My wife’s a teacher. She was a teacher last year, she was a teacher the year before that, and she wasn’t a teacher before because she was still in school.
As it is, you can’t really be a teacher. You can compete for a vacancy in a school. If you get placed, you get to teach at that school for a year.
The kids might like you (as it happened, they did like her), the other teachers may get along with you (as they did), you can help in school activity, get involved, make exhibitions in town with your student’s work, have students that are not your students look forward to being your students the next year. Sad news is… your head is for sale at the end of the year again.
Forget all about it, you were never a teacher at that school, you are now up to face the competition all over again.
So I went with her to take care of that, to fill in lists with school vacancy codes in order of preference, to be in line for hours waiting to deliver all the stamped, filled in a checked papers and hope. Hope that you get placed on one of the vacant spots in a school near you, or even hope it might be the same school as last year.
Thousands of teachers go through this every year, thousannds of kids never get the same teacher two years in a row… and dozens of school remain without teachers for this or that subject. And why?
No, it’s not a local celebration for war veterans, this is the day we stuck Scully and Yellow in a box and took them to the veterenarian clinic.
The vet was disgusted to just look at them… I must admit, they do look terrible and it was all our fault.
It appears the product we had been advised to put on their “bald spots” was actually helping the fungus on their skin develop. Result: they are now massively infected by fungi, which are destroying their fur. Michelle has it too, obviously, but she stayed home because we simply couldn’t manage to carry three cats to the vet.
So now we came home with a daily ear gel (because the ears are also affected), a daily half-a-pill of anti-fungus medication, a daily, quarter of a pill of anti-inflamatory medication, an every other day half-a-pill of skin acidifier medication… and… la piéce de resistence: a bath every four days with a special fungus killer… anyone who lives with cats knows exactly how fun it is to bathe not one, not two but three cats…
In the meanwhile it’s definitely confirmed that my skin affliction came from the cats but, thanks to modern medicine (i.e., over a month of daily pills and creams), it will not make my hair fall. I should, however, refrain from touching little children, animals and all human beings in general, since it’s contagious.
“Housework could be really fun if it was called ‘relaxing on a Hawaiian beach’ and you could wear a swimming suit and were actually in Hawaii, at the beach.”
Today it was cleaning day once again.
I finally changed the furniture around in my office and assembled the new bookcase which we bought last week. Things are looking a little better, since the space is nicer now, more adequate for actually working… although there’s still plenty of mess around, especially on my drawing table (how will I draw, you may ask…).
Well, I decided to take a little bit off to work on the redoing of my diary and, of course, take a stroll through the Open Pages webring and see some more online diaries. The truth is, I don’t like all those worked up diaries, except perhaps this one, but I’m not yet totally convinced I know what I want to do with mine exactly.
There are some online diaries so complicated that you have to go through 235 clicks just to get to the latest entry page.
The way I’ve set up the home page, allows me to change my money level (I wish), the latest CD or movie I went to without having to write an entry if I don’t feel the inspiration for it. However, I can still come in and write an entry and upload it, having only to add a small link to the dropdown menu for people to visit it.
I still haven’t decided what to do on individual diary pages. For example, this one looks exactly like the home page, except there’s no dropdown menu (or else I’d have to update it in every page), and there’s some navigation going on at the bottom of the page, instead of the LinkExchange counter.
There’ll be some people wondering why I don’t use frames. I hate frames, frames are the velour flares of webdesign if you get my meaning.
Well, there’s just still a lot of deciding to do… I suppose I could use my left column for… say… quotes, small stories or song lyrics, and the right columns I should use for… say… uh… I go see a movie and write a review, or I buy a CD and review it… sounds like a good idea.
