks: Clunky design (though Kindle 2 is a step in the right direction), already have a Sony Reader (is switching worth it).
Now, if I won the lottery, this would all be a moot point -- I'd just buy a bigger purse and have one of each. :-)
(Did we know that Amazon was going to announce the Kindle 2 today? I looked for Kindle 2 rumors on a whim about a week or so ago, and everyone agreed it was imminent, but I don't recall a date anywhere.)
Let me start by saying that I have owned both the first generation Sony Reader (the 500) and the upgraded 505. I don't own the third generation, touch screen, backlit 700 -- and after the firmware upgrade to the 505 that gave additional font sizes, I don't really see the 700 as a compelling upgrade. Judging from the unit I played with in Borders, the back light, even when it's not on, decreases the contrast of the display -- and if my batteries are going to run out, I'd rather it be the user-replaceable book light batteries than the Reader's internal battery.
Let me also say that I've always been a voracious reader -- and a voracious re-reader. There are novels, as well as a select few fan fiction stories I've found on the Internet, that I've read at least 10 or more times. One of the most challenging things for me as a teacher is that I rarely have the mental wherewithal to read in the evenings.
So having the Reader, which I can keep in my purse to grab a few pages here or there -- not to mention bringing weeks' worth of reading material on trips for less than a pound -- has been a real boom. It's been as transformative to my life and how I enjoy reading as the iPod was to how I enjoyed music.
The Kindle 1 would never have won any design contests, at least in my opinion (though I'm willing to admit that perhaps I'm biased towards the first device I own -- and am perhaps corrupted by the Apple minimalist design philosophy) while the Reader -- especially the 505 -- has always been slick and sleek.
But the things that kept me looking for Kindle 2 rumors, the things that had me wondering if, somehow, I could scare up some tax refund money, were two simple things: (1) you can buy books on the fly, using Sprint's EVDO network; and (2) Amazon's Kindle store has a number of older, classic Star Trek books (before Paramount moved in, took editorial control, and basically said that nothing was allowed to change by the end of a novel) that I really, really like and would really, really like to purchase legitimately.
Of course, they are available on the Internet for those of a mind to find them, but I try to be honest in my dealings.
(Remember that thing above when I said I'm a voracious re-reader? If you counted only Spock's World, Q-In-Law, Dwellers in the Crucible, The Vulcan Academy Murders, Doctor's Orders, The IDIC Epidemic, The Entropy Effect, Uhura's Song, The Romulan Way, and Vendetta, I would imagine that would account for something like 150 novel readings in my life time. The bolded ones alone probably account for 50. Also, pardon me for not linking, but that's a lot, and Google is your friend.)
So when I checked Twitter tonight and found Molly Wood tweeting about a Kindle 2 review, I was...flummoxed.
The Kindle 2 sounds like an incremental upgrade, at least from the CNet review I read, but that's rather what I expected. As you can tell from the generation numbers, the second generation (505) of the Reader was a "mere" +5 from the original 500, while the vastly redesigned 700 warranted a +200.
In other words, think software updates. Way, way back, long ago, upgrading from Netscape 3.3 to 3.4 was a very minor change, while Netscape 4 became something totally different.
If I'm remembering correctly, the actual readable screen size of the Reader and Kindle are the same, but the large plastic casing around the Kindle makes it seem smaller to me. Perhaps that would change if I could actually play with one for a few minutes, but one of the disadvantages of Amazon being an Internet-only operation -- as useful as it is in most situations -- is that there are no brick and mortar stores like the Sony Style or Borders stores where I've seen the Reader.
I like the fact that the buttons have been rearranged slightly, but I don't like that the Kindle 2 has no expansion slot.
(That said, my Sony Reader will play mp3s as well, and I've never loaded a one -- I would never want to drain my reader's battery by listening to music (that's why I have an iPod and a 9V battery pack for it) and I've never come close to filling up either its internal memory or the 1GB SD card I added to it, and the Kindle comes with 2 GB.)
