Old Video of the Day.

Another bipolar spring in Utah.

Yesterday it was warm enough to work outside without even a jacket, today it's snowing. Typical springtime in the Rocky Mountains.

So much for Earth Hour, though. On the one hand, my house was dark and no electrical appliances were being used. On the other hand, does it count if I was over at my brother's house playing cards? I don't think so.

Playing with Photo Story 3

Friday I spent the morning helping with a training on Photo Story 3, a free program for creating movie presentations with your pictures. So, here's a bunch of my old pictures that I put into a video. It's pretty easy to do, not including the time it took to get the pictures together, this took me less than a half hour to put together.

Earth Hour.

Can you go an hour without any electrical use at all?  Tomorrow, Saturday, night is Earth Hour.  Salt Lake City, the Marriott hotels, McDonalds, National Geographic, Wells Fargo, the LDS Church and more, are going to be turning off their lights from 8:30 to 9:30 pm tomorrow night.  I think I'm going to join them.  Don't know what I'm going to do for that hour, but it should be interesting trying to amuse myself without any electricity.  No computer, no DVD.  My first thought was to go for a drive, but then that would kind of defeat the purpose, especially if I went in one of the LTDs.  So, I'll probably take out the camera and the tripod and amuse myself that way. 

Grades

Are due this week. Yea. Not like I have anything else to do. We also have the first graduation meeting next week. Means the end of the school year is coming up quickly. It's gonna be busy, especially with having to finish up my Master's Capstone Project, get the graduation program together, set up all the new teacher computers that will be here soon, prepare my classes for the CRT*'s, prepare the CRT*'s for all the other classes, and try to squeeze in a little teaching to boot. If it weren't for the light at the end of the tunnel, I'd go crazy. (crazier?)

*CRT - end of year tests for No Child Left Behind.

Closed the shop, sold the house, bought a ticket to the west coast.

Got a call from Paperback Writer today. She needed some pictures of cars from the 70's for a project at school and for some odd reason thought I'd have a bunch on hand. I spent a grueling 30 minutes searching through my 150-odd thousand pictures (which I had just recently finished organizing) and came up with 70 pictures I thought she might be able to use. Coulda came up with lots more, but decided what I had was sufficient for her needs. Rather than send them to her by email, which would have overloaded the system, I put them on my website for easy access. I also decided I'd make them available to all you folks too. Check them out, here's the link: http://www.srossi.net/ObamaIn08/2009/seventies/index.htm.

.....I have no idea who the lady is in the picture, she was just sitting on the bus bench when I was out taking pictures for my photography class. And for something relating more to current times I've added the comic strip below.

Are you kidding?

I'm addicted to ksl.com car classifieds.  There are an amazing amount of 1969-1979 cars out there for sale in Utah, and I'm always dreaming about the next one I'm going to pick up, regardless of how little money I have.  Saw this one on there for only $499.99, or anything that can maim or kill.

1978 Buick Regal. This is the car that started it all. The grand dady of the low Riderz. Listen up all you teenager wannabe smoothies. This is the car for you. Turbo V6,Carbed. Easy to work on, will turn out to be the ultimate pimp mobile. Big Back seat, fast, and fun. Head turner when you get done w/ it. Call: ***** *** @ 801-***-****, no messages, texts ok. Runs, but needs works. Will consider trades for cool stuff like guns, ATVs, Drums, explosives and stuff.  Thanks!!!! Check it out !!

Certain words do not belong at the bottom of the page.

     Last week in Psychology we were going over the vocabulary for the chapter on Adolescence.  The last word on the screen I was working on was gonads, and as I was getting ready to scroll to the next screen, I asked "has everybody got this yet?"  D said to the student next to him, "I don't have gonads yet"  He's still getting crap for that comment.

     Then today I'm in the cooking class talking to the teacher, who is new to the school, and L (a good friend of D's) is telling me about D's comment that I seemed to have missed.  The new teacher didn't know who D was so I described him as 10'-4"and 67 lbs.  L adds that she calls him the "Anit-L" since he is all that she is not. We were chuckling over that when L tells us "Yeah when D & I stand next to each other we make the number 10."  L's got a good attitude towards life.

Jeff

Somebody wanna answer that phone?

     My ears are still ringing.  3 of the 4 band members of White Light & Royal Flush are in my Psychology class, so when they invited me to the Battle of the Bands, South Salt Lake style, I decided to go.  It was at the Avalon, a converted old theater down on State Street; all the seats have been replaced with wood benches and everything is painted black.  The Delta Center this ain't.  