Here’s what: I’ll add a phrase, a quote or something that fits the mood and feel of the day in question on the left side. Under that should come my levels table, but referring to the specific day, and not (like on the homepage), to my general being. Let’s say I am generally calm but had a stressing day…
I’m running Analog on my company website’s logs; I’m running it with the DNS option set to read, so I’m online resolving host names… how interesting. Since it’s not interesting I’m browsing through other online diaries, journals and the like and realizing there’s one thing I’m missing, the “about me” page (among other things, I know). I used to have one, but it was too “real”. Meaning, it wasn’t anonymous enough for my taste and this diary has become anonymous some time ago.
I found a pattern online diary persona. Usually, both real and made-up online diary people are white females, some young, 19 – 23, producing simple and sometimes naïf entries. They’re usually with some boyfriend or husband whom they like a lot and speak of in very innocent terms. Then there are the older ones, usually in their thirties, they’re strong independent women, married or with boyfriends of whom they don’t much like to talk. Almost everyone that writes an online diary has pets, mostly cats, although there are plenty of dogs. The majority thinks that they have writing skills, that writing an online diary fits in the category of literature or some way of creative writing. I haven’t found anyone yet (yet…), that’s not American, English or Australian.
What about little atypical me? Am I so different from what I have found? No, of course not… I also have cats!
I’m a 26 year-old white male from Europe. I’m married and work for myself, on my own company, as a web designer, illustrator, cartoonist, general manager, master of numbers, supreme lord of monkeys, ruler of the red eye people and tyrant dictator of answering machines.
I work from home, we all do, and use the internet, phones, cell phones, faxes, running couriers, pigeons and telepathy to stay in touch with my colleagues. I’m still trying to figure out if this stuff is worth making into an “about me” page…
Usually there’s a “likes” page… meaning that if you know what I like or enjoy you might learn more about me… fair enough, I like Star Wars, Mike Oldfield, comic books, Jungle Music, football (not that incredibly much, but still), movies (I rate star wars outside of ‘movies’), The X-Files, Gillian Anderson (I rate Gillian Anderson outside the X-files :) ), cats more than some people, few people more than my cats, working out, annoying my friends with silly one-liners to the limits of their patience, guitars, my house, computers.
I really like to eat: shanghai-style fried shrimp, lasagna, Häagen Dazs ice cream (almost any flavour that has chunks in it), cheese and ham toasts with fried eggs, eggs in general, shellfish, spaghetti, nice fresh salads, spicy potato chips, pea stew (yup, mainly made out of peas), Smints (the blue ones) and steaks (although I am considering vegetarianism, especially after trying out some veggie burgers last week).
I drink truckloads of: coffee, milk-caramelized sugar-coffee combination, Coca-Cola, orange fanta. I also drink (albeit less than truckloads): Vodka, whiskey, beer (only recently, I used to hate the stuff).
I really hate: very fat people, soft handshakes, fish, techno, someone trying to bullshit me, bullshit in general, stupid people, unprofessional people, politics, governments, spanish people, the fact that I’m messy and disorganized, long repetitive loud annoying noises (I lived by a ship yard for years), heat, bad oral hygiene (especially from my clients), fashion, the fact that people live through famous people’s lives, not having a stupendous amount of money to spend, a lot more stuff than I like.
Hum… maybe I will make that “about me” page… it’s also time I actually put some effort into redesigning this site. Not that there’s much wrong with it, it works, it’s user friendly and readable, which is more than I can say for many other online diaries out there… but hey… I AM a designer, should try harder… and try harder I will.. hmmm, yes… see through you I can!
Ah September! It has arrived. It means many things… it is the month the Summer ends and the Fall begins, heat gives way to breezy days, some rain, cold nights that make you feel lucky you have that nice blanket by the foot of the bed.
It is also the month in which I go back to the gym, recovering from a whole month without lifting a single weight more than once. It’s the month of my wife’s birthday (present already ordered, yes), it’s a nice month, isn’t it?
I’ve worked on cartoons all day, completing six full toons and coming up with a bunch of others, this is all for our top-secret, super-hush-hush 100 cartoon project. We have 48 down, 52 to go.