The Read to Me feature is awesome, though. I've used my own computer's text-to-speech capabilities to make "audiobooks" of certain things but it would be nifty to have a device that could read something to me on the fly -- especially DRMd books, which are exceedingly difficult to make work on my computer.
I'm ambivalent about the keyboard. When I had a Rocket ebook reader (yes, I've been an ebook early adopter for years), it had a pen and limited handwriting recognition, and I did occasionally look up words in the dictionary (sward, for instance, is one I remember getting the gist of from the context but wanting to know for certain). But I can't really say I've missed it on my Reader. Obviously, it's necessary for browsing for books on the fly, but I think it adds to my impression -- again, probably psychological and almost certainly false -- that the Kindle's screen is smaller than the Sony Reader's.
The photos here show that the Kindle is nice and thin, and I like the styling on the back -- which makes me wonder if the people designing the front and back ever talked to each other. I'm not sure I can articulate what I don't like about the front...and I might not feel that way if I'd ever seen a real one...who knows?
Six text sizes is nice, but a recent firmware update to the 505 increased the options for that as well, so that's not as compelling a feature as it used to be.
According to this review, the Kindle 2 now reads .doc and .pdf files -- I'll have to investigate more to see if it's natively (and, if so, how you get them on the device -- see below) as about 2/3 of my content is non-DRMed .rtf files such as my own stories, stories I've downloaded off the Internet, and so on. If that's the case, that's a major deletion the "minus" column in my mental comparison scale for the Kindle.
Finally, we hit one last thing.
The Sony Reader does not work with a Mac natively. There are 3rd party options, but they do not work with the Reader's DRM, which means that I can't purchase a book from Sony and put it on my Reader unless I boot into Windows -- and, if you've been reading my tweets, you'd see that my latest attempt to do so is not going so well.
So, there again, until I someday upgrade my laptop -- to, say, one of the nifty new unibody Macbooks -- and then install Windows, I don't buy or add books to my Reader as nearly as often as I would like, and am completely unable to do so, say, on a long trip.
So where does that leave me?
Unfortunately, back where I began. I'm slightly tilting more towards the Kindle side of the equation -- because, usability issues aside, I feel more secure in Amazon's support for Kindle long-term (because its business is so huge and diversified, it can afford to support a niche market product like the Kindle, where I'm not sure how long Sony would be able to do so), and because Amazon actually carries a lot of books that I would buy, that are not available from Sony's store.
Huge draws: Read to Me (text-to-speech) and WhisperNet (on-the-go buying).
Minor draws: Long term, it might be safer to buy proprietary-formatted, DRMed books from Amazon than from Sony.
Drawbacks: Clunky design (though Kindle 2 is a step in the right direction), already have a Sony Reader (is switching worth it).
Now, if I won the lottery, this would all be a moot point -- I'd just buy a bigger purse and have one of each. :-)
Saturday, November 22, 2008
It Begins Again
For the uninitiated (ha!), the Harry Potter series consists of seven books slowly but inexorably building to a final showdown between the eponymous (I love that word) hero and the most evil wizard ever (tm).
Before each book came out, there was speculation that it would be OMG DARKER AND SCARIER THAN THE PREVIOUS ONE! MAYBE OUR LITTLE BOYS AND GIRLS SHOULDN'T READ IT.
Um.
Remember that "slowly but inexorably" thing?
Remember how Lord of the Rings started with a relatively innocuous thing (Bilbo disappearing at his birthday party) and ended with "The End of All Things?"
When things slowly but inexorably built towards BAD THINGS, they slowly but inexorably get...
...badder.
This should not be rocket science, folks.
The same thing, of course, happens as trailers trickle out for each subsequent movie, to my continual irritation.
(Surely, if you're going to see the sixth Harry Potter film, you've read the books? I could forgive, perhaps, having not read the book before seeing the first, but wouldn't that pique your interest? More to the point, in a (ahem) post-Harry-Potter world, you surely know that.... Oh, never mind. I give up.)