     I missed the first couple bands, came in an hour late to see a pretty good band called Perfect Enemy, you could actully hear him sing words and the music had actual rythym.  The second band, and for the life of me I can't remember their name (and don't want to), more just made noise and hand a singer that screamed.  In the 4 songs they sang I couldn't pick out a single word he sang, um, yelled.  It was pretty funny watching him screaming the lyrics; his face all red, mouth & eyes wide open and the tendons in his neck jutting out.  One student in the audience (when there was a lull in the screaming) said he looked like a psychotic cannibal.  Another student just referred to him as Pterodactyl Man. 
     My students came next and they were a lot more mellow than the group right before them.  They sang some nice songs, none of which I recognized, but sounded like something I would have listened to in high school.  At the end of their set the drummer threw his drumsticks into the audience and the bass guitarist ripped his strings off his guitar.  I don't think he expected to do as much damage as he did, he wasn't in Psychology class today and the other two told me one of the strigs had flipped back and cut him right above the eye and the guitar rebounded and slammed him in the jaw.  Ahhh, the price of fame.  And the price of watching this fame was walking around school all day with ringing in my ears and a mild headache.  Nobody asked why I was so cranky in class today.....

Old Pictures of the Day

The last week in July of '78, right out of high school, I walked into this dumpy little pizza place in Sugarhouse looking for a job.  My hair was down to my shoulder blades, I was dressed in old Levi's and I can still remember Jo in cutoffs, standing on a chair putting a pizza in the oven.  I asked her for an application, she grabbed a paper menu, flipped it over and said "here ya go."  I can't remember what I wrote on it, but it must have included my name and phone number, because a week later I got a call from one of the owners who asked "Can you work tonight?"  Thus began my career at Free Wheeler Pizza, which has spanned 3 decades (I still do their payroll, although for 3rd generation of owner).  During those first few years we were the only pizza delivery place in the valley, and despite business being slow we didn't have to worry about our market share.  This led to Free Wheeler Football.  Football intramurals at the University of Utah took place in the afternoon, usually ending around 5:30 or 6:00.  Avid football fans, the owners of Free Wheeler signed us up for the league, hung a sign out on the front door of the store every Monday that said "Gone Footballin'", had us put on our "Twisted Brains" t-shirts and the whole crew went up to the "U" to either play or watch the game.  Customers got used to it, they had no choice and we had a lot of fun.  Except when we played the "Austin Animals", a group of students who lived in Austin Hall (dorms).  You know the type of guys, ones that are good enough to play in the expert league, but choose the novice league so they could kick butt.  The first 15 minutes of our first game against them, one of our players was sent to the emergency room to get a dozen or so stitches under one eye.  We called them the "Austin A-holes".  Here's some of my many pictures from those games, I'm not going to go into too much description because without names it isn't going to mean much anyway, just suffice it to say my team is wearing red:

  

Happy Pi Day

My new band's first record.

You've heard the game about putting your first pet's name with the street you grew up on to get your stripper &/or drag stage name?  (I'd be Tancy Ledgelawn). Well, here's a new one, your new EMO band. (found here on another blog). so, here's my EMO band's first album cover:

Five and a half days.

     Well, state budget cuts have hit home.  The principal called a surprise staff meeting after school on Wednesday to let us know what she had heard at her district meeting that morning.  Education actually fared pretty well all things considered, ending with only a 5.2% cut for next year.  Most of the cuts are going to be up to the decretion of the individual districts, but the Legislature specifically cut the $77.6 million slated for teacher training days.  That means teacher contracts have been cut from 188 days to 182.5 days, leaving me with a 2.9% pay cut. I'll still have the same 180 days with the students, they were adamant about not cutting that time down, and as of now we have been promised that class sizes will not increase.  That's good. 

     What it does mean is that the week we had before school to prepare for the new year is gone.  No one is sure exactly how it's going to pan out, but either I'll be expected to show up on the same first day as the students, prepared to start the new school year, or I'll be losing most of the time I used to get for grading at the end of each term. 

     Quite a few of the teachers were up in arms about these cuts, fearing that we were going to bear the brunt of these cuts and that administrators and district personnel wouldn't be made to feel the pinch at all.  Not that I trust the powers that be at all, but I figure I'll just wait and see before I go burning things down.  The principal, someone who I have worked with for 7 years now and trust completely, is pretty sure that administrators, custodians and office personnel will also lose those 5 1/2 days.

     In both his acceptance and inauguration  speeches President Obama said things were going to get worse before they get better, and that we'd all feel the pinch.  I just got pinched.  I don't like it, but I know people who have gotten smacked by the economy.  Every other department in the state got hit with 9% budget cuts.  People are losing their jobs.  I'll remember that on those days I'm not getting paid to set up my class and prepare for the new year. 

Josh

What's wrong with this picture?

Got this in an email today:
IKEA HAS ANNOUNCED ITS INTENTION TO TAKE OVER GMC, AND TO SELL CARS.

WE ARE IN DEEP SH!T........................
Who can tell me what's wrong with this joke? (If Pedro & the Gearheads don't get it right away, I'll eat the car).