In the meantime, the three cats, Yellow, Michelle and Scully are all ill with some skin disease that makes their hair fall. And yes, it’s passed on to me. I am now the proud owner of a complicated skin condition which has already produced a small red circle on my forehead. Thankfully I’m on drugs already, hoping it’ll not be as hard to cure as everyone’s telling me (but knowing it is…)
I had a little evening with the family last night. My aunt brought me an Asterix helmet, which I wear all the time now. The wings on it can be moved to reflect my mood, which is very useful to warn others of my mood swings.
Anyway, the main subject of today’s ranting is my ISP. Or all of them. ISPs are like banks: they all offer an unnecessary service, for a high cost and low quality.
Unnecessary because we should all be able to connect directly to the internet, we should all be able to use UNIX as a second nature and we should all be our own sys admins. However, that wonderland doesn’t exist and so we’re given ISPs.
ISPs are considered telecommunications operators, and as such, they generate phone calls and so receive a percentage out of each phone call they generate from the phone company.
So far so good. Too bad that in most countries, on top of what they get from internet users’ fat phone bills, ISPs also charge a monthly fee for their services.
Still somewhat acceptable, although not very. The real problem comes with dud connections (which is what I’ve been getting all day). What’s a dud connection? Well, you all know a dud mine is a mine that isn’t a mine… meaning, it has no explosives or it has malfunctioned, it won’t go off and blow your legs out… it’s a dud . Dud connections are normal connections that are normally established between the user and the ISP but don’t work. You’re connected, you’re paying your phone call, and your ISP is receiving you monthly fee, plus a percentage (often 30%) on your phone call… but it’s not providing a service at all! You can’t browse the web, you can’t download your porn, ICQ isn’t working, there’s no e-mail, you can’t read User Friendly and worst of all: your last Seti@home work unit is sitting in your harddisk with no hope of ever reaching Seti. There’s simply no data being transmitted to you by your ISP, you can’t even ping anything except your pitiful self. In the meantime you’ll stay online for a while, trying… you’ll try a national page, a page installed abroad, you’ll check your proxy configs, try to send e-mail, receive e-mail, reconnect ICQ, download posts in Free Agent… nothing will work. You hang up your modem after 5 minutes, 10, sometimes more, and your ISP cashes in on your phone call percentage. Nifty! And they don’t even have to ruin their bandwidth so they can joyfully continue to play Quake III Arena. It’s the decade of oppression by telecommunication providers, instead of being the decade of advance and freedom in personal communication systems. If you feel otherwise… why not e-mail me? Sleep well, everyone, I’m gonna hit the Macadamia Nut Brittle Häagen Dazs.
My wife’s a teacher. She was a teacher last year, she was a teacher the year before that, and she wasn’t a teacher before because she was still in school. As it is, you can’t really be a teacher. You can compete for a vacancy in a school. If you get placed, you get to […]
It’s Vet day! No, it’s not a local celebration for war veterans, this is the day we stuck Scully and Yellow in a box and took them to the veterenarian clinic. The vet was disgusted to just look at them… I must admit, they do look terrible and it was all our fault. It appears […]
SENTENCE OF THE DAY “Housework could be really fun if it was called ‘relaxing on a Hawaiian beach’ and you could wear a swimming suit and were actually in Hawaii, at the beach.” Today it was cleaning day once again. I finally changed the furniture around in my office and assembled the new bookcase which […]
I’m running Analog on my company website’s logs; I’m running it with the DNS option set to read, so I’m online resolving host names… how interesting. Since it’s not interesting I’m browsing through other online diaries, journals and the like and realizing there’s one thing I’m missing, the “about me” page (among other things, I […]
Ah September! It has arrived. It means many things… it is the month the Summer ends and the Fall begins, heat gives way to breezy days, some rain, cold nights that make you feel lucky you have that nice blanket by the foot of the bed. It is also the month in which I go […]
