Career Change

I was lead into the classroom by another man, another teacher.  He informed me that I was lucky to be assigned to one of the three new classrooms.  They were more sound proof and had windows.  My first class of the day was a pre-algebra class.

As the students rolled in the female principal also came into the room.  The bell rang to start the class and my mentor and the principal stared at me.  Waiting.  What was I supposed to do?  I was just student teaching.  Right?

The principal raised her hand and I asked her what she was looking for.  She told me to start the lesson.  What lesson, I'm wondering.  She wants me to do comparative equations or something.  I asked if we could speak in the hallway.

We stepped into the hallway and I tell her that there's clearly a  misunderstanding.  I wasn't prepared to give the lesson on my own.  She told me that I had to do it.  There was no other teach.  I'm trying to figure out what comparative equations are?  Fine, I finally tell her, I'll do it but I have to put it together on the fly since I didn't prepare a lesson plan.

Back in the room I sit down at the desk with a room full of students in front of me and a mentor teacher and the principal staring down my neck behind.  I put together three AND / OR equations for the kids to work on.

I specifically recall one was, "(7 * 7 = 47) OR (2X = X + X)".

While creating them I'm feeling the pressure.  One of the students, a larger boy, walked to the front of the room, leaned into my face and said something to me.  I sternly sent him back to his desk where he went contritely.

Equations ready I get up to right them on the blackboard.  Back to the students I picked up a piece of chalk and commented that I hoped my hand writing with chalk was legible.  That elicited a round of laughter as the green board in front of me was actually a "white board" that used dry erase markers.  I picked up one of the markers to begin writing the equations.

I realized I had another problem.  There were all kinds of obstacles around the desk and hanging on the white board.  If I wrote the equations on the right side of the board the left half of the classroom wouldn't be able to see them.  On the left side the other half of the students wouldn't be able to see them.  Well, I stuck to the right side of the board.  I then discovered that all the markers are damaged and nearly dry.  It wasn't possible to write anything legible with them.

After trying to get just one equation the board the principal asked me to follow her into the hallway.  Out there she asks me for the keys to the school and tells me it obviously wasn't going to work out.  I agreed.  As it was the second day of school and the kids were still without a teacher she said it was the second day they would be falling behind.  My parting comment walking out was, "They'll be happy.  Dumb, but happy."

In the parking lot I found it was raining and started walking to my car.  I found I wasn't really upset about being fired.  I pulled out and started texting the Calc Teacher with the message, "That was a short lived experiment.  Fired after the first period."

Before I could hit send I woke up from the dream.

Making Their Way The Only Way They Know How

The fact that the 01 is duct tape makes this extra awesome.
Originally uploaded by Fazoom
I found a link to this in Balloon Juice comments. Quite awesome.

Train Wreck

L.A. columnist sparks up in the name of science and public safety.  The results were predictable.

Meanwhile, in Georgia

Best headline of the week! I wonder if this will go down as a domestic dispute?

Today's Word Problem

A volleyball player stops at a fast food restaurant in Downers Grove to grab a bite to eat before his Thursday night game. The price of his meal totals $9.11. He checks the money in his pocket and doesn't have enough change but has a spare penny. He hands the cashier $20.01. The cashier fat fingers the tender amount and enters $10.01. The automated change machine returns $0.90 and the cashier immediately realizes she has made a mistake entering the amount tendered.

How many teenage cashiers does it take to realize another $10.00 in change is owed? Show your work.

A Worm Hole To A Different Time And Place

Sad news: my team lead and friend's father passed away this past weekend. It's been expected but is no less sad. The wake is today in Merrillville, IN. Many of us are leaving straight from work to go to the wake. We're a business casual office but today huge numbers of people are wearing white shirts and ties. It looks like a classic IBM office.

Escaped From A Black Hole

Saturday afternoon I got back from errands and I found a folded sheet of paper on the floor with this recipe:

Pasta Salad
1 lb tricolor corkscrew pasta
1 can black olives
1 can hearts of palm
1 can artichoke hearts
1 large red onion
1 ea. red pepper, orange pepper, yellow pepper
Jan's Yummy Dressing

Jan's Yummy Dressing
2/3 cup olive oil
1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 - 2 tbsp dijon mustard
fresh basil
dried oregano and basil
1 tsp salt
pepper
4 - 5 cloves of garlic

It is a recipe I know well. Every time I've made it and taken it to a party it is a hit. I've distributed the recipe numerous times. The first time my sister-in-law made it she had never used fresh garlic before and didn't know the difference between cloves and bulbs. She gave up after two. To say that the house stunk of garlic would be an understatement. The pasta actually burned the mouth a little bit and every last bit was eaten.