Anyhow, imagine my reaction when I saw this:
Sinister twist.
A 'darker' Harry Potter.
I just -- I just --
Okay, let me try to be rational.
Kids who grew up on Harry Potter grew with the books. If they were 11 when they read the first, they were adults when Deathly Hallows came out. I think adults could handle Deathly Hallows, don't you?
A kid that read Sorcerer's Stone for the first time (yep, I'm American...sorry) at 11 two months ago is in a different spot.
But here's the thing.
YOU'RE THE PARENT.
IF YOU ARE WORRIED ABOUT WHAT YOUR KID IS READING OR WATCHING THEN WATCH IT YOURSELF.
I mean, for crying out loud, people.
On another similar but related note, a couple of weeks ago, our News-2-You topic was the Country Music Awards. Because the paper had a bit on the history of country music, I hopped onto YouTube, violated several copyrights, and made a video showing the growth of country music over time, with 30 second-ish clips from each decade of country music.
Johnny Cash being Johnny Cash showed up in two of them.
Three of my students -- including my youngest, Bart (fourth grade boy P), who just turned nine a month ago -- said, "Oh, that's that guy from the movie with the drugs!"
So we let an eight year old boy (with special needs, but even so) watch Walk the Line, but we angst that the sixth movie in a series of...well, eight, really...movies that are building to a giant confrontation with a REALLY EVIL BAD GUY...is...darker?
Walk the frelling Line.
I weep for society.
Before each book came out, there was speculation that it would be OMG DARKER AND SCARIER THAN THE PREVIOUS ONE! MAYBE OUR LITTLE BOYS AND GIRLS SHOULDN'T READ IT.
Um.
Remember that "slowly but inexorably" thing?
Remember how Lord of the Rings started with a relatively innocuous thing (Bilbo disappearing at his birthday party) and ended with "The End of All Things?"
When things slowly but inexorably built towards BAD THINGS, they slowly but inexorably get...
...badder.
This should not be rocket science, folks.
The same thing, of course, happens as trailers trickle out for each subsequent movie, to my continual irritation.
(Surely, if you're going to see the sixth Harry Potter film, you've read the books? I could forgive, perhaps, having not read the book before seeing the first, but wouldn't that pique your interest? More to the point, in a (ahem) post-Harry-Potter world, you surely know that.... Oh, never mind. I give up.)
Anyhow, imagine my reaction when I saw this:
Sinister twist.
A 'darker' Harry Potter.
I just -- I just --
Okay, let me try to be rational.
Kids who grew up on Harry Potter grew with the books. If they were 11 when they read the first, they were adults when Deathly Hallows came out. I think adults could handle Deathly Hallows, don't you?
A kid that read Sorcerer's Stone for the first time (yep, I'm American...sorry) at 11 two months ago is in a different spot.
But here's the thing.
YOU'RE THE PARENT.
IF YOU ARE WORRIED ABOUT WHAT YOUR KID IS READING OR WATCHING THEN WATCH IT YOURSELF.
I mean, for crying out loud, people.
On another similar but related note, a couple of weeks ago, our News-2-You topic was the Country Music Awards. Because the paper had a bit on the history of country music, I hopped onto YouTube, violated several copyrights, and made a video showing the growth of country music over time, with 30 second-ish clips from each decade of country music.
Johnny Cash being Johnny Cash showed up in two of them.
Three of my students -- including my youngest, Bart (fourth grade boy P), who just turned nine a month ago -- said, "Oh, that's that guy from the movie with the drugs!"
So we let an eight year old boy (with special needs, but even so) watch Walk the Line, but we angst that the sixth movie in a series of...well, eight, really...movies that are building to a giant confrontation with a REALLY EVIL BAD GUY...is...darker?
Walk the frelling Line.
I weep for society.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Star Trek Gripe
I've jokingly said from time to time that one of my worries about the new Trek movie was the casting of Karl Urban as McCoy.
Why?
