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...

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.

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.