otoh

Life is very nice, but it lacks form. It’s the aim of art to give it some. ~ Jean AnouilhNot all that wander are lost.

I’ve always wanted to be somebody, but I see now I should have been more specific. ~ Lily Tomlin/Jane Wagner

Remember we’re all in this alone. ~ Lily Tomlin/Jane Wagner

For fast acting relief, try slowing down. ~ Lily Tomlin/Jane Wagner”

The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat. ~ Lily Tomlin/Jane Wagner

No matter how cynical you become, it’s never enough to keep up. ~ Lily Tomlin/Jane Wagner

The best mind-altering drug is truth. ~ Lily Tomlin/Jane Wagner

If the formula for water is H2O, is the formula for an ice cube H2O squared? ~ Lily Tomlin/Jane Wagner

Reality is nothing but a collective hunch. ~ Lily Tomlin/Jane Wagner

Reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it. ~ Lily Tomlin/Jane Wagner

There are two kinds of people in the world… those who divide the world into two groups and those who don’t.

There are only 10 kinds of people in the world… those who know binary, and those who don’t.

There are two kinds of people in this world : those who believe there are two kinds of people in this world and those who are smart enough to know better. ~ Tom Robbins

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other. ~ Eric Hoffer

The difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she is treated. ~ Eliza Doolittle (My Fair Lady)

[T]hey knew all lovers are equal in the dark, that light defines beauty the way longing defines desire…. ~ Michael Blumenthal

There is a simple solution to every complex problem, and it is usually wrong and makes the problem worse. ~ H.L. Mencken

Wisdom begins in wonder. ~ Socrates

I usually just add quotes to this list as I run across them so it’s very random. Sometimes though, I actively seek related quotes and add them en masse. I don’t remember what inspired me to look up all the Lily Tomlin quotes. I suppose I was Searching for Signs of Intelligent Life….

The previous parts of this series are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. (If you’re keeping track, there are 238 quotes in rotation now.)

Technorati tags: blog~personal~otoh~Or You Could Just Keep Pressing F5 - part ten

In southern Germany, the owner of a 27,000 square foot forest of fir trees went to check on his property. He was shocked to find that thieves had cut down all the trees and taken them away.

The entire forest. Gone. This is not a huge forest (at least, not by American standards) — about half the size of a football field. But still, what’s the world coming to when you can’t see the forest for the thieves?

Technorati tags: Can’t See the Forest~blog~personal~otoh

I had a suspicion this was imminent — it’s what reminded me of the site-blocking debacle I wrote about last week….

Academia is schizophrenic. One of our technology goals is “Students use telecommunications to collaborate, publish, and interact with peers, experts, and other audiences.” At the same time we block access through school computers to tools such as blogs, forums, and other online communities that would help achieve that goal. [Ya gotta love the system!] Blocking such sites is, of course, for the good of the children.

I don’t use MySpace, but I know it has been blocked for some time. [Its demonic properties have been well-documented in the media, after all....] If I were to look at this blog at work [not that I would do that from work, but if I did], it would not include the blog roll because content from Blogrolling.com is blocked. Haloscan has been blocked for a couple months now. A couple weeks ago I noticed that the Help files on Blogger are blocked. And as of last Wednesday all of Blogger.com is blocked. [Don't look for logic in the order in which content gets blocked.]

It won’t affect this blog [although I admit I would sometimes publish moderated comments while at work], because I do this from home. But I have also used Blogger for the last couple years for daily summaries of the assignments in my classes. [There was a time (years ago, of course) when I tried writing and archiving summaries manually. What a logistics nightmare that was....] But our beloved technocrats have done a complete 180 — from not providing any server space or tools to requiring that all class content be housed on their servers and using a short list of approved tools. They, of course, reserve the right (with no method to appeal) to immediately remove content that does not meet stringent guidelines and to revoke access privileges.

To their credit, they do now provide web space, a blogging tool, and a podcasting tool. They offer training for teachers that have never created websites, blogs or podcasts. And they finally have an online version of a class that experienced users can take to get approval to access those tools. [For months they referred us to a site to sign up for classes that were not currently being offered. Ya gotta love the system....]

I don’t know yet how easy it will be to migrate content from my current class site over to the approved site. I suspect that I will have to abandon the archives and start anew for the class summaries. Ditto for a forum I’ve been hosting for teacher inservice. My wiki experiment will probably wither away. I’ve already paid for the hosting of my class site through this school year though, so I won’t abandon it immediately [assuming that site doesn't get blocked] and that gives me time to make the transition and duplicate content [dammit] if necessary. This is progress, right?

