Nerd Squee

Hello from Moya, my new iPhone.

Edited to add: I just saw that a few recent comments weren't emailed to me -- among them, Stacey's. If you see this before I get a chance to email you (I'm in nerd heaven, playing with my new toy), I'll email you soonish.

D'Oh

I clicked on my blogger profile for the first time in forever, and there's one setting that I didn't change back after I switched to the "new" (a.k.a. Google) blogger -- my profile said I was a 'he.'

So let me take a moment to assure you that when I complain about my none-too-friendly reproductive system (which is finally quiet for the next 28 days -- just in time for Disney World, of course), I assure you it's as a girl.

Just wanted be clear about that, there.

A Good Rant

An MSNBC newsperson has a fun 10-minute long rant about the commutation of Scooter Libby's sentence.  Be sure to watch the video.  I agree with him -- but the rant itself is...impressive.  :-)

It's the Little Things

Much was made a few weeks ago of the fact that Apple released its Safari browser (my browser of choice) for Windows as a beta (pre-release) download.

But while that's a momentous change (which my PC doesn't seem to like; I can't get it to work on my PC), of all the small changes I've found in Safari 3, these are the two I like best:

• "Merge all windows."  I am a tab fiend; I am constantly opening new tabs, especially when doing google searches or checking all my RSS feeds -- I start from the main page and open up tabs from there.  But sometimes a site will automatically open up a new window; in the past, I'd have to close that window and re-open it as a tab.  Now, I just click Window | Merge All Windows, and voila -- all my open windows are tabs in one main window.

• "Make text normal size."  My eyesight is really bad; rarely do I browse the net at the normal text size.  In fact, one of the first things I do on any text-laden site (e.g. a long blog entry) is bump the size up three or four times.  But there are some sites whose layout gets all screwed up if things are too big, and rather than bumping the size down, I just click apple-0 (or View | Make Text Normal Size) and things are good to go.

One More Disney World Purchase Down

Just ordered a transport chair (a wheelchair with 4 small wheels -- and hand brakes!) for Patrick for Disney World, because it's becoming very clear that while his thyroid medication helped initially, therapeutic levels have not yet been reached.  So the climate concerns we had about Orlando in August are all still valid.

Plus, pushing him and his girlfriend around the other night actually took a lot of strain off my aching ankle -- I'd stumbled during our APE lesson on Friday -- so having something to stabilize me and prevent me from being boneheaded and clumsy and attempt to break my ankle again will be good.

And, yes, we could have rented one, but there are advantages to having your own, not the least of which will be not having to pay the daily deposit at Disney only to have it re-credited to your account.  (Also, Disney's are old, decrepit, and poorly balanced, which makes pushing a larger gentleman uncomfortable.  Plus, the hand brakes will be very useful -- having spent about 45 minutes keeping Chaline from rolling down various ramps the other night.)

I noticed when Patrick took a few turns in Chaline's transport chair (she's had one ever since she had brain surgery a few years ago) that his whole demeanor changed.  We'd gotten there at the height of the day's crowd, and had to maneuver through some pretty intense mobs.

It's long been my opinion that one of the things that sends Patrick into overload and wanting to go home is his poor eyesight -- his left eye is very lazy, and has a reduced field of vision.  As near as his optometrist can tell, he essentially ignores the input from that eye because it's so confusing.  This means that he's essentially blind in one eye -- and therefore has no depth perception.

Imagine a mob of people in front of you -- a see of faces -- that your already-slow-to-process-things brain has to turn into meaningful information so you don't bump into people.  (This is exacerbated from spending 5 years in high school being yelled at for bumping into people you couldn't see in the first place.)

Imagine, also, that because you have no depth perception, you have no real reliable way to tell how far away these people are.  Someone whose brain processes things faster may be able to take cues from relative size (e.g., that guy is getting smaller, so he must be moving away from me), but your brain just doesn't work that fast.

When Chaline offered him a turn to sit down, a whole load of tension went out of his body -- he became more communicative, for one thing (he was tired and not talkative), and he just seemed happier.  And this was at Disneyland, which he could probably navigate blindfolded.

It's my hope that being able to wheel it, at least part of the day, will relieve a lot of that "oh, my God, who are are all those people, where are they, and are they going to run me over" thing.

