The Corporation

One of the things I like about my TiVo (and miss in the other DVRs) is that it'll record programs that I might like. Many times these programs are things I've already seen, but sometimes, it finds something that I would never have noticed on my own.

Last week sometime, my TiVo recorded a documentary from LinkTV. It was called The Corporation. I finished watching it this morning. And I just had to share. (It has its own website here.)

It's one of those things that makes you think. Of course it's not on again in the near future (I checked). Look out for it. It's worth it.

Black Friday

Every year at this time, I think back to my retail days. The nightmares should start soon.

I mostly worked evenings. So, when the whole Black Friday/doorbuster thing started, I barely noticed. At this time of year, I'd end up working until 3 AM (if I was lucky).

One year, though, I got to be there for the early opening. The crowds were wild. The store was packed. And things were going fine, until the customers went to check out.

The fairly new manager had done all the scheduling for the week. She scheduled all the new cashiers for the doorbuster opening. Disaster followed.

I still have not-so-good associations with this time of year.

Waiting Room

We're out of school for the week. It was very nice of the district to give us this whole week off. I think it was worth it to start the school year before Labor Day.

Today was my day to get some errands taken care of. First on the list was taking my car in for its oil change.

What is it about waiting rooms? Why is the news always on? I guess it's better than morning talk shows, but it seems like every time I'm waiting for my car, I'm watching CNN. Well, I wasn't really watching it. I was working on some more beads.

While I was knitting, I was watching the others waiting with me. Every man in that waiting room had a laptop computer. The guy sitting next to me pulled his out, and I thought he was working on something important. I glanced over...he was on Facebook.

The other women in the room were reading. So, the TV wasn't really needed. Well, at least it wasn't silent in the room. That probably would have been worse.

My car didn't take as long as I had anticipated, so I ended up getting all my errands done much more quickly than I originally thought. Now, here's hoping I didn't forget anything else at the store. I really don't want to brave the grocery store crowds tomorrow.

Chutzpah

Algebra 1. First period. They had a packet on writing equations of lines. Most of them weren't doing it, so I was walking around the room in order to keep a closer eye on them.

I noticed a student writing on his desk. At least he was using a pencil. Unfortunately, he was drawing a gun.

I called him on it. I told him to clean it up.

First, he claimed he didn't do it. Since I witnessed him drawing, that excuse didn't fly. He continued by telling me that he was a designer, and if he cleaned the desk, his design would be gone. I didn't care, said so, and walked away.

Upon my return, I was surprised to find that he had still not cleaned off the graffiti. When I repeated that he needed to clean the desk, he claimed that he had.

The boy's hand was over the spot where the drawing was. I told him to move his hand. He did, keeping the doodle covered. I ended up telling him to move his hand three times before he revealed that the gun was still there.

As this had gone on way too long already, I asked the boy if he really wanted this incident in my note to his teacher. He said that he didn't. He argued a bit more, then finally wiped his markings off the desk.

I did put this in my note. If he had just cleaned the graffiti off the desk when I asked the first time, that would have been the end of it. I shouldn't have to repeatedly ask him to correct something that he shouldn't have done in the first place.

Freshmen! Sigh.

Unexplained Technical Difficulties

Today was Turkey Day at the continuation high school. We sit in class, wait to be called, go eat, and then return to class. Dismissal is at noon. And I get paid for this.

This is the kind of day where no work gets done. (My students had today as a make up day for any work that they had not finished. So, surprisingly, some actually did work.) To pass the time, the administration puts on a movie for all of the classes.

There is a cable connection in each classroom. Since they only do this once a year, that connection is not connected to the TV. But I knew where it was, so I went about getting that set up.

I verified that the cable was connected to the wall. I verified that the cable I was using was the right one. And I tried to connect it to the TV. No luck.

After connecting, disconnecting, and reconnecting that cable, I finally got a picture. It was a little snowy, so I tried to tighten the connection. That's when I lost the picture entirely.

I finagled the thing some more, and I got it to work. Everything went fine for about 15 minutes. Then for no explicable reason, the picture went to snow and the sound went to white noise.

I managed to get it to work again. I went back to my seat. Then after another few minutes, the picture and sound went out just like they had the first time.

I was nowhere near the connections. The students had not gotten out of their seats, and they were nowhere near the TV. I lost the movie for no reason.

Not that it mattered. They weren't watching the movie.

Finally, after doing this three or four times, they called us to eat. After we got back, I didn't bother trying to get the movie back on.

Undressed

7th grade. I was covering a "core" class, meaning that I had the same group of students for two periods. One period was devoted to English, the other to history.

The English period didn't go well. I was late to class (long story), so they were already wound up. Then the assignment was something that wound them up even further. I was so ready for the history period and a video.

I spent a good five minutes talking to the class about appropriate behavior during the video. Mostly it was this advice: "Don't talk." That's when I noticed that a boy in the corner of the room was bare chested.

The boy had removed his shirt.

Suddenly, the whole class was watching him. One girl turned her head and blocked her eyes. She couldn't look. The rest of the class watched as he got his shirt back on, found it was on the wrong way round, and twisted it around his body. That's when the class told him the shirt was on backwards.

I wasn't sure how to react. I think my mouth was hanging open. My face must have said it all. They knew I wasn't amused.

But the thing to do with middle schoolers is to get them on to the next thing (such an incident can ruin the rest of the period if I'm not careful). I had to get the video started. Luckily, I had no more unclothing issues after that.

What is it with 7th grade boys? This is not the first time such a thing has occurred in class. At least this time it wasn't his pants.

Boy Versus Girl

It was an odd day in the 8th grade classroom. I don't usually get 8th graders to work silently. So, while I didn't get full periods of silence, I did get silence for a large portion of the period, and that was enough to impress me.

Fourth period. I was called over because the girl had poked the boy with a pencil, so the boy had taken the pencil from the girl. The girl wanted her pencil back. The boy wanted the girl to stop pestering him.

I used to tell them to just date and get it over with, but since that statement usually gets protestations so loud that the entire class gets disrupted, I told the boy to give the girl her pencil back. While they pestered each other some more that period, they kept it quiet enough so that I didn't notice.

Then at the end of the period, they attracted my attention again. And here is the only reason I'm mentioning them. The boy said this:

"That is a girl-shaped chunk of evil."

Great line. Cutting and snarky. Bonus for it not being vulgar. I give it an A.