Wednesday, February 22, 2006

George, George, George of the (wireless) Jungle....

I know you do this too.

You're on a Manhattan bus with your PSP or PDA or laptop or whatever, and you decide to try surfing the web, just to see if you can. At this point, Manhattan would seem to be a dense cloud of connectivity, but I prefer to liken it to a jungle, which means that as you cross from one zone to another, never losing connectivity for more than a few seconds, you are swinging from vine to wireless vine, neh?

This is a partial list of wireless LANs I encountered while web surfing aboard a Manhattan bus:

dirtydeedsdone
lexbeach
eddie t. head
ANY
homesweethome051226
fatty
stop looking at porn & love me,
Fatty
Usman
go_red_sox
Team Zissou
kingvance
loboworld
merlot
Lipuma
lindseyworks
Peyton
Goldberg
Lisanet
AWNY
Kaplan
burnrate
straats
Weiser Network
Shadow
Doula
28E
LaiWang
gioggle
EVE
aladdin
Tomarigi_G_105
gamgee1
WLCM
gosswireless
Oreo
Dolphin
thebeach2
security_is_paramount
honors_college
Big Steve
Wireless O
Hyperion
Apple Pad
goaway99
lovesupreme
Greg's Computer
Sydney

You can learn a lot about a person from what he or she names their network. I know, I know, a brillliant insight, but hey...I found it interesting...

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Later this same day...

OK. so it is now 10:00 PM. Ting has come home, we have had some (mediocre) sushi, and we are settling in for the night. I am still feeling pretty frustrated, but not as intensely as before. This is just one of those days, that's all. Anybody who teaches will tell you that this comes with the job. So I will go in tomorrow and try to make yet another bit of difference. Seeya later. Peace out till next time.

Oh, lest I forget...

Happy Valentine's Day, everybody. Reach out and hug someone.

A hard day's day

Before I begin, I would like to clarify one thing:

I like teaching. Honestly.

Having said that, though, I can tell you that there are days when I really wonder why I am bothering to do this. I am teaching elementary math concepts like slopes and converting units to teenagers who would just as soon not bother, or even try, and who then declare that they hate math and will never need to know this in the future, so why bother now?

The sad part is, they might be right. For a lot of them, this is a useless tortutre that they will put out of their minds as soon as they are physically and psychically able.

Part of the blame must lie with me, because I am teaching the class and trying to manage the whole thing, around 22-25 students in a class, some of them bored because they already know this stuff, the rest bored because they would rather be anywhere else but here. But how can I pull this into some kind of razzle-dazzle that will capture their attention? Why do I need to do that to upper high school students? They will take the soft treatment and go on to college, and promptly drop out of college when faced with the reality of what a real class demands.

As Nero Wolfe was fond of saying...pfui.

I am in a really tired, bad mood right now, and I am still facing the prospect of a long day in Lehman, and I just want to go home and sleep. I know I will probably feel different tomorrow, but man, sometimes this is a snapshot of exactly how I feel.

Discuss.