It also eliminates my lingering concern over whether they will give him a Guest Assistance Card.  My mom was assured on the phone that they would -- specifically, that if she went in with him and asked for a card that requested that he not wait in the outside portions of the queue for health reasons -- grant one without question, but it's better to be safe than sorry.

A lot of this trip is being planned with Patrick's stamina -- both physical and mental -- in mind.

I was 7 the first time we went, and we ended up missing a day in the parks because I was just too exhausted.  We planned this in, when we went when I was 12, and Patrick was just kind of along for the ride then.

We're planning to upgrade our 8 day tickets to annual passes (somewhere around $150 more) so that if Patrick just can't make it one day, we're not feeling like we're wasting money by not using a day's admission -- the Magic Your Way packages don't allow for what we did last time, which was stay 8 days but only go in the parks 7.

The idea is to fly this summer, then drive back before the annual passes expire for a few more days -- using the lack of expense for tickets and the fact that we won't have to ship them to buy souvenirs, since Patrick will want mostly books.  We'll probably also stay somewhere much cheaper, since we'll have a car and not be reliant on Disney transportation to get Patrick back to a hotel if he is having heat exhaustion issues.

When we went before, when Patrick was 3, it obviously wasn't as much of a concern.  We had strollers, his ticket was still free ('cause he looked 2), and until I got my 2nd degree sunburn, my friend Amie and I could always carry him if he got tuckered.

Post sunburn, even wearing clothes hurt, so Amie (bless her) did most of the 'heavy lifting.'

Today, of course, I can still lift him, but only for about 2 seconds.

He has the issues with dehydration and heat, which is one of the reasons I sprang for the Contemporary Resort (aside from the fact that I have always wanted to stay there) --  we all assume that we will spend most of our time at EPCOT (for me) and the Magic Kingdom (for Patrick).

Our mom will probably go to Animal Kingdom one day without us; while Patrick (who's not a zoo type) will be content to ride a few rides and maybe see Festival of the Lion King, she will want to do the early morning safari and really walk around the animal exhibits.

And MGM Studios only has a few rides -- he's not into shows -- but we'll probably make a couple extra stops to eat there.  (He's a big I Love Lucy fan, and wants to eat the the Hollywood Brown Derby, and I'm a nerd, and want to eat at the Sci-Fi Drive in restaurant.)

We're also staying on the concierge level (when you're paying what the Contemporary costs, what's 30 more a day, when they feed you 2 meals and 2 snacks a day?) so that we can have a microwave and fridge in the room, which we'd otherwise have to pay for -- because he needs a steady supply of liquids to replenish the buckets of...well, you know.

If anyone who has read this far is interested in other Disney World planning information for people with disabilities or other special needs, I highly recommend the PassPorter's Walt Disney World For Your Special Needs Guidebook.  Far beyond the standard mobility information, DHH information, and information in Braille and tactile guidebooks that Disney itself provides, this covers ADHD, the autism spectrum, traveling while ill (e.g. Make A Wish), intellectual disabilities, and even information for people of large size.

As the trip approaches, I'll probably talk some more about the special planning (e.g. how to get a young man who finds bass painful onto a plane where the engine thruuuuummmms for 5 hours straight) that I've been spearheading to make this trip as fun for Patrick as possible.

'Cause, you know, the more fun he has, the more he'll tolerate me wandering World Showcase (which I found only mildly interesting last time, and which I'm really excited to explore)!  :-)

Multitouch

You'd think I'd have learned.

You'd think I'd know what happens when you get over-involved nerds all in one place.

It goes beyond not pleasing some people.  You can't please anyone.

So why am I browsing macrumors.com?  Well...I dunno.

In a few threads, they have been talking about speculated updates to both the iMac and MacBook product lines -- with people thinking that both lines would become touch screen interface (multitouch) a la the iPhone.

As usual, the folks commenting are very polarized.  Some think it's a revolution of computing -- as revolutionary as the mouse was originally.  Some think that a purely touch interface would be tiring to use (it probably would be).

But as someone who has used a touch screen (granted, not exclusively, and not as elegant as multitouch), I can see its uses.

See -- one of the computers in my class was donated by the Amanda McPherson Foundation and has a touch screen.  It's been invaluable for one of my students, who does not understand how to use a mouse -- nor does she have the fine motor capability to do so.

