Slash Puppies Urinate In the House

Whenever I read Slashdot, my eyes water from the laughter. People post some of the strangest comments. It reminds me of an ole’ professor saying, “Opinions are like the prevalent opening of a human’s southern side; expose it soon after releasing waste and it stinks. “ Actually, she used to say that expression in a more profane manner but I thought it was best to clean it up a bit. You get the point. Simply, /. comments are puppies who miss the paper and urinate on the best furniture and carpet in the home.

Today’s funniest comments center around the Tablet PC/PDA translation linked by /. I wonder whether any of these knuckleheads have even tried a Tablet PC. They are so busy trying to post comments about a blue screen of death with regards to MS Windows that it’s clear they are stuck with a previously old OS opinion and never tried a TPC. None of my machines with Windows XP TPC Edition have ever blue-screened. Never. These idgets need to learn their craft and get newer equipment.

More important, they are enriched with their own egos that they can’t accept the beauty of the TPC form factor. Read these comments and ask yourself how educated individuals can be so lost in denial. Well?

Hilary Duff Chat Alexa Results

Birdie is extremely excited about the Hilary Duff Chat site doing so well on the Alexa rankings. Traffic and new members continues to grow. Click on the image to get a larger view of the results.

Impressive, eh?

Sonofusion

Have you ever thought that nuclear power plants should be replaced with a better technology that is less harmful to our environment and ourselves?

Sonofusion, tapping energy from rapidly expanding and shrinking bubbles, may be the answer to this question. A small startup in Grass Valley California believes they can scale up this technology to match the energy production equivalent to the process that occurs in the sun.

Very cool.

Back to Writing

Monica is back to writing. Peter changed her blog over to .TEXT and she is set to post. It will be great to read the thoughts of another teacher who loves technology, especially the .MAC stuff because I .SUCK at it. Good luck Monica!

NASA Jet Might Have Hit Record 5,000 Mph

NASA has succeeded in setting a new speed record.

"The unpiloted X-43A made an 11-second powered flight, then went through some twists and turns during a six-minute glide before plunging into the Pacific Ocean about 400 miles off the California coast."

Dang - they took off from Edwards - just around the corner !

"The 12-foot-long, 2,800-pound X-43A was mounted on a Pegasus rocket booster and carried to an altitude of 40,000 feet by a modified B-52 bomber, which took off from Edwards Air Force Base in the high desert."

Full Story

Footloose

As I handed my ticket to the woman at the front door, my eyes scanned the crowd growing inside the entrance room. The eager audience was mainly composed of white blue-collar families with only a sprinkle of color. The smell of perfume and cologne intensified the obvious – the audience was middle class and out for the Friday evening. Children, teenagers, young and old mothers, fathers, and proud grandparents were all present.

As I started to look for my place, children pushed passed and ran toward the seating area. Older women slowly made their way, blocking the teenagers who were in a hurry to grab their seats and talk to their friends. I patiently waddled behind them. People would stop in the middle of the walkway and give greetings of hugs. I waited until it was clear to pass.

I finally found my seat, almost exactly where I sat for the previous show. I slid down, riffled through the brochure and looked for my daughters’ names. As I sat and read, the noise level expressed my excitement of an opening night performance of Footloose. My daughters had worked for weeks and tonight was their night.

The lights dimmed and a voice announced that cameras and flash photography were not allowed. The request was also made for cell phones and pagers to be turned off. More light disappeared and the curtain was raised approximately 2 feet showing eight pairs of feet. The music began and the feet danced.

Actors playing Ren, Arial, Shaw, Vi, Willard and others made their characters come alive. The young lady who played Rusty did a fantastic rendition of “Let’s hear it for the boys.” It was impressive. The hard work had paid off.

Two and a half hours later, my youngest daughter grabbed me as I stood in the hall. Her smile asked if I enjoyed the show. Hopefully my returned smile was all she needed to know. Yes. It was a great show. Congratulations.