Well, here's the thing.
I first saw Karl Urban on Xena, playing Caesar-Julius-Caesar (how he always introduced himself...hey, it was a campy show, especially at the beginning) and (gulp) Cupid. When he played Eomer in Lord of the Rings, that was marginally okay, because he didn't look like Caesar.
But...the pictures...the new pictures.
Good Lord, it's McCoy-Leonard-McCoy.
Allow me to explain graphically.
Now, other actors have gotten past this barrier. For instance, in no universe anywhere does Bester = Chekov even remotely compute. And yet, I never got past Archer = Sam Beckett either.
That said, Zachary Quinto bears an eerie resemblance to a young Leonard Nimoy.
In short: the jury is still out.
Why?
Well, here's the thing.
I first saw Karl Urban on Xena, playing Caesar-Julius-Caesar (how he always introduced himself...hey, it was a campy show, especially at the beginning) and (gulp) Cupid. When he played Eomer in Lord of the Rings, that was marginally okay, because he didn't look like Caesar.
But...the pictures...the new pictures.
Good Lord, it's McCoy-Leonard-McCoy.
Allow me to explain graphically.
.
equals That said, Zachary Quinto bears an eerie resemblance to a young Leonard Nimoy.
In short: the jury is still out.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Memo To Self
Next time you are planning to copy next week's homework, it might be beneficial to print the homework and, y'know, actually bring it to school.
Friday, September 19, 2008
You Keep Using That Word...I Do Not Think it Means What You Think it Means
That is one of my favorite quotes from The Princess Bride -- delivered by Inigo after hearing "Inconceivable!" one too many times.
I found this today.
I just...sugarless Peeps.
Think that through.
Sugar-free Peeps.
The illogic...it burns.
I had the same reaction when I first saw sugar-free caramel sauce.
I mean, caramel is basically sugar, water, and milk. "Caramelized," or the darkening that happens when you cook things, is mostly 'cause you've messed with the sugars in something.
Sugar-free caramel.
(For the record, neither is really sugar-free. They are simply different forms of sugar.)
I found this today.
I just...sugarless Peeps.
Think that through.
Sugar-free Peeps.
The illogic...it burns.
I had the same reaction when I first saw sugar-free caramel sauce.
I mean, caramel is basically sugar, water, and milk. "Caramelized," or the darkening that happens when you cook things, is mostly 'cause you've messed with the sugars in something.
Sugar-free caramel.
(For the record, neither is really sugar-free. They are simply different forms of sugar.)
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
Reminder to Self
That whole "allergy-induced asthma" thing?
You experienced it first in Thousand Oaks. In September.
It is now September.
You were in Thousand Oaks.
Next time you go to Thousand Oaks in September, take a freaking Zyrtec or bring some Primatene, okay, dummy?
You experienced it first in Thousand Oaks. In September.
It is now September.
You were in Thousand Oaks.
Next time you go to Thousand Oaks in September, take a freaking Zyrtec or bring some Primatene, okay, dummy?
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Another Pet Peeve
Sight = seeing stuff
Because of my lousy sight, I must wear glasses.
I could hardly believe the sight that greeted me when I opened the door.
Site = a place (physical or "web...")
Sacramento will be the site of the next National Down Syndrome Congress conference.
The webmaster completed his total redesign of the site in under three weeks.
Cite = refer to
The judges cited three precedents in the text of their ruling.
If you do not cite your references, you will be accused of plagiarism.
Because of my lousy sight, I must wear glasses.
I could hardly believe the sight that greeted me when I opened the door.
Site = a place (physical or "web...")
Sacramento will be the site of the next National Down Syndrome Congress conference.
The webmaster completed his total redesign of the site in under three weeks.
Cite = refer to
The judges cited three precedents in the text of their ruling.
If you do not cite your references, you will be accused of plagiarism.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Knock on Wood
Well, all four new kids did well today. In fact, the whole class did very well (hence the title). Aside from the usual disruptions from Bulldozer (one medium sized and one very minor one), the class was very responsive and interactive. We even had discussions.