Having a touch screen enables her to interact directly with the computer.  It allows me to make activities for her with ChooseIt Maker 2 to practice classroom vocabulary words and other receptive vocabulary.  Without a touch screen, she would also have to understand how to use a single switch in scanning mode.

Having a touch screen also allows me to use SwitchIt Maker 2 to adapt the books we read in class (which are already adapted, but that's a story for another day) into cause and effect computer games for her, so that she can be involved in what we do.

With a touch screen, she can make choices in Switching On American History and learn important computer skills (choosing a picture), as well as participate in age-appropriate general education curriculum (she's entering 5th grade next year).

With a touch screen, she can use Teach Me to Talk to practice her expressive vocabulary in a low-stress environment, where speech seems to come easiest to her.

Now, I realize this I'm talking about a niche market here.  The student I'm describing has significant cognitive challenges due to Down syndrome.  It's my gut feeling that she also has autism.  She has very little verbal communication (though, boy, is she an effective communicator!) and challenges with eye-hand coordination (except when she's throwing masking tape at me) and fine motor skills.

But as far as I'm concerned, the more common touch screens become, the more accessible computers will become as well.

(And, I have to admit, when I'm setting something up on the computer that E. uses, I often eschew the mouse and use the touch screen myself.  Not exclusively, certainly -- especially when precision and/or multiple clicks are involved -- but it's convenient and easy.)

And, boy, did that turn into a book that I didn't intend to write.  Hm.

(By the way, there's a green dot next to the Simi Apple store.....)

Another Grammar Lesson

Namely, [sic].

You put [sic] within a quotation to show that you know the thing you're quoting has some sort of grammatical error or unusual usage.

So:  "The dog was seen eating it's [sic] dinner."

The [sic] indicates that, yes, I know, it should be its, but the rules of quoting someone mean I'm not at liberty just to change their wording.  My options, therefore, are adding [sic], or using an ellipsis and brackets, thusly:  "The dog was seen eating . . . [its] dinner."

In the first, I just admitted that I saw the mistake but that it was not mine; in the second, I used an ellipsis to indicate an omission (granted, only one word) and used the brackets to re-orient my readers.

This is prompted by this quote, from Peter David's post on Bush's commuting Scooter Libby's sentence (which is a rant for another day, but for the record -- how smarmy can you get?):  "George Tenet provides faulty intel on Iraq?  Medal.  Horrible treatment of detainees at Abu Ghirav (Sic)?"

Okay, I appreciate that you don't know how to spell Abu Ghraib -- of course, a simple google search would probably have netted you the answer.  (I used "Abu Graib prison Iraq" and it popped up the spelling correction right away.)

But in Internet parlance, you did not mean "(Sic)."  You likely meant (sp?).  You were not quoting someone else; therefore, you may not use [sic].

I know I'm a grammar nerd; I also know that, given that I started elementary school in the early 80s -- in the age of Whole Language and new math -- I was fortunate to go to a private school where the teachers were distinctly "old school" in their teaching approach -- phonics, direct grammar instruction.  I remember having to re-do an assignment in 3rd or 4th grade in which I used their, they're, and there incorrectly.

But, gosh, what on Earth is happening to the English language?

By the way -- i.e. means "that is," while e.g. means "for example."  The two are not interchangeable.

1.  I have a headache; i.e, my head hurts really badly. -->  I have a headache; that is, my head hurts really badly.

2.  J. has lots of good rote skills; e.g., she can add, subtract, multiply, count by 5s and 10s.  -->  J. has lots of good rote skills; for example, yadda yadda yadda.

Hmph

I do not have an iPhone...but it's not for lack of trying.

See my earlier post about falling in love with the device within a few minutes of playing with it.  I tried really hard to talk myself out of it, but finally reviewed the additional money I will make by home teaching 3 hours a week this summer...and decided I could swing it.

So I checked the iPhone availability website, which showed a nice green dot next to the Northridge mall.

Yeah...

...the green dot lied.

And now, there are red dots next to all Apple stores in California, except 2 stores in San Francisco.

Oh well...nice to have enforced impulse control.

Meanwhile, for those of you who think I'm weird for not liking peanut butter cups, you'll be pleased to note that I love eating peanut butter sandwiches with chocolate milk.