The Sucking Sound

The shriek broke the silence in the classroom, pinching a nerve in my spine. My shoulders tensed, forcing my head to turn toward the direction in which the sound originated. A woman stood in the doorway and repeated her sounds. The words were not clear but she was upset. After a few more sounds, my brain processed that she was a parent of one of my students.

He gathered his papers and sealed them in his backpack. Slowly walking toward the door, his body expressed his emotions. His shoulders hunched and his head was down. The shuffle of the walk stated his embarrassment loudly. Other students watched with equal embarrassment.

My eyes and head tracked his trail until he could no longer be seen from my seat. I spun in my chair, and saw the pain in the eyes of my students. I immediately scooted up and leaned forward. With as much emphasis as possible I prepared to speak, making one final check in the hallway to make sure my voice would not be overheard.

“I hope (pause) when you have children that you always focus on them and never on yourself.”

There was a short pause until a student said, “That’s deep.”

This broke my heart and so I pulled myself up from the chair and headed to the hallway. Just as I reached the threshold, the emotion forced its way up to my face and started to drip out my red eyes. I didn’t want the team to know that tears were rolling down my cheeks so I hurried to the faculty bathroom. Up one flight of stairs and no one would be the wiser.

Looking in the mirror, I splashed more and more water in hopes of diluting the tears. My heart was racing and the stream continued. The cold spray tightened my skin until the river stopped. A few practice smiles in the mirror reassured me that my false facade would hide the true emotions. I breathed a deep sigh, dried my eyes and hands, and returned to the classroom.

Never, ever embarrass a child in front of his teacher, friends and peers. Never.

Teaching Contract

It is official. I am now a "qualified" teacher. Err. Uhm. Qualified, of course, is a relative term to my sitting through education classes such as "Reading" and "Social Foundations" and the all time favorite "Learning." Geez, these classes made me such a better teacher. Cough.

Anyway, the celebration has been taking place all afternoon because the paperwork has now been turned in and signed. My new contract officially begins tomorrow. The really cool part is that the contract doesn't have an ending date. All of my previous employment contracts ended 6 months after signing them.

Phew. Job safety.

Uh oh - UTLA is talking about a strike. Drats.

C-19 Letter

After a little more than 2 months, the C-19 letter arrived from CAL State LA. This is the piece of paper that states I'm now a "real" teacher and not a fake one. Think of this piece of paper as a dog license. I can now bite and growl.

Just an FYI, I paid $75 to CAL State on January 5 so that there would be an expedite. The form that accompanied the paperwork stated it would be 15 working days. Of course, 2 months is a little shy of the 15 working days promised by paying the $75.

I'd hate to think of the teachers who didn't pay the $75. Yikes, guess they might have to wait years before getting their silly piece of paper.

ChevronTexaco Corp.

"In its 2003 earnings statement, ChevronTexaco Corp. reported that profits doubled from the previous year, driven by the price increases in oil and gas. The company made more in the fourth quarter of 2003 than in all of 2002. Meanwhile, since the beginning of the 2000 election cycle, the company has given more than $3 million in political donations, three-fourths of it to Republicans, according to numbers from the Center for Responsive Politics."

Are you still buying gasoline there? Shame on you.

MSN Messenger 6.2

I found several websites that really caught my funny-bone. I was laughing so hard while reading their forums. I mean - does it matter when MSN Messenger 6.2 is going to be released. Does a list of new features really mean anything to any of us?

Apparently, there is a huge crowd that does care. A google search for "MSN Messenger 6.2" returns results of over 18,000 sites. WOW.

Heck, April 22 sounds like a decent day to me. It's just as good as any. More important, do we really care if the animated images are called Deluxe Display Pictures.

OK. We'll see if anyone is correct on these boards. Time will tell. Meanwhile, thanks for the laughs.