Multiple ones.
Which was good, because one of the new people hired didn't show this morning. (Turns out her paperwork isn't completely processed, but I guess the office didn't know that.) So, independent, well-mannered workers was a plus.
Meanwhile, and totally unrelated except that I was on a Loreena McKennitt kick while getting my classroom ready, I have realized that somehow -- despite being quite a fan of European history -- I missed the extent to which the Vikings were involved in British history.
The notion was sparked while reading Stephen Baxter's Time's Tapestry series (awesome books, btw).
Ironically, very soon thereafter, I something clicked while listening to Loreena McKennitt's "Bonny Portmore" (which is on an earlier album -- The Visit, I think). As she says in Nights From the Alhambra, the song is a lament about the fact that a beautiful tree has been cut down.
Multiple ones.
Which was good, because one of the new people hired didn't show this morning. (Turns out her paperwork isn't completely processed, but I guess the office didn't know that.) So, independent, well-mannered workers was a plus.
Meanwhile, and totally unrelated except that I was on a Loreena McKennitt kick while getting my classroom ready, I have realized that somehow -- despite being quite a fan of European history -- I missed the extent to which the Vikings were involved in British history.
The notion was sparked while reading Stephen Baxter's Time's Tapestry series (awesome books, btw).
Ironically, very soon thereafter, I something clicked while listening to Loreena McKennitt's "Bonny Portmore" (which is on an earlier album -- The Visit, I think). As she says in Nights From the Alhambra, the song is a lament about the fact that a beautiful tree has been cut down.
"For it stood on your shores for many's the long dayYeah, somehow I missed the reference to "longboats" every one of the hundreds of times I've listened to the song. D'oh.
Till the longboats from Antrim came to float it away."
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
The Painting Adventure
I got to school around 9:00 this morning, got busy working, and around...oh, 10:30 or so, a painter stuck his head in and asked if it was okay that he painted the ramp. It would take about an hour to dry. "Yeah, that's fine," I said (though I now realize I should have asked Patrick if he'd need a restroom...oops). So he painted.
We got ready to go to lunch around...oh, 12:30ish. (By the way -- Patrick *likes* to dust and volunteered to come dust everything (and I mean *everything* -- he's even doing the chairs) in exchange for Subway for lunch. Nifty.)
Anyway, around 12:30, I poke my head out and the paint still looks wet. I ask a painter guy if it's okay to walk on. "Oh, eight, ten minutes it takes to dry," he says in broken English.
Dubiously, I kinda touched the ramp with a toe and checked my shoe. No paint. I have Patrick follow me, and we walk to the office.
Only to find Sixth Grade Teacher J in the office complaining that she hasn't been able to get into her classroom all day because she got here after they painted once and then they PAINTED ANOTHER COAT. This is confirmed by Fourth Grade Teacher K. No more classroom for any of us.
Meanwhile, am getting twin sixth grade girls, and probably Boy B back until his surgery, because PM miscounted children. So that takes me up to 10, plus an hour of Girl B.
And here I was hoping I was finished with the cutting and laminating for a while.
The room is looking surprisingly not-insane (though half the ceiling tiles aren't quite where they should be and there are wires hanging out of two of the walls). Of course, half of my stuff is still in the car or piled in the center...but as difficult as it was, the move proved to be a good organization tool.
We got ready to go to lunch around...oh, 12:30ish. (By the way -- Patrick *likes* to dust and volunteered to come dust everything (and I mean *everything* -- he's even doing the chairs) in exchange for Subway for lunch. Nifty.)
Anyway, around 12:30, I poke my head out and the paint still looks wet. I ask a painter guy if it's okay to walk on. "Oh, eight, ten minutes it takes to dry," he says in broken English.
Dubiously, I kinda touched the ramp with a toe and checked my shoe. No paint. I have Patrick follow me, and we walk to the office.