Tune In

I don't talk about it much, but when my mom's family moved to the Valley in the late 1950s (from the duplex they'd lived in on Washington Blvd. since moving from Pennsylvania in 1955), both she and my aunt had small parts in several TV shows, among them Wagon Train and Leave it to Beaver.

My mom's current boss is very fascinated by this; me, not so much.  Perhaps that comes from having supported an actress's son in an inclusive environment and getting to know her just as M's mom.  And, by extension, realizing that celebrities are Just People too.  Or seeing her excitement when her show as on hiatus for the summer and she could actually pick up and drop off M at school, and realizing that acting, like everything else, is a job -- and a hard one at that.

Or perhaps it's because I've only ever seen one of my mom's episodes.

If you tune into TV Land next Saturday, you'll see the Leave it to Beaver episode where Beaver sneaks out to a movie theater and, in true sitcom form, promptly wins a bike -- which, of course, it hard to explain if you were supposed to be grounded.

In the movie theater scene, my mom is the blonde behind Beaver who is eating popcorn.  She would have been between 9 and 10 at the time of filming.

I'm not a huge Leave it to Beaver fan (nor do I enjoy Wagon Train or (I think) Gunsmoke) so I probably won't watch, but I figured it was worth mentioning.

Well...THAT Was a Mistake

So, loyal readers will know that I've been drooling over an iPhone since the commercials and videos started that last marketing push a couple of weeks ago.;div>

I told myself, "You don't need a 'Smart Phone' -- you barely text and never use the internet on your phone."

I told myself, "The keyboard can't be that easy to use; if for no other reason than you've got great big blunt fingertips that the average iPhone user doesn't."

I told myself, "You already have a shuffle for small playlists, and you have a 5 gen iPod that plays video.  You don't need to have pretty, full-screen landscape video."

I told myself, "You have lousy eyesight.  Surely reading a web page would be difficult, and the text would blur if you zoom in."

I told myself, "That finger-flicking scroll thing would be annoying; you'd be overshooting things all the time.  Ditto the 'pinch' zooming."

I was at the Northridge mall tonight, and after five minutes of playing with the thing, the only thing that saved my bank account (which I'm supposed to be bulking up for Disney World) a huge hit was the fact that they were sold out.

The thing is gorgeous.

I had no trouble typing.  When you zoom in on a web page, the text is crystal clear -- and that was in portrait mode; the phone was nearly out of batteries and needed to be docked to work.  You can control the amount of zoom by holding your fingers on the screen.

I don't think I can convey how pretty it is.

Scrolling through your music library is painless.  Flicking is very intuitive, and you can tap in the middle of a flicked scroll to stop it from scrolling.  Cover flow for the playlists...meh.  But the fact that you can click and see other songs on the same album, without backing out of your playlist and into one of the music browsing modes?  So cool.

I was so enthralled, I forgot to check out google maps, but youtube loaded nicely.  The video was...meh -- but it turned out that I'd been using EDGE the whole time, so the video was very highly compressed.

How did I discover that?  I went into setting to turn off wifi (all Apple stores have wifi) to see how bad EDGE really is -- and it turned out I'd been using it the whole time!

This is going to be a very hard to resist toy, especially because of Google maps.  I can't tell you the number of times I've been driving somewhere and trying to figure out where the nearest X was.  I remember actually trying to do that two phones ago, when I didn't have a data plan at all but was desperate, knowing that I'd pay through the roof for looking up whatever it was, and I gave up in frustration.

On an ironic note, however, people are sheep.

When you go to Disneyland a lot, you'll notice things like: people line up in waits 5 or 6 trams long when often at closing, they are loading at both stops -- but people see the huge mass of people and assume that's where they should be.

At the Apple store, the table that normally held the...mm...nanos, I think, was given over to the iPhones.  There was a huge crowd of people all gathered around the table, clearly waiting impatiently for their turn to play with the iPhone.

If they'd looked two feet behind them, they'd have seen that every iMac on display had an iPhone next to it.  So I stood over there and played for a good 5 minutes, and didn't feel the least bit pressured.

By the way -- the simple, classicly Apple layout makes this device very good for tech novices -- but it occurred to me right away that there's another population this phone would be good for: folks with intellectual disabilities.

