One of those days…

First period a couple students informed me that they had found my Jeep ad on KSL.com. 

“Oh, that’s where those 2 mumbling, incoherent voice mails came from, huh?”

Oh, no.  Not us.  We wouldn’t do that.

Try calling the number and see whose phone rings.

Yeah, try that, says guilty party figuring he’s safe since his phone is actually turned off.

“Ring, ring” … “ring, ring” … “Click, your call is being forwarded to an automatic voicemail system” … “Hi, this is (guilty party’s name), leave a message.”

“Ha, gotcha.  Your phone’s off and it went straight to voicemail.”

Still denies it.

Dial phone again, put it on speaker and next to the teacher microphone.

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Then in 7th period we were working on probability.  I proposed a fictional bag with blue marbles, red marbles, clear marbles and, just for fun, marble’s with Dave’s (not real name)face on them.

Halfway through the discussion a student raises his hand to ask a question and asks “So, after you grabbed one of Dave’s marbles out of the sack…”

Class bursts out laughing.  Student (7th grader) gets embarrassed and assures me he didn’t mean it that way.

To their credit, I got the class back on track in less than 5 minutes.

Beautiful Day

It’s a beautiful day along the Wasatch Front today, just had to share some shots.

So, I went up by the “H, but it shoulda been an E” rock to get them.

Looking toward the Avenues.

The Oquirrh Mountains on the west side of the Salt Lake Valley

Stansbury Island, in the Great Salt Lake

Downtown Salt Lake City.

Rice-Eccles Stadium at the University of Utah

The Oquirrh Mountains again.

Part of the Wasatch Mountains, on the east side of the valley.

Looking west across the valley.

Looking at downtown Salt Lake across the valley.

Happy Birthday Patrick

Just when you thought the Utah State Legislature wanted to do the will of the people they serve.

(Ok, I didn’t but…)

When Judge Shelby struck down Utah’s Amendment 3, banning same sex marriages, our legislature screamed “unfair”, this is going against the will of the people.  After all, in 2004 the people voted 2:1 in favor of the amendment, and no activist judge has the right to usurp the will of the people.

Yeah, activist judges, who are employed to interpret the U.S. Constitution, don’t, but seems that elected legislators do have the right to ignore what the people want.

Senate Bill 54 passed an initial vote in the senate with a 13:1 ratio in favor of it.

SB54 gives our caucus system of nominating candidates a slight facelift, but most importantly it directly voids any conclusion to the Count My Vote initiative that would completely eliminate state caucuses in favor of open primaries.

It boils down to this, like Rod Decker of Channel 2 news put it: if SB54 goes into law and the people vote to keep the caucus system, we get the caucus system.  If the people vote in favor of open primaries, we get the caucus system.

Thanks Utah State Legislature, way to do the people’s work!

Happy Birthday Todd

Happy Birthday Danny

Finally, the truth comes out.

For years, decades, the Utah State Legislature has been denying the “starve the beast” attitude towards public education in this state.  “Top Priority”, but can’t find the money, gotta keep the rainy-day fund for rainy days and don’t want to foist a tax increase upon the unwilling taxpayers have been their mantras.

In yesterday’s Tribune, House Speaker Becky Lockhart let the cat out of the bag.

In an article about putting iPads (or something technologically similar) in the hands of every student in the state and it’s $300M-$750M price tag, she was quoted as saying:

“Let’s not try to be so focused on the money.  If this is the vision we want to have for education, if this is where we know we are headed … then we’ll find the money.”

So, since we can in fact find the money for our vision for public education, then that means that our vision for over 20 years has been “lowest funding in the nation, largest class sizes and lowest pay.”  Nice vision.

It’s Official.

“Your new vehicle is scheduled for production. Track it on the VOTS!”

That was the title of the email I got today.  I clicked on the link which led me to this page:

Yup, somewhere out there are the parts in stock that will become my Jeep.  Yeah, I’m not the slightest bit excited, eh?

Yeah, right.  I did find out that my new Jeep is being built in the same plant in Toledo that produced the Jeeps during WWII.

I also got some comparison data between the Jeep I have and the new one.  The new one has a longer wheelbase even though it’s shorter than the old one.  It’s also a little bit wider but shorter than the old one.

	2000	2014	Difference
Wheelbase	93.4”	95.4”	+2”
Length	155.4”	152.8”	-2.6”
Width	68.3”	73.7”	+5.4”
Height	71.1”	70.9”	-0.2”

 

The waiting is killing me, I’ve never been particularly patient when it comes to vehicles.

 

For someone’s who never been to the South…

I’m sure making my mark.

First, it’s legal stuff in Georgia, and now it’s…

I’m just hoping that these are lawsuits that will net me some really big settlements, and not legal problems from a drunken rampage through the South that I can’t even remember.

***UPDATE***

This just in:

Seems my trail of blackout debauchery led me back to the state I spent my pre-teen years in.  Hmmm, musta been fun, wish I remembered it.

