Stats

I was just looking at the stats for my blog, I decided to check out where most of my traffic is referred from.  Other than my own URL (srossi.net) and Google, Writer’s blog (157) and Carmi’s blog (125) are the top two places people come to my blog from.  Thanks.

It still amazes me that for the day, week, month and all time my People of Wal*Mart post from over a year ago still ranks as the most viewed post.  That’s why you see me tag my posts with Wal-Mart and walmartians every now and again, just messin’ with the masses.

As for the countries that I get the most viewers from, the USA tops the list.  Throughout the categories (day, week, month, all time) Canada and Russia bounce back and forth between 2nd and 3rd place.

80 to 85% of my audience come to me from Windows, 10 to 15% from Macintosh and the rest seem to be different types of cell phone platforms, except for one page view from a Nintendo Wii.

45 to 50% are viewing my blog on Internet Explorer, 25 to 30% on Firefox and 10 to 15% use Safari.  I have had 33 page views (<1%) on something called Jakarta Commons-HttpClient, whatever that is.

So, there’s a little trivial statistics on my blog.

One more awesome characteristic about the building I teach in.

It never occurred to me before, but there is more than one power line coming into my school building.  I guess that’s understandable, considering the power upgrades it’s needed since it’s construction in 1975.  And maybe, since the subdivision had grown a lot since then too, it’s understandable that the power would be coming from two different grids.

But seriously, I’d expect different sections of the building to be on the different grids.  Or maybe the areas that needed the new wiring, like the computer labs and other technological additions.

Nope.  The two power sources seem to be interwoven throughout the building, as we found out when half the power went out this afternoon.

I didn’t even know about it, even though it happened in the middle of 3rd period.  I was using the projector and when I was done I went to turn on the 2 banks of lights that were off.  One went on, the other didn’t.  I just figured they were on the fritz, and was annoyed that I would have to put in a work order to get them fixed.  I figured it out when the office staff came around to tell us that the bells were out, and to just let our classes go when the time for lunch came.

When I went to lunch right after 3rd period, I discovered that we had had a power outage.  Well, half of one.  The lights were out in the cafeteria, but not in the hall that goes right by it.  One side of the faculty lunchroom was dark, the other side nice and bright.  All the lights in the faculty workroom were on, but the soda machines and one of the copiers were dead.  A third of the teachers had no computer, another third had no projector, the rest either had both or neither.

Total hit and miss.  But at least every room had some light, so we could all continue teaching, granted with a little adaptation to our lesson for some of us.

Until the power went completely out about 5 minutes before lunch was over.  Yup, deja vu all over again.  Fortunately this time it only lasted for about 15 minutes, just long enough to shorten 4th period a bit.

Well, I may not understand the why’s and whererfore’s of the electrical work in my building, but it sure made for an interesting day.

P.S. – This just became my post for Carmi’s Thematic Photographic, which you should be aware of by now.  And if not, you should go check it out here, which is where you’ll have to go if you want to understand why this belatedly became my entry for this week.

The show must go on.

If you read my post from a couple days ago, you know that one of the things that kept me busy that week was the school play.   I don’t teach drama, my responsibility went to the Stage Crew department, I’m in charge of the crew.

Our drama teacher is quite creative and came up with the idea of a Murder Mystery Dinner Theater for last week and this week, right before Halloween.  One of the great things about the abominable building I teach in is that the cafeteria has it’s own small stage, which allowed us to present the play right inside the dining area. 

The play takes place in 2010, this year, on a cruise ship named the S.S. Enchantment.  As the guests enter the cafeteria, they are greeted by the captain, the cruise director and the servers offering h'ordeuvres and drinks (just water and lemonade, it is a junior high play after all) and welcomed to the ship.  Once the guests are seated the play starts, the plot introduced and then dinner is served.  During the dinner, the cast mingles with the guests, dropping hints and giving clues to what is going to happen.  After dinner, the plot thickens, threats on life and limb are made and then we get another break for a game of bingo.  During the bingo game, two of the characters are murdered and their bodies are set in strategic spots in the building.  After bingo, the play resumes, the missing cast members  are mentioned and foul play is implied.  The remaining cast pairs off and each pair takes a table of guests and leads them through the building looking for clues, and finding the bodies.  Everyone meets back in the cafeteria, the guests are given ballots to see if they figured out who killed who, and who has the cursed amulet (I’ll explain that in a second) and then the play goes on while the servers tally up the ballots.  At the end the three guests who got the most correct answers get a prize, a 2” plastic sword.

The plot of the play is simple.  Cruise ship director finds amulet, the captain reads the inscription (in French) on the back  and a group of pirates who were cursed in the  1700’s are brought into 2010.  Pirates take over the cruise ship, battle amongst themselves and in the end are, by the power of the amulet, sent back to the 1700’s.