What is interesting here is the paper with the recipe on it. I didn't make up this recipe. It was given to me by an ex-girlfriend, The Drummer, back about 2002. The piece of paper I found was in her hand writing. It was the original copy given to me.

It's been 7+ years since we broke up. I've moved four times since then. Until Saturday I had no clue I still had this sheet of paper. For the life of me I don't know where it was, where it came from, or how it ended up on the hallway floor.

(Jan was The Drummer's roommate and band mate. Last I knew, maybe 18 months ago, they were still living together in a new apartment and playing together.)

Kids These Days.

Back in my day we walked to school.

There were no cell phones. When we went outside we were out of touch. The way it should be.

We didn't have no Tweeter, or Face Space, or My Book.

And when our teams won championships (the Bulls) we flipped police cars on Division Street. These days they can barely be bothered to over turn a garbage can on Southport.


The didn't even get it into the street. Amateurs.

Today's Stat

5

Is the number of sticks of deodorant I have is current use.

There's one in the medicine cabinet, one in my backpack/gym bag, one in my softball bag, one in the duffel bag I use for volleyball and bike commuting to work, and one on my bedroom dresser. I wondered aloud to my brother last night if I was weird in having that many. He counted up five or six of his own plus body sprays with each.

It's a 2 Man Crusade to Keep Mennen in Business

Oooh Look, Donald Duck

Sometimes it is a wonder our species survived.

That's The Chicago Way

Good work.

You Thought The First One Was Bad

A fifteen year old in the 'burbs called 911 to report his parents taking away his Xbox. The police showed up at his parents house after the call.

I can't even fathom what my parents would have done if I had pulled that kind of stunt. I guarantee that the temporary loss of a game would have been the least of my worries at that point.

Who'd of Thunk?

How people use social networking sites?

Why the popularity of photos? Piskorski hypothesizes that people who post pictures of themselves can show they are having fun and are popular without having to boast.

. . .

Piskorski has also found deep gender differences in the use of sites. The biggest usage categories are men looking at women they don't know, followed by men looking at women they do know. Women look at other women they know. Overall, women receive two-thirds of all page views.

"This was a very big surprise: A lot of guys in relationships are looking at women they don't know," says Piskorski. "It's an easy way to see if anyone might be a better match." Again, online networks act as cover.

Men's voyeurism surprised a Harvard researcher? Talk about Ivory Tower cluelessness.

Too Many Depressing Posts

Let's have some Viking Kittehs

Best Work Email Topic Ever

"Manlove connectivity down"


UPDATE 3:09
An important up date email: "RESOLVED: Manlove connectivity down"

Making Diamonds

I had forgot about this company until hearing the story on NPR this morning.

A Chicago-area company that converted strands of Ludwig van Beethoven's hair into diamonds will soon use the same process on the hair of another music icon -- Michael Jackson.

A lock of Jackson's hair that was charred during the infamous filming of a 1984 Pepsi commercial could produce up to 10 half-carat diamonds, said Greg Herro, CEO of LifeGem.

They market their services to people to have their deceased loved ones' remains converted into diamonds. The idea of having a diamond made of grandma's remains has always seemed creepy to me.

Saving Trees

Obama's Interior Secretary Ken Salazar put a stop to a Bush admin whopper...er WOPR.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Thursday withdrew the Bureau of Land Management’s Western Oregon Plan Revision, which would have tripled the allowable timber harvest on 2.2 million acres of Western Oregon forests. Salazar called the management plan legally indefensible because it failed to follow federal environmental rules.

I know this hurts an area of the country already hurting but I really believe we have to change our habits and reduce our use of natural resources. To further that goal - and not to be out done by Obama - my coworker Linda has announced her own plan to save trees.

She's retiring.

This woman has driving me nuts since I met her a decade ago. She prints every email she receives. Every. Single. One. I understand that she was actually told she had to stop dumping her Inbox to the printer. It may have slowed her down but I still see her at the printer every day with printed emails in hand.

Spotted owls can thank Linda right along with Ken.

Today's Wiki Featured Article

You may laugh or be offended as is your want.

The Apex Of A Career

The Weirdness tag has never been so apropos.

This Morning's Freaky Email

This is the first email I received this morning at work. All identifying information redacted and genericized.

SUBJECT: Update on

temporarily lost his/her vision this morning. We called an ambulance and they are taking him/her to . I talked to the ambulance driver after they examined him/her and she said he/she was OK now. This is obviously a scary incident for Him/her and his/her . Keep him/her in your prayers.

I will keep you up to date as I find out more information.

I can't imagine losing my eyesight, especially all of a sudden and out of nowhere.