As if puke on my doorstep isn’t enough…

Today I woke up to this:

Someone had hacked my Barnes & Noble online account.  Dangerous, because they have my Discover card information on file.  ***Lesson learned: Do not leave credit card information on file online.***  The very next email was this:

Whoever had hacked my Barnes & Noble account had used that credit card on file to make an order.

I immediately got online to check the order, and it seems that I sent some guy named Davis a $300 e-certificate B&N gift card.  The message read “Happy Valentines Day, Love you.”  And since they had changed my password, I couldn’t log on to cancel the order.  And since they had changed the contact e-mail, I couldn’t even have them send me the new password.

This is why I will never leave credit card information on file anywhere any more.

I called the Barnes & Noble toll free number.  They were there to sell me something, but their fraud department didn’t open until 9am EST. 

Great.  So I called Discover and they were very helpful, said they would file a report, but I had to talk to Barnes & Noble first.  Since I had left my card number online at the B&N site, it couldn’t be considered a fraudulent charge, that it was a fraudulent order and B&N would have to deal with it first.  they did say that if B&N refused to help, they could file a dispute on the charge and we could go from there.

Next reason not to leave credit card information online:  if the card had not been online, it would have been a fraudulent charge and Discover would have reimbursed me immediately.

I cursed and bitched and moaned about h”how could Barnes & Noble acknowledge that my information may have been changed without my consent, and yet minutes later allow a $300 gift card charge?”  I called them all kinds of things and swore I’d never do business with that rinky-dink company again.

And now I have to eat my words.

Dear Barnes & Noble,  I’m sorry for all the crap I said about your business practices.  I should have waited until I had all the information before jumping to conclusions.  Please forgive me and I will still be doing business with you.

I called them as soon as I could, at lunch, and was told that they had already flagged and denied that order and charge.  What showed up on my Discover card was the preliminary charge, the one they do to make sure I have the credit if the order does go through.

They cancelled the order, I wasn’t charged and even better, the scumbag didn’t even get his $300 gift certificate.  Yeah!

And when I got home, this was in my email box:

Well, I learned two lessons today:  Don’t leave credit card info online and don’t jump to conclusions about Barnes & Noble.  And it didn’t cost me $300.

Welcome to Monday!

What a way to start a Monday.

In the five minutes before class started, one of my students got a little sick, and threw up on the way to  the counseling center.

Right in front of my classroom door.

We were ten minutes into class before it got all cleaned up, and there were several students outside waiting to come in.

Good day for them if they were late, since I had no idea who had been out there when the bell rang and just didn't want to wade through the puke.

yup, it's a Monday.

And I ain’t even been to Georgia lately.

Yet, I seem to be taking someone to court for some reason.

People really fall for this crap?  Even if I had been in Georgia lately, I probably wouldn’t forget filing some papers with the court a scant 11 days ago.

But then again, there may be big bucks in this, I should click on the link just to be sure, no?

Happy Birthday Saige

For Sale

In a month or so my new Wrangler is going to be here and since I don’t really want 2 car payments, I’ve put my 2000 Wrangler up for sale.  Click on the picture if you are interested.

Some funny stuff.

I so want to do this.

Truth in Advertising

Exactly what students say when I ask them what they’re doing

I found an old disk in my desk and showed it to the class.  when I explained what it was, several of them said “Oh, that’s why the ‘save’ icon looks like that.

Clueless at the Capitol

I am a driver, so the lower a gallon of gas costs, the happier I am.  I still think the bill I just heard about on my favorite local news station is absurd.

Consider these:  our roads suck and the pollution in our valley during inversions is the worst in the nation.

So, in year citizens want to  improve the air and the roads, why are our legislators introducing legislation that will encourage more driving?

Their idea: cut the sales tax on a gallon of gas in half, and raise the sales tax (including on food) by another 2%.  Gleefully they announce that this is not a tax increase, in the short run there will be no increase in taxes collected.

So, why do it?  Well, in the long run sales tax revenue increases, whereas gasoline tax revenue tends to stay the same, or even decrease.

Let’s not consider that:

1. Gas consumption tends to increase when taxes go down – more wear and tear on the roads and more pollution in the valley.
2. Why are we shifting the cost of our roads from the people who drive to people who eat food. (Yeah, even drivers eat food, but not all people who eat food drive, and they already pay for roads in the cost of delivering their food items.)

Well, it hasn’t passed and even though I’d love to pay 12 cents less a gallon for my gas, I’m hoping the bill dies.

Weekend in bed.

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Oh, hi.  Sorry I haven’t been around much the last week.  I felt like crap on Thursday, so I called in sick Friday.

Spent all day Friday in bed sleeping.  Got up a few times to put some soup into me, along with some vitamin C and fluids.

Saturday was pretty much the same, except stayed awake long enough to take a really hot bath, hoping to sweat out that cold.

Sunday was much better.  I squeezed 3 loads of laundry in between long bouts of sleeping, and even got in a short walk.

Today I made it to school.  Felt OK until about 5th period.  Came right home after school and planning on having dinner and hitting the sack again.  What an exciting weekend.

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