Technorati tags: Prescience?~blog~personal~otoh~sydca

Let me tell you about the time my website was labeled “pornography”. [And it was not last month when I got all crude and rude on a couple posts. In fact, it predates my blog by a few years.]

The school district where I work has only been hosting websites for teachers for about a year or two. Those of us that were ahead of that curve were on our own. So for a while I used some of the space provided for personal pages by my ISP to post information for my classes. I registered a domain name and had the URL forward to my pages.

That worked well… until one day the filtering software the district used blocked access to my site. It was classified as pornography. Hmm. Well, I was angered a little and amused a lot. But URL forwarding was a trick often used by pornographic sites so you could have a link for PureAsTheDrivenSnow.com that actually links to RaunchyDebauchery.com. And since it wasn’t really practical for them to, you know, actually have a person look at every website that passes through our servers, the filtering software just blocked every site that was forwarded. And labeled it pornography.

[I just made up those domain names and figured I better check whether there are websites attached to them. As of this writing PureAsTheDrivenSnow.com is registered but being offered for sale and RaunchyDebauchery.com is not yet registered. So if you're looking for the Christmas gift for the person that seems to have everything....]

I copied the section of the agreement with my ISP that expressly prohibits posting obscene material and emailed our district network administrator. The reply shocked me more than having my students see the big stop sign when they tried to get to my site. It was district policy not to unblock sites owned by teachers. I think they adopted the policy because a lot of people were using services like Geocities [remember Geocities?] that were full of banner ads over which you had very little control. But I wasn’t using Geocities for my class pages and I had no ads (or pornography) anywhere on my site. And shouldn’t we expect a site owned by a teacher to be among the most relevant of the sites we want our students to access?

Fortuitously, I also emailed the publisher of the software the district was using and they unblocked my site. The argument with district policy was moot for me then and it was a battle I was not inclined to fight just on principle. Eventually web hosting prices dropped low enough that I was willing to have a site devoted just to my classes so I don’t have to forward the URL any more. And thus ended My Extremely Brief, Unintentional and Unprofitable Ownership of a Pornographic Website.

Technorati tags: My Extremely Brief, Unintentional and Unprofitable Ownership of a Pornographic Website~blog~personal~otoh

At a faculty meeting last week our principal referred to an important point in the agenda as the “money shot”. OMG, I nearly laughed out loud. I’m pretty sure she intended to use a different superlative, but just in case my frame of reference was unnecessarily vulgar I looked it up. And as I thought, it’s roots are in the film industry and is most often associated with pornographic films. So maybe she’s naive in such matters. Am I ever going to ask her? Hell NO! But it made for an interesting… um, climax to the meeting….

On a [very slightly, tangentially] related matter, if you ever read about a teacher referring to a cum folder you should know that it is pronounced KYOOM folder. It’s the cumulative record for a student. That’s just somethng I think you all should know.

BTW, I have not taken the plunge into Beta Blogger yet. Maybe during the long holiday weekend coming up — Oh, hell, you know what I mean…. [smirk]

Technorati tags: Say What?~blog~personal~otoh~sydca

W is a former coworker that I was infatuated with. I’ve pretty much kept my personal and professional lives separate ever since the Dragon Lady. I know people that got involved with coworkers and it worked out fine, leading to long marriages. More often, though, it blows up like it did with DL and me. So for me, not getting involved with coworkers is a rule. (I’ve bent it a couple times, but not broken it.) With W, I was really tempted. Fortunately, before I made too big a fool of myself I realized there were some really good reasons that it never would have worked out.

X₁ is in a bad marriage. We have a history that predates that and I got way too involved. That was stupid and churlish of me. X₂ is a former coworker that I saw socially after we no longer worked together. She decided after she left the area that we had some potential. That pretty much confirmed for me that we probably didn’t.

Y is someone an acquaintence was sure I had to meet. She kept after me for months. “You don’t know what you’re missing,” she implored. Finally, I caved. Why, oh why, didn’t I stand my ground? Why, oh why, did she think that was a good match?

Zee just needs to accept that I’m not interested and move on. That’s all I can safely say about that right now.

In the book Math Curse[Get the Book], when Mrs. Fibonacci tells her class, “You know, you can think of almost everything as a math problem,” the Math Curse begins….

