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.

yet another test

This is being written from a firefox plugin that adds a blogging tool to the browser. Cool!

RIP, Will Eisner, one year later

Amen.


http://www.comicon.com/thebeat/2006/01/never_forget.html

First day of marking period 2

Today started off...

...well, weirdly.

The first 2 minutes went OK, but when i walked into the kitchen, all hell broke loose from the instant I struck the switchm and the kitchen lightbulb blew out. This was not a big event in itselfm except that I then discovered that I was out of coffee, so I had to grind a new batch, which when I went to the coffeepot ended up in the water part of the pot and not the filter part. AArrrgggHHH!!!! So in the darkness, here I am trying to scoop out the coffee while somehow attempting to salvage the water/coffee operation, with a really bad prognosis. Grinds dropping everywhere, in the dim light of the hallway.

So in a rage, I resolved to fix all the broken lightbulbs then in the house -- in the lobby and now the kitchen -- right there and then. Pulled the last 2 out of the closet, pulled the stepladder over, stepped up to replace the kitchen bulb, reacahing up to untwist the light fixture -- did I mention that I had just taken a shower and was wearing only a towel? I was -- when the towel started dropping off, forcing me to reach down fast to grab that, when ny wife came out of the bedroom, wondering what in hell was going on.

So we finally got all that cleaned up, got the bulbs replaced and actually managed to get a few cups of coffee out of the whole thing, and then Ting and I left the house together and got on the R train, and things seemed back on track again, until i remembered that I couldn't get to work from the R train.

On to Times Square, then, where I got the train to Queens and ended up getting to work from the opposite direction I usually did. Except for this 4-hour window if craziness, the day actually went pretty well in school.

Testing Flock

Now I am testing the posting from Flock, a new browser...

I am testing ecto

This is a test. Ecto is being tested

Do You Know Where You're Going To

So I just found this website which is the answer to something I have been hoping would reappear in NYC sometime soon: Hopstop.com, which will give you travel directions in New York, Boston, and Washington using public transportation. If you live in any of these cities and you, like me, do not generally drive around from place to place, this is very useful. Hell, even if you are only visiting, it could come in handy. I just wanted to pass this on.

Back to School

So I am now officially back in school, barring problems with validating (something involving the all-important concept of tuition. Sigh...)

I got to the Bronx after a particularly trying day - it seemed as if a multitude of deadlines for a multitude of items were all converging down to a time period of about three hours, which forced me to multi-multi-multitask just to get out of the house in time to eat lunch. The only break I caught was when the realty agent failed to get in touch with the person whose home we had been scheduled to see, freeing me up for a crticial half-hour. I scarfed down lunch and made it in time to stroll into the first class about 5 mintues before it was due to begin.
The classes themselves went OK, and that was even without the smoking HOT chick who is in both of them. The feeling of being in school is reassuring and dreadful at the same time - (I mean dreadful in the literal sense of the word, full of dread). A lot of the same feeling I had last year is there once again, and with my knowledge of what was to come - that half-semester at El Puente - I have a hard time not taking the similarity of feeling as a sign that I not bound for a similar experience all over again. I am not sure whether every teacher feels this impending doom that I am feeling, but I would sure love to know for sure.
A sidebar. That chick in class I mentioned above -- name of Tamara, deeply tanned skin, possibly Dominican, wearing a black, midriff-bearing tube top and a white peasant skirt, and did I mention the high-heeled sandals, or that she constantly adjusted her boobs in class, for God's sake? - sorry, got carried away for a moment - promises to provide some serious eye candy...dammit, where were teachers who looked like that when I was in junior high? It's not fair, man....

So this is the last day of school and I am sitting in my (soon to be former) cubicle, posting a quick one before I bounce. We will be holding house in 15 minutes, when we will be handing out report cards, then on an awards ceremony across the street at LaGuardia college. After that, who knows? It has been a hectic year in general, and not only because of the career change: Grandma's death, 2 new babies, meeting Mikey again, all of it, has made this what the Chinese called "interesting times." More to come later.

Sith and Stuff

So it has been a while. Just some updates, then:

Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith - saw this at the Midway at the midnight show. Not bad, though not great. It had definite moments of greatness, but you sort of had to swirl through the rest of the stuff to get to it.
In the plus column:
Coruscant (I love the Coruscant stuff);
The final battle, which was OK;
Lotsa Wookiees;
Finally seeing Darth again.

In the minus column:
The de-badassification of General Grievous, which defeated the purpose of the Clone Wars cartoons, although Lucas probably did that on purpose;
All the love scenes, which were ham-handed and crappy, and of which there has been plenty mentioned already;
Anakin's sudden and seemingly arbitrary switch from good to evil;
The birth scene, which (yet again) violates apparent continuity -- this has happened so often and so consistently that I have given up trying to reconcile events anymore.

Overall a good film, though it could have -- should have -- been great. Keep Lucas off the word processor and in the computer lab, where he seems happiest. Let him generate the ideas by all means, because the fecundity of his imagination is staggering, he really needs to keep away from anything having to do with dialogue.

I dread the train wreck that the fourth Indiana Jones flick threatens to be.


What else?


Work went OK, I got a Satisfactory rating from Aaron, the principal, which means my career is on track. School is finally almost over. Some students failed my classes who I did not think were going to fail, others failed as expected, and some, happily, passed despite expectations.

This has been a time of reflection for me. It has been almost a year since I left Citigroup. I always have a bittersweet memopry of my time there, ending the way it did. I am happy I left on my own terms, though, even if it did mean taking a huge cut in salary.