Sedna Signals Something Sour

Sedna is a newly discovered planetoid approximately 2/3 the size of Pluto and which travels around the sun every 10,000 plus years. It sits in the Kuiper Belt.

Sedna's discovery announcement was made on March 14, 2004 (actual discovery on November 14, 2003) has been confirmed by several telescopes around the world.

According to Mke Brown (California Institute of Technology in Pasadena), Sedna resembles objects predicted to lie in the hypothetical Oort Cloud, which is believed to be a zone of early comets that extends around the sun halfway to the nearest star.

And for more information go to http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/

Very cool stuff. In fact, this body may even have it's own moon.

More fascinating is the added discussions to Pluto's planetary status. From a previous article:

Update: Just read this on the NASA Site:

"Brown, along with Drs. Chad Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii and David Rabinowitz of Yale University, New Haven, Conn., found the "planetoid" on November 14, 2003, using the 48-inch Samuel Oschin Telescope at Caltech's Palomar Observatory near San Diego. Within days, the object was observed by telescopes in Chile, Spain, Arizona and Hawaii, and soon after, NASA's new Spitzer Space Telescope looked for it."

MT-Blacklist

The number of spam comments was just too annoying to tolerate any longer. Therefore, MT-Blacklist was installed and this will hopefully decrease the number of spam comments. After all, 120 comments in one day is a bit too much ...

My best Mini Mouse Voice

Yes, this could very well be another boring "I'm sick" post but there is a little twist. I've spent the day either asleep or wanting to sleep. However, the phone rang and it was my youngest daughter. I tried to talk to her as best as possible, hung up the phone, and then burst into laughter.

You see, I don't have much of a voice. The cold has traveled directly to the voice box and when forced to make some sort of noise then my voice is high pitched and very funny.

OK. laughs over. Time for sleep.

Gas Prices - Join the Protest

Gas prices are simply ridiculous. Companies have conditioned all of us to just follow along and pay as the prices increase. Maybe you'll grumble and maybe you'll talk to a neighbor but in the end you will buy the gasoline -- and this is what the gasoline companies count on us doing each time they raise prices.

If we simply organize a don't drive on this day then the companies will wait all of us out. So what do we do? An email I received suggested a great way.

The top two gasoline companies should be targeted. Simply do not purchase gasoline from Mobile and Exxon. Eventually the protest from those two companies will cause them to react to the consumers. They will be forced to lower gasoline prices.

Do you really want to pay $3.00 per gallon? Then don't change what you do each day. Keep buying the gasoline. However, if you want to send a message then pass along this idea. Let's stop these thieves from harming our economy and our pocketbooks.

Enough said.

The Art of Being Weak

Hamilton High School is filled with students pretending to be tough. Students below mental breathing capabilities loudly proclaim themselves as a genius. Students without enough nerve cells to even fire once an hour claim they are the best students. Laughably there are even students who can't put together a coherent sentence orally claim they are 'A' students. Heck, they shout it out.

Humility, being humble, keeping a low profile are all traits that I admire. And yet these traits are void in Hamilton students. In fact, one student approached me and complained that his laziness was due to my poor planning. I tried to make sure my laughter was held back. Instead, I smiled and attempted to diffuse the situation. It wouldn't have been proper to laugh - even though - I dearly wanted to laugh.

On one side of the coin, it amazes me how Hamilton students do not know their place. They are students. They are at the school to learn, to participate, and to get a diploma. The teachers are there to help and not hinder. If the students would simply listen and follow directions then their lives would be fairly easy. Ideally, a student could listen, follow directions, earn the A, and move on with life.

On the opposite side of the coin, students are so filled with their own social agendas that they forget most adults were children once too. However, my childhood seems to have been radically different from their childhood. For example, I could never imagine telling a teacher that I didn't do something because the teacher didn't make me do it. But that is a phrase or tape that seems to be played constantly by Hami kids.

Blah.

In fact, the tape mentioned above plus the students' strong personalities makes it important to appear weak in the classroom. It's a sanity check measure.