Only to find Sixth Grade Teacher J in the office complaining that she hasn't been able to get into her classroom all day because she got here after they painted once and then they PAINTED ANOTHER COAT. This is confirmed by Fourth Grade Teacher K. No more classroom for any of us.
Meanwhile, am getting twin sixth grade girls, and probably Boy B back until his surgery, because PM miscounted children. So that takes me up to 10, plus an hour of Girl B.
And here I was hoping I was finished with the cutting and laminating for a while.
The room is looking surprisingly not-insane (though half the ceiling tiles aren't quite where they should be and there are wires hanging out of two of the walls). Of course, half of my stuff is still in the car or piled in the center...but as difficult as it was, the move proved to be a good organization tool.
Friday, August 15, 2008
Incoherent Spluttering
Okay...so...there will be Romulans in the Star Trek movie. They made up a language.
Good for them.
But...but...the comments. Oh, the comments.
"We’re space pirates,” Collins explained. “Think of Johnny Depp as a Romulan.”
Pardon me over here while I gibber in a corner.
Good for them.
But...but...the comments. Oh, the comments.
"We’re space pirates,” Collins explained. “Think of Johnny Depp as a Romulan.”
Pardon me over here while I gibber in a corner.
Are you frelling kidding me?
(Note to self: Stop sounding like a rabid fan girl. Thank you very much.)
Romulans aren't pirates. They -- they -- they're an Empire, for the love of....
I can't....
Okay, seriously?
(Hello, self? This is your other self. Seriously. Stop sounding like a raving fan girl.)
You don't have to be the cos-playing nerdy Trekkie at a convention, lugging around your well-worn copy of The Romulan Way** (see how I snuck that in?), to know that the Romulans aren't pirates.
And to invoke Johnny Depp-type pirates....
(Self? This is your not-insane self pointing out that Battlestar Galactica is very good and Baltar isn't a weirdo sitting on a really tall chair.)
...
I must quote. Other people's words actually make sense. "Oh Great Bird . . . guide our Trek on its course." (Go here and download "Born Again Trek" if you need a visual -- even though I wasn't with the "midwest crowd" and actually have only ever watched Wrath of Khan once, because of the earwigs (ewww) and Kirk watching Spock die (sniff).)
** Written by the very, very good Diane Duane, who wrote two of my other favorite 80s-ish era Trek books: Spock's World (awesome, awesome exploration of Vulcans) and Doctor's Orders (freaking hilarious except when I felt bad for how scared Bones was).
*** Also? While I was googling for "Born Again Trek," I found Pigs in Space!
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
This Should Not Be Funny
I made a sound like a giraffe getting run over by a train while they're both hit by a meteor.Actor...word-smith...actor...word-smith. He's both.
And he's really, really funny -- even though it so shouldn't be.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Yikes
Note: I have not read Twilight, nor any of its sequels. Yes, I did read the whole Harry Potter series.
However.
Ouch.
I kinda laughed at the review in a few places, but...ouch.
Quotes of note:
"Educators, readers and parents have all made much of the fact that the Twilight series promotes a wholesome version of teen love for its dreamy, predominantly female readership, citing how the books' protagonists practice abstinence (as opposed to, say, the lewd excesses of Harry Potter's cohort, or those out-of-control Pevensie kids)."
Um.
Lewd excess? I hope I'm right in reading that as hyperbole for effect. 'Cause I kinda remember Ginny having a couple of romances, and some talk about...Dean? Seamus? And, of course, there was some snogging, but none of the descriptions went past, well, snogging, which is what 16ish year olds do.
However.
Ouch.
I kinda laughed at the review in a few places, but...ouch.
Quotes of note:
"Educators, readers and parents have all made much of the fact that the Twilight series promotes a wholesome version of teen love for its dreamy, predominantly female readership, citing how the books' protagonists practice abstinence (as opposed to, say, the lewd excesses of Harry Potter's cohort, or those out-of-control Pevensie kids)."
Um.