Everything is so visual and obvious -- click the picture of a phone to make a call.  You can attach pictures to address book entries.  If you get confused, click the one physical button on the bottom to go back to the main screen.  Nifty.

Say What?

When you surf the Internet a lot, you tend to see some pretty...err...interesting...grammatical mistakes.  While they still irk me, I more or less expect them.

This, however, was a new one:

"To spite what some people are saying."

This is one of two things.  It could be someone using voice recognition software and not catching a transcription error.

Or, more worryingly, it's someone who doesn't know the word "despite."

Opportunity

Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity landed on Mars 3 1/2 years ago.  They were supposed to last 90 days.

NASA decided to send Opportunity into a deep impact crater.  Like NEAR Shoemaker, a probe that was landed on Eros after a successful mission -- thus becoming the first man-made object to land on an asteroid -- NASA basically decided that since Opportunity has long-since outlived its original mission, the risk that it won't have the power or maneuvering capability to get back out of the crater is worth the risk.

So here's to little Opportunity, the rover that could.  If this proves to be the end of your mission, we'll miss you...but something tells me it won't be.

In other news -- we had our first APE lesson today.  It started out promisingly enough.  They paired us with the two classes that have potential future classmates for A., and although we started with rhythm sticks (bleh) it was at least to a contemporary country song.

Then, in a room full of mostly 5th and 6th graders with learning disabilities, they started a song called "Texas Lonestar," which included -- among other things -- howling at the sky.  Miss T. tried her best to get me in trouble with (amusing and appropriate) snarky comments; the other kids looked either bored or astounded, and poor A. looked at everyone like they were crazy.

Miss C., on the other hand, cheerfully sang along ('cause, you know, supposed to be doing circle time and "Itsy Bitsy Spider").  Afterwards, I jokingly told Miss T. that she was going to get me in trouble, and that if she thought that was bad, she should have seen (now 7th grade) C. and/or (now 8th grade) RL when the OTs would come in and make the kids sing "Tap, Tap, Tap" (a Handwriting Without Tears song).

Miss C., confused, says, "Our OTs sing that here...."

"I told our not to," I said.  "These guys are mostly 10 and 11...it's just not appropriate."

If looks could kill, I would now be 12 feet under.  Sigh.  It's been a few years since I had to fight that battle with Miss K., who thought that letting a 6th grader take a nap cuddled in her lap was appropriate.

But I got the best bookend for the story.  After cooking today, I told the kids it was time to clean up.  M (I think) started singing the Barney (blech!) clean up song, so R. (sixth grade) started singing along.  Before I could say anything (I usually just say, "you guys are too big for that song"), A. pipes up with, "You aren't a baby, M!  That song is for babies.  You're too old for that song."

You go, girl.  :-)

Meanwhile, both little A. (the one who is the size of a 7-year-old) and little J. (ditto) have raging crushes on Patrick....

More Randomness

Randomness Number 1:  R. story for the day.

We are reading a poetry book this summer; after Little House, I just didn't have the wherewithal to adapt another book from scratch (despite some very good suggestions from both (!!) fourth grade teachers -- the weekly Starbucks runs, while they sucked for me as I don't drink coffee or tea, certainly paid off in the camaraderie department).  Add to that the fact that my program specialist wanted me to attend a training the first two days of summer school (I ended up not going because she couldn't guarantee I'd have any of my aides), and 17 days just wasn't worth it.

Anyhow, before each poem, we're reading a (very) abridged and abbreviated summary of that historical time period (I chose a poem about the Pilgrims, "Paul Revere's Ride," The Gettysburg Address (which was in our poetry book, so there :-p), We Shall Overcome, one other one, and "Hope Eyrie," in honor of the anniversary of the moon landing being the last day of summer school).

So we started the section on the Revolutionary War today.  In the text I gave the kids, I wrote, "The English were not nice to the colonies."  Most of the kids have very simple multiple choice questions, but R, J, and A have harder short answer questions.

One was, "How did the English treat the colonies."

A. got it right away.  (She would.  Hence the move to a more challenging class next year.)

J. got it after I showed her the paragraph the answer was in, with a little verbal prompting.  (She promptly burst into PMS tears, by the way.)

R...not so much.  We eventually got to the point where I was saying, "R., it says the English were not nice.  If someone is not nice, they are mmmmm...?"

