Over the weekend, something happened to our server at school and it froze. While I was trying to work on Sunday morning, I kept getting error messages from my school laptop. Yesterday morning, our IT guy got the server going again, but my laptop was still giving the error messages. Something was wrong with the hard drive. IT Guy ran a diagnostic/repair program on my laptop, but it didn’t work. I think he might have to replace the hard drive.
In the meantime, I’m using a laptop from the student cart. It’s not entirely compatible with my server profile, so I’m having some trouble accessing my files. Fortunately, they are not gone from the server. And fortunately, I have them all saved to a flash drive. But still, my computer access is slow and labor-intensive.
I hadn’t realized how much I use my computer for school. It’s not just the notes and worksheets stored in my files. It’s also daily announcements, This Day in History, movie clips, PowerPoint presentations, and internet trivia. If we ever lost power at school, I’d be done for.
I have mentioned Ron Smith, my favorite radio talkshow guy, a couple of times. He died in December from pancreatic cancer. It was fast. He announced his illness in November. I loved listening to him. He had a big influence on my way of looking at politics.
I miss listening to him on the radio, but even more, I miss the internet links he would post on his show’s webpage. He found political articles from all over the spectrum. I enjoyed the different perspectives. I’ve been trying to find another source for articles, but it’s hard. First of all, sites seem to have a particular political slant, so going to any single source leaves me wanting to hear the other side. Secondly, searching takes time, and if I want to read a quick article during lunch or something, I find that I use up all my time just searching.
I have had some limited success though. Maybe instead of a single source, I could whittle it down to four or five. I think I might have one already; I have enjoyed several articles from Forbes.com. You would think all their articles have to do with money, but they don’t. HERE is an example of a fun article I liked so much I printed it out for my classroom (but I couldn’t use it because some of the language is inappropriate). I especially love the graphs in the article. It reminds me of THIS place, which just posts interesting charts.
Dang… now I’m late for school.
My school sponsored its annual bingo night last night. The prizes were Longaberger baskets and Vera Bradley bags. I’ve gone a couple years in a row now, and it’s been really fun. Except no one at our table ever wins. We get really close, but no yell of “Bingo!”. It’s okay, because we enjoy hanging out with each other and we enjoy yelling angrily when someone else wins. This year we even started making pirate noises. Instead of “Awww!”, we started yelling “Arrrgh!” Ha!
I got close to winning the regular bingo games several times. I also got really close to winning one of the special games when I almost spelled an “S”.
They also had some raffles. You could buy tickets and put them in the bucket of whatever prize you liked. There were three prizes to choose from. One prize was a wine and cheese basket that also included a wine and cheese party for 25 of your closest friends with horderves prepared by a chef. The basket was sponsored by Michele’s family’s kitchen remodeling company. The party is at one of the kitchen show rooms. It sounded really fun. I put all my tickets in that bucket.
I won it! HA! I was so excited. My whole table cheered! We won something! We finally won something! The curse is broken! And we’re all going to a party! Woo hoo!
Last night I had a church council meeting. The regular secretary wasn’t there, so the president asked if I would take minutes. I’m not sure if I was the best choice.
First of all, I was still feeling pretty sick. The night before I had gone to bed at 8pm. Last night’s meeting didn’t end until 9:30. Fortunately, when someone made a motion, the president would say: “Brad, are you getting this down?” I thanked him each time he said that.
Secondly, there is so much talking at these meetings. So many words. I’m not sure what a secretary does with all those words. Should I write everything down, like I do when I take sermon notes? I opted for a shorter version. As we some people discussed the budget for an hour from 8:30 to 9:30, I just wrote: “Much discussion”. It ended with a Recommendation, so when I type the minutes, I should probably indicate what some of the discussion was actually about.
I don’t know if you regularly visit LloydAndLauren.com. If not, do go there today. They are sharing information about some terrible legislation that’s in the works right now. It would do great damage to the internet. I have already signed the petition against it. I urge you to as well.
**********
We have Google email at school. Each time I look at my inbox or refresh that window, a new link to some news story or recipe or something is shown. I’ve actually clicked the links a couple of times because they interested me.
Yesterday, as I was cleaning out my spam mailbox, the link was to a Spam recipe. I thought that was weird. Then when the box emptied, another Spam recipe popped up. Huh. I think those links are targeted to whatever words are appearing on your email. The software is reading my email subject lines and giving me links based on what it reads. Fascinating. …and a little creepy.
Oh, and in case you were curious about that recipe, HERE it is.
