... or to agonize it into suicide?!?
Don't listen to this if you really, truly intend to keep your hearing. You might think I'm kidding, but I'm serious this time.
This one is for those of you who think it is funny to deafen people around you with evil ringtones.
Some of you techies out there might be wondering what the heck I am teaching in the computer science class. Well, according to the Ontario curriculum, it's supposed to be the continuation of a Java programming class... but unfortunately none of the students have ever had an introductory programming class (and the teacher doesn't remember her own introductory programming class) and some of them don't even know the difference between a programming language and a command line interface. Heck, you'd be hard pressed to ask them if they could find their computers, like today (she left it in the washroom!?).
Anyway, I thought I would make the course easier by making four units, three of which are completely non computer science-y. The first was computer hardware, which the students learned to identify and put together components of computers that I obtained around town from donations. The second unit was learning about (ugh) software types, operating systems, and ethics of computers. Unfortunately, I was not able to get a hard drive that worked well enough to install an operating system, so no Linux conversions this term. (Not that I know much about Linux anyway...)
The third unit is web page coding; I wanted to step up the difficulty of the course by requiring that they code the pages by hand using (more or less) XHTML and CSS standards. They don't like practicing anything for some reason (which is why their homework marks are terrible), so I gave them a class activity today on CSS layout. This is probably the trickiest part of CSS for me because I never, ever, ever get any CSS layout right the first time. Or the fourth time. Or ever.
They are supposed to be creating the style sheet for a given web page (for a "clueless" client - soon to be obvious). For this, I had to make a web page and some images on MSPaint. The students are meant to set up either an internal or external style sheet, edit the markup language to (almost) XHTML standards, and make a more appealing kind of layout. They are not allowed to change the content of the page.
To tell you the truth, I don't know what the crap I was thinking when I was making the page. Behold, the fast and furious times of the mysterious middle-aged playwright/actor!
Follow the navigation links to view the awesomeist pictures of the show.
Thumbnail gallery:
May 18, 2007 - The lead girl has called in sick - she says she probably has bronchitis (maybe her swimsuit is a bit too light for the show; I might have to cut back on the snow machine use). Now Little Tom will have to play dual roles, as our stand-ins are unfortunately unable to come due to their parents' anger that I have been taking them out of school. It's not my fault they were skipping middle school that day I recruited them; I thought they were just college kids "down and out of luck."
May 13, 2007 - Due to insufficient funding from a small audience this weekend, I've had to close the show for the weekday runs. I'm going to wait until the weekends to put on the show, at least until we get more reviews.
May 11, 2007 - The show has started playing at the Old Barn Theater downtown, and we've had rave reviews from the local hot dog stand!
This is the most exciting show presented here since Hair came and went back in '79! Of course, I don't know if any other shows have been on since then.
-Pete, the Weinermobile
May 8, 2007 - LOTS of tickets left! Great seats! Get them while you can!
May 1, 2007 - I've found the GReAT VeNUe! The Old Barn Theater was slated to be demolished this week, but with my savings, I managed to procure it for the show. It'll be our permanent venue, at least until we get more reviews then maybe we can start touring around the country.
April 3, 2007 - We're still looking for a new director to replace the one who decided to quit on us a week into the practice sessions. It seems the previous director wanted to change the script around, since it was "unbelievably stupid" but I wouldn't hear of it! It's perfect the way it is, and I don't care if we have to scour the whole town for another person who will direct this the way the original script intended it to be. On the other hand, we have a great cast! For a PRevIeW of them in costume, click here.
March 30, 2007 - This week was great! Someone just came up to me on the street and asked if I had a something for a person "totally down and out of luck" and I just happened to have the job position of director for my awesomeist musical! We'll be seeing each other within the week.
March 19, 2007 - After a week of searching and chatting online, I found a couple of people online who are interested in my idea. Next stop, the photocopy place!
March 12, 2007 - I have this great idea for a musical production. So last night at 3 a.m. I scribbled this whole script out and it's called "THe GReAT eSCAPe." It'll have everything, including this awesome scooter that I just bought last week. I love that scooter!
I'm a 45 year old guy who decided to change my life around after having spent 20 years in the retail industry, selling flaxseed cakes on the streetside downtown. You might have seen me next to Pete and the Weinermobile. I wrote the script and I star in the next sensational musical production, THe GReAT eSCAPe!
THe GReAT eSCAPe - the next big MUSICAL SENSATION
Flaxseed Cakes - the next big NUTRITIONAL SENSATION
It doesn't feel like a real long holiday weekend coming up, for some reason. In the last two weeks, our school has been tied up with AP examinations for registered students. Unfortunately, not all the schedules for every student is the same depending on what they were registered to write; so for days when there were very few students not in exams, the classes were canceled. So there has been at least one day that I did not teach any classes. Instead, I had to invigilate these 3.5 hour marathons of student BO.
Then there was that day last week when the weather warmed up to above 20 degrees, and the uncontrollable apartment heating was still ON. Jorghnassen and I were melting in the apartment, even with the windows wide open and ceiling fans tornado-ing noisily away into the night. He would check the thermostat often during those sweltering days and proclaim the temperature in approximate terms: "It's around 90 degrees." I'm no imperialist-unit type, so I will assume that means "stupid hot."
Anyway, last week I woke up at 1 pm on a day when I had class that started at 12:45 pm, completely drenched in sweat and realizing no one and nothing had bothered to wake me up. (You'd think the school would call, but by that point no one realized how messy the week's schedules were becoming.) Also, realize that this means I had to have slept through 4 alarms. I stumbled about, blindly through the heat ripples in the air looking for my cell phone that failed to wake me up through three of those alarms. I called the school to tell the secretary that I was not feeling well at all (due to the misery of the apartment heat) thus I would not be going to class, to which she kind of kept a professional phone voice and informed me that it would be taken care of (while she more or less stifled a laugh since I had told her the day before how uncomfortable the apartment was becoming).
That afternoon, we bought a fan. Canadian Tire is getting cheaper with their bonus money. >_<
It's been two weeks and I haven't seen some of these students in class for many days at a time so it doesn't feel like a holiday at all. For what else does a holiday mean to a teacher but some time to take a break from your students? (No, it never means that you don't have any work because any teacher knows that we have pooploads of corrections and preparations to do at any point in time in and out of the year. Part time work my butt.)
This morning's algebra midterm invigilating involved a coin falling from the sky. Or I don't know where. At one point, a student seemed to have picked it up from the ground while doing his exam, and it was left on the table after the exam. I thought, "Wow, this kid doesn't even bat an eye for a CA quarter..." (This is the miser in me.) Anyway, I left it on the invigilator's table (since I am too honest a bum to swipe money from my students, who probably have more sitting in their bank accounts than my pile of leftover student loans). At least it gave the other two invigilators some topic to focus on while mindlessly watching their students this afternoon. "Oh, look, it's the New Brunswick quarter."
Then this article got me thinking: SPY COINS. Oh no, I've got new cheating techniques to brush up on!