Back and forth we went.  Right through snack time.  I will abbreviate the whole thing here to a simple: "YEEEAAARRRGGGHHH!!"

Later today, he had to finish that one question before he got a break.

I say, "Now, R., remember, it says the English were not nice.  Someone who is not nice is -- "

"Mean!" he says, immediately and cheerfully.

Le sigh.

Randomness Number 2:  Frivolous Purchases

Every year for (everybody's) birthdays, my grandfather gives people money.  Always $60.

This year, he must have forgotten to get cash, because my card was full of 10s, 5s, 1s, and even a $2 bill.

I used that money to buy season 1 of BBC's Robin Hood...which is in no way historically accurate, but oh well.  It's funny and I like it.  I didn't like it enough to buy it myself, but with birthday money, it's okay.  (I know, I know, it's all in the same account, but whatever.)

Randomness Number 3: The Disappearing Dock

The shuffle dock is nowhere to be found.  I have been eyeing this travel dock for the trip to Disney World, 'cause it doesn't have a wire to break, snap, get tripped over, etc.) and decided to take the plunge.

Therefore, because my life works this way, I will be shortly locating my shuffle dock.

Randomness #4: Gadget Love

I really want an iPhone.  Especially now that there's a rumor that AT&T is upgrading their EDGE network (apparently, download speeds improved significantly this evening, the day before the launch of a product whose main drawback in reviews has been the slow connectivity of AT&T's network).

I really, really want one.  I have no reason to...I'm, at best, an occasional cell phone user.  But it's so pretty....

Randomness #5:  People Drama

On the aide front, the instant ambivalence is shifting into pretty intense dislike...on both sides.  Apparently, I am included in the other aide's animosity.  This does not surprise me in the least; the last time she worked with me, I was fried, burned out, and stressed over that summer's IEP drama with yet another R.  My heart was not in it, and I was constantly freaked that if I pushed A. just a little too far, he'd flip out and have a major meltdown like the one he did on the second day of school.

(Typing this now, I remember that she Really Didn't Like Being Spit On then...too bad that's R's favorite new thing...'cause, you know, now that we stopped screeching "Pee pee!" we have to replace that fun behavior.)

I was pretty motivated coming into summer school this summer.  I'd had a good year, I was in a good place...so we're working -- we're doing journals, adapted books, News-2-You, etc.  In other words, lots of things she thinks are a waste of time, because we should be having circle time and singing "Itsy Bitsy Spider."

Ah well.  One week down, almost, and R's mom never did yell at me (though apparently she ranted to a lady T. is taking a class with, but oh well).  Tomorrow's an easy day, with APE, cooking (snow cones, this week) and scheduled games time (SpiderMan memory, Cariboo, and Trouble).

Karma Redux

Well, that's better -- I didn't have to pay a thing to get my car fixed again, because it was a faulty part to begin with.  This is why I love my mechanic: he's trustworthy, for one, and for another, if he messes up, he fixes it.  I didn't even have to pay for labor.  :-)

Which means that I can afford to replace my wireless router.  I'm thinking of going with an Airport Extreme, in the hopes that someday I'll be able to afford an HD TV with which to use an Apple TV.

Karma

I apparently earned a bit of bad karma lately.

Either that, or I'm earning some good karma for some future date.

My car is back in the shop about six weeks after I spent $700 fixing it.  Same warning lights this time.

And now, my wireless router is randomly turning off.  Apparently, something is wrong with the wire, because if I jiggle it and prop it up around the antenna, it stays on, but if the wire moves at all, it turns off.

Those Darned Neutrinos

So, just as I finished typing out my rant about the misadventures of today, I was getting ready to go to a fundraiser for the condition that the kid I do home teaching for has...

...okay, that sentence went all kinds of grammatically bad places.

Anyhow, just as I finished, I went to turn on my car, only to see the battery light and brake light on again.

Grrr.

On the plus side, my new fan came.  Yay.  I've had one like this before -- it blows lots more air, but it's way quieter than my old one (which was an emergency WalMart purchase when the other one I had like my new one got knocked over) and the dual blades eliminate that annoying dead air syndrome in the center, which, 'cause I've got my bed on risers, was at just the wrong height.

And considering that I'm incapable of forming real sentences...night.