Scott

Couple o' jokes and a funny(ish) student comment.

Denny's has added a new item to their menu - called the "Octuplet Slam"

You get eight eggs, no sausage, and the guy next to you has to pay for it.

-------(badbim-badaboom)----------------------------------------------------

And this from my older brother, the writer of "The World According to Pedro":

A gynecologist had become so fed up with malpractice insurance and HMO paperwork and was burned out. Hoping to try another career where skillful hands would be beneficial, he decided to become a mechanic. He went to the local technical college, signed up for classes, attended diligently, and learned all he could. When the time for the practical exam approached, the gynecologist prepared carefully for weeks and completed the exam with tremendous skill.

    When the results came back, he was surprised to find that he had obtained  a  score of 150%. Fearing an error, he called the instructor, saying, "I  don't want to appear ungrateful for such an outstanding result, but I wonder if there is an error in the grade."

     The instructor said, "During the exam, you took the engine apart  perfectly, which was worth 50% of the total mark, You put the engine back together again perfectly, which is also worth 50% of the mark. This equaled an A."

    After a pause, the instructor added, "I gave you an extra 50% because you did it all through the muffler, which I've never seen done in my entire career.

And finally, I was discussing Parent/Teacher Conferences with a student who was concerened about what I would be telling his parents.  He told me that he would only be worried if his mother came, because his father wouldn't care.  When I asked him what he meant by that, he told me that all his father ever says is "Get good grades and don't get laid until college."  Good intentions, bad execution.

(This is what you get when I take a break from spending the whole day doing homework)

What the hell?

    I get most of my news from short soundbites on the morning news (when I'm still half asleep) or from letters to the editor in the Salt Lake Tribune.  So, this morning when I read that Rush Limbaugh said he hoped President Obama fails, I was surprised.  Enough that I had to check out it's authenticity.  Well most of the sites I got when I Googled "Want Obama to fail" were admittedly liberal sites, and I couldn't find the original quote on YouTube, but there I did find video of Rush himself discussing (and defending) the fact that he said that.  So, it's not just liberal media propaganda and now I can post this quote from thinkprogress.org:

So I’m thinking of replying to the guy, “Okay, I’ll send you a response, but I don’t need 400 words, I need four: I hope he fails.” (interruption) What are you laughing at? See, here’s the point. Everybody thinks it’s outrageous to say. Look, even my staff, “Oh, you can’t do that.” Why not? Why is it any different, what’s new, what is unfair about my saying I hope liberalism fails? Liberalism is our problem. Liberalism is what’s gotten us dangerously close to the precipice here. Why do I want more of it? I don’t care what the Drive-By story is. I would be honored if the Drive-By Media headlined me all day long: “Limbaugh: I Hope Obama Fails.” Somebody’s gotta say it.

   How many people out there wanted George Bush to fail?  No, not knew he would fail, but wanted?  Well, I wanted him to fail in both his bids for election, but as president I was hoping he would succeed.  I supported the responses immediately after 9-11, I wanted to see BinLaden caught and to feel the country was safe again.  I even, at that point, was glad that Gore was not president, because I honestly felt that the swift and strong response to 9-11 would not have happened under his presidency.  Even as I saw Bush's policies going awry, I wasn't hoping he would fail, because for a president to fail, as we can see now, is for our country to fail.

   To want Obama to fail, whether you agree with his policies or not, is to want this economic mess to continue, to want the unemployment rate to go higher than the 8.5% it's at now, to see more companies fail and the country fall further into the abyss.  Obama's goal is to get this country out of this recession or depression, and even if you disagree with his methods, you should be hoping that he gets us out of it.

Another one bites the dust......

In case you have been trying to get here from http://www.srossi.net/, you've probably been having trouble.  It's been down all day, because yet another modem died on me.  It seems that every 2 years or so, Comcast's modems give up and I've had to go down and get them replaced.  The good thing is that it costs me nothing extra, just my time.  Which, other than the time it takes to drive there and back, was a total of about 20 minutes.  Not bad.  So, here I am, back up and running again.  Phew!  Now I don't have to worry about it again until 2011.

Old Picture of the Day

My oldest neices and nephew, this picture was taken at their parent's second wedding. Half of the birthdays this month belong to these 3 and this is long enough ago that they are all married and parents of their own 2 children. Time flies way too fast.

Of Age and Feet.

Every now and then age comes up in class, because frankly to the students all teachers (except cute History Teacher) are OLD.  Yesterday one of my students accused me of being 46, for which I thanked them.  When I informed them that I actually was going to be 49 this year, S hit me with "That's so old you can smell the stench of death."  Without even needing time to think about it, J sitting right next to me, comes back with "No, that's just 'cause his shoes are off."

Jenn

Lynda