Picture this, you are standing in front of a group of kids explaining population dynamics. You show several age structure pyramids. You interpret developing nations diagrams versus industrialized nations diagrams. You ask the kids to turn to the page in the book with other examples.

Now - stop and look. More than 90 percent of the kids will be writing notes to each other and did not hear one word you've just said. The other 10 percent were trying to listen but had not done their homework either and therefore have absolutely no idea what you mean by an age structure diagram.

Of course, all of this is your fault. You are not explaining things correctly.

There are techniques for getting kids engaged - but it really comes down to the kids wanting to be there - and most simply Hamilton students are not interested. Therefore, I try to use gentle persuassion with most of my students. Sometimes that simply doesn't work and it is too exhausting. It's easier to stare a kid in the eyeballs, think bad things, and smile -- looking totally blank, lost, and confused - hoping the kid will just go away.

In the example above, it would be great to scream into a kid's face - put the hate mail away, get out your book, straighten up in the chair, shut your face, open your ears, screw on a new head or at least pull the one you have out of your butt, grow up, and learn to read.

Err. But then again - the poor kid wouldn't understand one word that was said. He'd just think it was funny that the teacher looked mad - oh isn't that cool? I made the teacher angry.

Enter - therefore - the art of being weak.

A good teacher stands, waits, looks deep into the eyes of the kids and smiles. A thoughtful, gentle reminder that they are in biology class and not in jail (yet).

Now, if I could only get used to being quiet when these same students who don't do their homework, don't read the book, don't listen, don't do any work, approach me and complain that I failed them.

But reality does seem to crash down on my justifications. Yeah, maybe I have failed them. They need a teacher who can help them learn that it is okay to not have an answer - it is okay to then take the time to find different possible answers - it is okay to discuss possible answers - and it is okay to just simply have a good time learning.

A mentor of mine praised me for being able to stand and take all the guff from kids. They admired how I could smile and diffuse the tantrums. I remember them commenting once that it takes a strong person to remain quiet while others are running around like chickens with their heads cut off.

Ugh, is that really what a classroom looks like? A bunch of chickens running around - lost - confused - bewildered - bemired - bemused.

Then again - What does all of this post mean? Uhm. I don't have a clue because I wasn't listening. I was asleep. I didn't do my homework. What did you say? Would you please repeat the question.

The Beatles Chat

Yes, the fab four website is now officially launched. The forums are up and sorted and now content is being added to the site.

The Beatles

Now you may wonder why there should be such a site and the answer was clear to me when it was built. Each of the artists has their own site, three having links off the Beatles Official site. However, there is a lack of dicussion sites combining all of the four members of the group. The Beatles Chat is simply an attempt to put the discussions onto one site.

Tux Reports

Several weeks after declaring Tux Reports a failure, the traffic to the site continues. Just over 70,000 visits were done from bookmarks and over 8,000 visits from links from other sites.

Maybe I was a bit hasty to consider Tux Reports a failure. Then again, the site doesn't produce the same euphoric feeling it used to when I first starting building it.

Regardless, I started to update the site a little bit more and have even considered writing a review - err - maybe I'll even consider pubishing it. Maybe not.

Gas Cap

It shouldn't be too unexpected that with the rise of gasoline prices comes theft. Sadly, my truck was one of the first victims. Someone ripped off the gas cap, took gas, and left me starting my commute as I normally do only to look and see the truck needed fuel.

After fueling the truck, I drove to a place to purchase a new gas cap. Yes, this one has a lock and key. It cost a few dollars extra to get the lock but with the price of fuel going crazy then maybe the extra money is worth the pennies.

Ah, the price of fuel continues to climb out of control. I wonder why no one is complaining. What is with all the sheep who believe the price hike is legal, just, and fine with them.

Pooey.

Dogs and Cats

The entry on Omar's blog is about the funniest dog and cat comparison I've ever read. Very funny and oh so true.