I Am Evil

(But before that -- it's only $20 a month more to have an iPhone data plan.  Grr.  It's getting really hard not to want to buy one.)

Anyhow, yeah...evil.

By the way, I deliberately wrote this in a sort of funny tone (to convince myself it was funny, I think), but it's not exaggerated.

At all.

Well, okay, my head didn't actually explode....

I have always been very leery of prompt dependence.  After all, when you've seen a kid who'd been programmed right into not eating unless you tapped her elbow before every bite, that kinda thing becomes important to you.

(And, the fact that her aide saw nothing wrong with that? Frightening.)

Anyhow, I have a student.  We'll call him R.

R. has been known to dither around all morning with his journal (I kid you not -- he might leave it for a novel study, but he's always asked to go back to it) because he doesn't know how to spell a certain word.

"Just try," I'll say.  "Do the best you can.  Try to sound it out."

Because (1) he can, and (2) I don't want him just sitting around passively waiting for help, and (3) he's notorious for asking for help he does not need.

Much time later, my molars have been ground into dust, and I'm left begging, "Just write something.  Anything, as long as it's a letter."

Then, the others stop to get their snacks, and I say, "You need to finish your journal before you can have your snack."

Twenty second later, an attempt has been made.  Often, it's a fairly good attempt.  Sometimes, it's perfect.

But he would rather sit and wait you out for hours because he's convinced that sooner or later you'll feel bad for poor wittle R. and do it for him.

We had an issue like that today.  R. was doing a math page.  A simple math page.  He can add (and regroup), subtract, count by 10s and 5s (which means he can multiply the Touch Math way).

He had to do a simple word problem; the end result of which was 9 - 6.

I had written the math problem for him; all he had to do was DO it.

He'd done two other subtraction problems on that page already.

Well...after repeatedly reading the question (which I finally covered up because, hello, the problem is THERE, you don't have to read it again), and then writing 96 three times, I say to him, "R., you have already done a take away problem on this page.  I know you can subtract, so you need to do this problem yourself."

"Okay," he says.

"Yeah, right," I think.

So, the morning goes on.  We have recess.  The darned journal is still there.

I finally cave (bad me) and say, "If you don't know any other way to do this problem, go get the counters and do that."

It's now 10 minutes before the end of the school day.

He takes out 2.

(I about have a stroke.)

"Your problem is 9 take away 6.  How many do you start with?"

"Nine."

...

...

...

(I count to ten in about 5 languages.)

"What do you need to do?"

"Get 9."

...

...

...

(The other R. tries to lick my arm.)

(My head explodes.)

"So get 9."

"Oooooh," he says, like it's a revelation from God.

(At this point, for some reason, I heard Dory from Finding Nemo:  "Just keep swimming, just keep swimming.)

"Now how many do you take away?"

"Um, nine?"

"R."  I say.  "The problem is NINE minus SIX.  You have NINE.  How many do you need to take away?"

"Six?"

...

...

...

(The other R., who is now done writing his apology letter to his mom, tries to steal R.'s journal.)

(I contemplate alcoholic beverages.  "Just keep swimming, just keep swimming.")

"How many are you taking away?"

"Six."

...

...

...

(At this point, I am praying for a nuclear apocalypse.)

"So take them away."

"Ooooooh."

...

...

...

R's mom, who will no doubt be yelling at me approximately fourteen hours from now, walks in.  Despite the fact that school's not over yet, and our door was closed.

"Miss ____, my mom's here!"

"Finish that first, please."

"Fowwy, ______" the other R. says.

"Go put your letter to mom in your backpack," I say.

R. tries to solicit mom's help.

I drive a nail into my own coffin by saying, "R., you know how to do this.  You just told me what to do.  You need to do it on your own."

The other R. tries to go hide in the bathroom.

I follow him.  R's mom doesn't have to hear the other R. shrieking, giggling, "Pee pee!  Pee pee!  Pee pee!"

I turn back.

R's mom has told him how to finish the math problem, and has helped him do it.

(Molars?  What molars?  Who needs molars?)

R's mom chooses then to wait outside.

I add another final nail to my coffin, and go over to R.

"R," I said, "Did I ask you to do that problem on your own?"

"Yes."

"Did you?"

"Yes."

"But your mom helped you.  That's not doing it on your own."

"Oh."

"Did you follow my directions?"

