Got this from Danny this morning :

An old Italian man lived alone in the country. He wanted to dig his tomato garden, but it was very hard work as the ground was hard. His only son, Vincent, who used to help him, was in prison. The old man wrote a letter to his son & described his predicament.

Lunch at "the school formerly known as Central High".

This was found in the vending machine in the front hall at Granite Alternative. Some kid must have stuck it in there after they pulled out their sandwich, and it cost the Vice-Principal $1.50 just to pull it out and throw it away. Datsa one expensive smoke.....

Just have to say - Obladi, LMAO. That was a great story, I wish I'd been there. And a hearty "way-to-go" to Davies, Stock and Pickett. Doris, I didn't know you were Jewish, although I knew Christian was Christian, but I still don't see what religion has to do with self-starters. On the other hand, I guess you could say that Michelle is an agnostic in this case. Anyways, two thumbs up.

I know some of you are wondering what this is all about, I'd post the whole story here but I haven't gotten clearance from all the parties involved, and it's one of those teacher stories that I think most of you would go "huh?" to anyways. Sorry........

The picture I just put as the background is of the mountains on the east side of the city, and it was taken in the latter part of August. Those of you who know Salt Lake can see from them how wet a summer we've had. Usually long before this time of year all the green is gone, and all there is are shades of brown. I tried to find a comparison picture, but I couldn't. So you'll just have to take my word for it. Or not.

What a week. My second week as STS, first week as a High School teacher. Although it was incredibly tiring, it was a lot of fun. I really like the tech side of things, I've learned an incredible amount about networking, imaging computers and (the least fun part) inventory. Larry down at the district had me going through the school again looking at computers. He had a list of specific computers, all the same model fortunately, that I was looking for, serial #'s and all. Stan, another teacher, helped me this time, and we made it out into the other buildings this time. You wouldn't believe the kinds of things you can find hidden in little corners in a 100 year old building. We found an old Atari game station, the kind that looks like it takes video tapes for the games. We still need to find the paddles and a game or two, but when we do it'll be e-Bay heaven. There were of course old vinyl turntables and typewriters (one was a green IBM Selectric, like mom's except without the automatic erase button) and even a Macintosh LC or 2.

Anyway, back to the tech thing. It's amazing how quickly teachers will send in a work order, without even checking simple things. I've had computers that wouldn't work (power cord wasn't plugged in all the way), computer that worked, but wouldn't get the network (network cord was plugged into the computer and network cord was plugged into the wall, they just weren't the same cord) and various other simple problems. The beauty of it is I go in there, fiddle around with it for a couple of minutes and leave them happy and with the impression I'm a genius. Of course I don't tell them that it was a simple problem they could have fixed themselves, gotta keep up the techie mystique. And so far, nobody's asked anyway.

I think I've come to the conclusion that High School kids aren't all that different from Junior High kids. Except for a couple of things. The kids that really don't want to be there, aren't. The kids that are there want to get their diploma, for whatever reason, and understand that they have to play the game to get it. And their humor is immature in a more mature way, they get sarcasm. One kid had only two lines of notes on his paper and when I came over and said "Don't hurt yourself taking notes there", instead of going "what?", he simply flipped backwards through his notebook and showed me that he really was taking notes. End of story. And when I had to take 15 minutes to get some kids onto the network that weren't on the list, the rest of the class worked on what I gave them and then just sat around and talked. I didn't have to stop what I was doing to tell anyone to quit running around the room, don't bang the mouse on the table, pick up all the paper you shredded and threw on the floor and pull that pencil out of your neighbor's arm. They also make connections, although they aren't always right. We were talking about computer chips, how the circuits are surrounded by silicon, hence the name silicon chips. It mentioned that silicon is made out of melted sand and I asked what else they knew of that was made out of melted sand. Confusing silicon with silicone, one girl blurts out "fake boobs". (The correct answer was glass). There's the immaturity. The maturity was that everyone laughed for a minute and then we continued, leaving it behind. It didn't take 15 minutes to get the class back to the lecture. But other than those few things, which do make a big difference, I ran my classroom pretty much the same as I did in Jr. High, and the kids responded pretty much the same.

Now it's time to go get Danny's compressor so I can switch the tires on the trucks...........