The kids were fantastic, they and the play are entertaining and funny.  The play requires them to improvise and they did quite good at that too.  The actor playing “Salty Pierre” got quite a few laughs when the bingo spinner broke on him and he did a little improv thing about it.

The only bad part was when the drama teacher got a call from home right at the end of the first performance, with the news that her husband had had a heart attack and was in the hospital.  Last thing I had heard was he was out of surgery and doing well, although she was not there for the second performance.  Thanks to the PTA parents, the cast and the stage crew, all of who knew what needed to be done and did it well, the second performance went off virtually without a hitch. 

We have two more performances, Tuesday and Wednesday this week and as of now I have no idea if the drama teacher will be there.  It’s good to know that the PTA, cast and crew have their jobs down well enough that if she needs to be with her family, she won’t need to worry about the play.

Hosts from hell, pilfering blue jay and a big mud puddle.

Last weekend I was down at Arches National Park.  We had a 4 day weekend off from school and, since my brother had booked the campsites 6 months in advance, I decided to take advantage of the free time and join the family down there.  I had a great time, relaxed a lot, hiked a little bit, found some dirt roads to drive down and sat around the campfire with the family.  Overall a worthwhile weekend, but at the same time the culture of the place has changed so much I’m not sure it’s worth going again.

First of all, we had the camp hosts from hell, and it seems that the Park Service allows them to make up random rules for the camp area they oversee.  Now I understand that rules are important, without them us wonderful human beings would overrun the park, destroy everything around the campsites and make them uninhabitable.  But, like I’m told all the time for my classroom, rules have to be visible, enforceable, reasonable and above all else, consistent.  Allowing volunteers that change every season make up their own rules makes no sense.   Especially when the rule itself makes no sense.

We booked three campsites six months in advance, and even then we couldn’t get them all right together.  One was up over on the other side of the hill.  So we did what we’ve always been allowed to do; used the closer ones for as many of our party as possible and reserved the farther one for stragglers.  That meant putting 2 trailers in one of the campsites.  The paved parking pad was big enough for both of them, and even room for a car without blocking the road at all.  We happily moved the car so that the road wasn’t even slightly crowded, but according to the hosts we were only allowed one trailer per campsite.

There is already a written rule, in the pamphlet and on the website, limiting each campsite to 10 people, so it wasn’t a matter of too many people at the site.  5 couples with 5 tents and 5 cars would be allowed, but not 2 families with 2 trailers.  If we had one of the smaller campsites and the trailers were crowding the road, that I could understand.  But the hosts couldn’t give us any reason other than it was their rule.  And when asked where the rule was written, their response was “If we had to write every rule we’d have to print up a 7 page book for everyone.”   In 2010, that excuse doesn’t work, because my niece was willing to obey the rule if they were even able to show it to her on the website.  And that costs nothing but time for 7 pages everyone can see.

Anyway, you can get a first hand account of things from my older brother’s blog here, and in the end we did get to keep both trailers on the one site.

Even more disturbing to me is how the whole feel of camping has changed down there.  I’ve been camping in and around Arches since the spring of ‘76, right after I got my driver’s license.  For me, the fun of camping does not come from sleeping in a sleeping bag, on the hard ground in a tent that is usually either too cold or too hot.  I put up with all that because it was a time to relax, to hang out with friends and/or family and, especially, a time to sit around the campfire till late in the evening joking, laughing, telling scary stories and just bullshitting.  Back when I first started going down there, that seemed to be the general consensus.   Just about every camp site had a fire going in the evening, and at least half of them would be up late talking, joking and enjoying themselves.  Nobody was bothered by the occasional outburst of laughter.

This year I was surprised when I noticed it was only 9:00 and we were the only ones with a campfire still going.  It was eerie and weird and made me a little nervous.  The fourth night, when at 10:30 there were only 4 of us left around our campfire, talking quietly (I thought) someone from the camp across the way yelled at us to be quiet.  Kind of broke up the party, since we were already trying to be quite since it was after official camp hours, and we didn’t know how to be any quieter.

I think I’m going to stick to going up to the family property.  We can show up at anytime we want and find a campsite, we can put as many trailers in a row as we want and we can stay up as late as we want, being as loud as we want. 

So, here are pictures from the trip.  You can click on any of the pictures here to get a full sized one, or go to the album below and see them all (well, all the ones I’m posting, I always take about 3 times as many as get posted.)  As for that last picture, those were crushed cars being hauled out of Moab.  How many of the cars can you identify?

View Full Album

Savor.

This week’s Thematic Photographic is “Savor”, and if you read what I posted right before this, you’ll better understand why I chose this picture.

I am sooo going to savor the next 7 hours curled up on my bed. And that’s where I’m headed right now. G’nite.