"Yes."

"No, you did not.  I asked you to work on your own.  You asked mom for help.  You need to apologize for not following directions."

"Sorry, Miss _____."

Maybe I'll call in sick tomorrow.

Or go to the dentist.

Or, you know, wear a cape and carry a pitchfork.

Sigh.

My Neutrinos Are Spinning the Wrong Way

Once upon a time, my friend Caryn and I were very amused by the fact that a Deep Space Nine episode determined that people were having bad luck because the neutrinos were spinning the wrong way.

For months, we jokingly used that to refer to Murphy's Law.

And, yes, we were nerds.  At least, I was.

Anyhow, my neutrinos are spinning the wrong way this evening.  I really want to charge and update my shuffle, which has become my podcast repository (while my full iPod is my music and videos repository).  I found two full iPod cables, but not the little special one the shuffle uses to sync.

Le sigh.

(Ooh!  A new Order of the Phoenix preview...that I'm pretty sure showed the Department of Mysteries and the veil.  Neat.)

The One Where SpooWriter is a Nerd

Grr.

I know that's how you say it...but there is no such thing as "could of," "would of," or "should of."

It's "could have" (or could've), "should have" (should've), or "would have" (would've).

Pick it apart. Take the "could," "would," or "should" out.

Do you way, "I of eaten my sandwich?"

Of course not. You can say, "I have eaten my sandwich."

Therefore, you must say, "I could have eaten my sandwich, except that I had to answer the phone." You must say, "I should have eaten my breakfast; now I'm hungry." You must say, "I would have eaten my sandwich, but the chocolate cake looked better."

Sigh.

Oh, and for the record, it's means "it is." Only and forever. If you write, "The cat chased it's tail," you really wrote "The cat chased it is tail." Its is possessive. There is no such thing as its'.

100 Words

From American Heritage:  100 Words Every High School Graduate Should Know.

Apparently, these folks have never seen the vocabulary exercise in each and every Reader's Digest (what? lines at WalMart are long, and I have to read something).  The vocabulary in those is much less challenging.

For the record, here is the list.  Words I know off the top of my head are bolded.  If I'm pretty sure but not 100% sure, the word is italicized.

Edit: the bold was hard to see; it's yellow now too.

• abjure
• abrogate
• abstemious
• acumen
• antebellum
• auspicious
• belie
• bellicose
• bowdlerize
• chicanery
• chromosome
• churlish
• circumlocution
• circumnavigate
• deciduous
• deleterious
• diffident
• enervate
• enfranchise
• epiphany
• equinox
• euro
• evanescent
• expurgate
• facetious
• fatuous
• feckless
• fiduciary
• filibuster
• gamete
• gauche
• gerrymander
• hegemony
• hemoglobin
• homogeneous
• hubris
• hypotenuse
• impeach
• incognito
• incontrovertible
• inculcate
• infrastructure
• interpolate
• irony
• jejune
• kinetic
• kowtow
• laissez faire
• lexicon
• loquacious
• lugubrious
• metamorphosis
• mitosis
• moiety
• nanotechnology
• nihilism
• nomenclature
• nonsectarian
• notarize
• obsequious
• oligarchy
• omnipotent
• orthography
• oxidize
• parabola
• paradigm
• parameter
• pecuniary
• photosynthesis
• plagiarize
• plasma
• polymer
• precipitous
• quasar
• quotidian
• recapitulate
• reciprocal
• reparation
• respiration
• sanguine
• soliloquy
• subjugate
• suffragist
• supercilious
• tautology
• taxonomy
• tectonic
• tempestuous
• thermodynamics
• totalitarian
• unctuous
• usurp
• vacuous
• vehement
• vortex
• winnow
• wrought
• xenophobe
• yeoman
• ziggurat

Huh.  Better than I thought I'd do...but my vocabulary has always been pretty good.

I want to know, though, why "recapitulate" is on there and "capitulate" isn't -- if you know what "capitulate" means, you should know that to recapitulate means to give up again.  (Or, to "go over" something again -- restate it.  Suppose that's why it's on the list...it's counterintuitive.)

Just sayin'.

On a totally (and I do mean totally) unrelated note, I've had the song "Blame Canada" from the South Park movie stuck in my head for about a week.  A straight jacket may be necessary before long.