I = 1 AND I + W + X₁ + X₂ + Y + Z = 1

If I’m going to hell in a handbasket at 100 mph and my social life is circling the drain at 27 rpm, how many dates (blind or otherwise) do I have to refuse before people believe me when I say, “NO.”? I am damaged, I know. Fixing me up does not fix me. Curses….

Technorati tags: W, X, Y, and Zee~blog~personal~otoh

Heather Anne has confession on Mondays. And in the (holiday) spirit of her confession today, here is mine:

I hate the movie A Christmas Story. I’ll sit through it when I’m with friends because some of my friends (for reasons that are completely unfathomable to me) think it is the BESTEST, FUNNIEST CHRISTMAS MOVIE EVER!!!

And the movie Home Alone (and all its sequels) SUCKS. The closest I’ve come to liking anything with Macaulay Culkin in it was My Girl. Um, he died in that, didn’t he?

Go ahead, let the hating begin….

Technorati tags: Monday Confession: Holiday Movies~blog~personal~otoh~sydca

The word “plumbing” is derived from the Latin word for lead, plumbum, because pipes used to be made of lead. We don’t use lead pipes any more. Lead would get into the water and cause lead poisoning.

Lead poisoning can damage every organ in the body and the brain and central nervous system. However, just because we don’t use lead in pipes any more, doesn’t mean that having to work on plumbing problems is any less maddening.

Anyone want to guess what I spent my whole freaking afternoon and evening dealing with? A broken pipe in my front yard. Ugh!

Technorati tags: Plumb Tuckered Out~blog~personal~otoh~sydca

Sometimes I hear music. Sometimes I hear voices. Sometimes I just hear noise.

We turn down the radio in the car when we are looking for an address or a particular street. Apparently loud noise impairs our vision. I’ve worn corrective lenses since I was 10 years old. I’m not sure I can blame the noise in my head for that, unless I ever have a moment of quiet and my sight improves. Not likely.

Sometimes I think the noise in my head is loud enough that people standing near me must hear it too. Just squint and walk away.

Conversely, pictures in my head impair my hearing. I love song lyrics, but I often cannot remember all the lyrics to my favorite songs. When I hear them, one particular phrase will put an image in my head and I don’t hear another word until I’m done looking at it.

My intuition is very vocal. I usually regret it when I choose to defy what it tells me. You might think that I would be more likely to do what it says then. Yeah, that seems logical, responsible even.

As I write this, there is an episode of Twilight Zone on. It stars Buster Keaton and the first ten minutes are done like a silent movie — piano soundtrack and slides with dialog printed on them. And he’s complaining about all the noise around him. Hmm. Now that’s freaky.

I have a button that says, “Welcome to the Twilight Zone. I’m your usher.” I think I should go put it on. But I’m not wearing a shirt and that would really hurt. May I show you to your seat?

Rarely do I feel in step with the metronome that drives the universe. (Living and Dying in 3/4 Time?) But I hear its song.

There is music in the universe. There are noises in my head.

Technorati tags: Noises Off~blog~personal~otoh~sydca

The principal at my school left a couple weeks ago. He had only been here a little over a year. Our new principal likes to be on a first-name basis with the faculty. And during this “getting to know each other” phase I keep thinking, “Hello [school]? It’s me, Margaret.” Because… that’s her first name and… I’m really weird. I’ll never tell her that unless I get to know that she has a really good sense of humor about such things. But I had to tell someone. You lucky devils.

What makes a kid think that we should treat him/her like an adult when they aren’t responsible enough to bring their notebook and a pencil to class every day?

Scenario: You are a parent. [Wait! This is all hypothetical.] Your child maintains a good GPA and works part time. A school administrator calls you. Your child was given a 30 minute detention after school for excessive tardiness. Your child did not serve the detention and now has a two hour detention on Saturday morning. If your child does not serve this detention s/he can be suspended for up to three days. If you then respond by threatening to call a lawyer and by telling the administrator they should be dealing with the low GPA kids and not your child, what do you think your child will learn from this experience? And do I need to tell you what I think you’re teaching them?

Oh, that (”You’re a parent”) reminds me. [Relax, dammit.] A friend of mine once sent an anonymous father’s day card to an ex-boyfriend. Is that funny or just really, really mean?

I am damaged. I know. I’ve got a post or two in draft mode about this. I’m usually pretty careful about what I publish though. Anyway, fixing me up does not fix me. But lately, people want to fix me up. Why, why, why? And that’s all I can say about that for now.

Technorati tags: Oddments and Assortbits~blog~personal~otoh~sydca