Lewd excess? I hope I'm right in reading that as hyperbole for effect. 'Cause I kinda remember Ginny having a couple of romances, and some talk about...Dean? Seamus? And, of course, there was some snogging, but none of the descriptions went past, well, snogging, which is what 16ish year olds do.
I student taught at a high school.
Trust me.
However, this cracked me up. Possibly because it's late and I'm tired and yet trying to get myself to write a little.
"It gets worse: Breaking Dawn has a childbirth sequence that may promote lifelong abstinence in sensitive types."
However, this cracked me up. Possibly because it's late and I'm tired and yet trying to get myself to write a little.
"It gets worse: Breaking Dawn has a childbirth sequence that may promote lifelong abstinence in sensitive types."
I feel kinda bad for the author, except that I've read some examples of the prose in the stories, and it reminds me of stories I wrote in high school that -- for a reason -- are no longer available on the Internet for your reading pleasure.
Which is not to say that I have the talent to become a published author, so I probably should shut up where I'm ahead.
Saturday, August 09, 2008
Friday, August 08, 2008
Olympics Opening Ceremony
Wow...the pictures are awesome.
Without getting into a political debate, I just have to say that the pageantry is gorgeous. But, a thousands-of-years-old society has had lots of time to practice.
Without getting into a political debate, I just have to say that the pageantry is gorgeous. But, a thousands-of-years-old society has had lots of time to practice.
ETA: About one of the pictures above. I don't even watch Avatar, though being in fandom, it's hard to avoid it. So why, oh why, do I look at these guys and see only...uh...(quick google search) Aang? I mean...what the heck, brain?
Thursday, August 07, 2008
Note to Self
Dear me,
Next time you are in Powell's and see volumes 3 and 4 of the series of books you've brought to bring along on your trip sitting on the shelf...remember what it was like to go from Borders to Borders on a futile hunt for number 3, okay?
No love,
Me
For the record, I have an interesting relationships with Stephen Baxter's books. I was first introduced to him while reading a collaboration he did with the late Sir Arthur C. Clarke, and quickly sought out more. I read The Time Ships in...oh, within a day and a half or so (having not yet read The Time Machine, to which it is the only authorized sequel).
I now own the majority of his books.
(Also, can I just say that I love the way that page is laid out? Separated by series, with the books' covers shown in series order below? Awesome, Mr. Baxter or webmaster.)
The funny thing is, I often have to start a book two or three times to be sucked in. Once I am, I'm left devouring whole books in a matter of hours -- but that doesn't always happen on the first attempt.
That's what happened with book 1 of the series I referenced above. I'd read part of Emperor but stopped -- which is funny, because I've currently been on the look-out for good alternate history fiction.
Note "good." That's, apparently, more difficult than it seems.
Anyway, on the trip, I started reading Emperor one night when we stopped kind of early. By the end of the trip, I was two third of the way through book 2, and began to look for book 3.
Yeah, every store I went to had book 4...but no book three.
It's now been ordered from Amazon, but still...
Next time you are in Powell's and see volumes 3 and 4 of the series of books you've brought to bring along on your trip sitting on the shelf...remember what it was like to go from Borders to Borders on a futile hunt for number 3, okay?
No love,
Me
For the record, I have an interesting relationships with Stephen Baxter's books. I was first introduced to him while reading a collaboration he did with the late Sir Arthur C. Clarke, and quickly sought out more. I read The Time Ships in...oh, within a day and a half or so (having not yet read The Time Machine, to which it is the only authorized sequel).
I now own the majority of his books.
(Also, can I just say that I love the way that page is laid out? Separated by series, with the books' covers shown in series order below? Awesome, Mr. Baxter or webmaster.)
The funny thing is, I often have to start a book two or three times to be sucked in. Once I am, I'm left devouring whole books in a matter of hours -- but that doesn't always happen on the first attempt.
That's what happened with book 1 of the series I referenced above. I'd read part of Emperor but stopped -- which is funny, because I've currently been on the look-out for good alternate history fiction.
Note "good." That's, apparently, more difficult than it seems.
Anyway, on the trip, I started reading Emperor one night when we stopped kind of early. By the end of the trip, I was two third of the way through book 2, and began to look for book 3.
Yeah, every store I went to had book 4...but no book three.
It's now been ordered from Amazon, but still...
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Of Course
Because what you expect just after having your car checked over from front to back in preparation for a road trip is to have a dead battery.
Grr.
Grr.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Packaging Ridiculousness
Just to clarify, the little box from Canon came in the big box from Amazon.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
The Eyes Have It
Yes, it's a bad joke. So sue me.
I got my new glasses Tuesday, and boy, did the eye doctor change something. The first night, I thought my head was going to explode. (This is a bit unusual for me, but I quite often have a breaking in period for glasses...it's just usually more like, "Hey, wait, how far away is that?" In other words, my depth perception gets...weird.)
I got my new glasses Tuesday, and boy, did the eye doctor change something. The first night, I thought my head was going to explode. (This is a bit unusual for me, but I quite often have a breaking in period for glasses...it's just usually more like, "Hey, wait, how far away is that?" In other words, my depth perception gets...weird.)
Anyway, as my eyes adjust, the headache has been less and less intense each day, but...eesh.
I got the super-flexible ones...which does not make them Bulldozer-throwing-proof, but it might prevent badness from when I accidentally step on them afterwards.
For those that want to boggle, my left eye is 20/175-ish, and my right eye is 20/550-ish...which means that I have to be twenty feet away from something to see it as clearly as you would from 175 and 550 feet, respectively.
And, no, that does not make me legally blind. Legal blindness means that with the best possible correction, you see 20/200 or worse -- so if I were wearing the strongest glasses I could get and still only saw 20/200, then I'd be legally blind. (Or if my field of vision were 20 degrees.)
Just clearing that up, as that's almost always the first comment I get, and I'm a stickler for accuracy. :-)
(I do, however, have a restriction on my driver's license that I must wear my glasses to drive. Fair enough...although in an absolute, utter emergency, as long as I knew were I were going, I'd get there without hitting anybody...I just couldn't read street signs and would have to remember that my depth perception is all wonky.)
Meanwhile, "The Island" is one of the most melancholy songs I've ever heard, and the guy I'm listening to right now can't sing it. This guy can. Of course, he wrote it.
And, really, it's not that he technically can't sing it -- it's that he has no idea what he's saying. He says "so we sacrifice our children to feed our worn out dreams of yesterday" with no more feeling than "this wasn't meant to be no sad song" (which he sings without irony, except that it's...ironic).
I got the super-flexible ones...which does not make them Bulldozer-throwing-proof, but it might prevent badness from when I accidentally step on them afterwards.
For those that want to boggle, my left eye is 20/175-ish, and my right eye is 20/550-ish...which means that I have to be twenty feet away from something to see it as clearly as you would from 175 and 550 feet, respectively.
And, no, that does not make me legally blind. Legal blindness means that with the best possible correction, you see 20/200 or worse -- so if I were wearing the strongest glasses I could get and still only saw 20/200, then I'd be legally blind. (Or if my field of vision were 20 degrees.)
Just clearing that up, as that's almost always the first comment I get, and I'm a stickler for accuracy. :-)
(I do, however, have a restriction on my driver's license that I must wear my glasses to drive. Fair enough...although in an absolute, utter emergency, as long as I knew were I were going, I'd get there without hitting anybody...I just couldn't read street signs and would have to remember that my depth perception is all wonky.)
Meanwhile, "The Island" is one of the most melancholy songs I've ever heard, and the guy I'm listening to right now can't sing it. This guy can. Of course, he wrote it.
And, really, it's not that he technically can't sing it -- it's that he has no idea what he's saying. He says "so we sacrifice our children to feed our worn out dreams of yesterday" with no more feeling than "this wasn't meant to be no sad song" (which he sings without irony, except that it's...ironic).
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