Topic: What are you doing right now?

[smokester]

The Leprechaun Rubic's cube.

Takes bloody ages!

[goldshirt*9]

not sleeping, awoke at 3.30am lasted till 4.30am in bed gave up got up 

[smokester]

All green?

Didn't he sing "Let's Stay Together"?

[8ullfrog]

Not moving halloween up, but I did slap on a costume in sharpie. I heard a band of goblins (rugrats) trick or treating on the wrong damn day.

And I've decided to fire the mental health department I've been assigned to. It's been six months since I've seen one of them, they only call to cancel appointments, and attempting to call them back is futile, thanks to their outsourced call center. (The verizon voice mailbox for this number is full -click-)

Less anyone think I'm doing this AMA, I got my real doctor to clear it.

Since I've been off the crazy pills a week, I had myself a stone cold one.Stone IPA, because you're not bless'ed around.

Eh, Jury duty should be fun, I've decided my opening negotiation point is, if they've judged me competent they should give my bless'ed gun back, the thieves.

[smokester]

I'm applying for a secondary school for my daughter. It's a tricky business and it would have been a lot easier if she'd done better in that test.

Laptops, tablets, Smartphones and TV made sure that didn't happen.

[8ullfrog]

So... remove the distraction and retest? Explain that this is more important than any youngin crisis she may be embroiled in?

My SNES found itself in the car trunk a few times when I was a kid. It wasn't actually the problem, but my mom sure as hell thought it was.

It was actually my sleep cycle and poo diet, along with a misdiagnosed learning disability. They declared from on high, ADHD, and forced me to take ritalin.

I bombed quite a few tests before it was discovered that I have a learning disability, but good luck getting the state to recognize or acknowledge it. They still haven't, the gits. They're willing to say I'm disabled as long as I don't seek aid. When I do, there is nothing wrong with me but "some fatigue."

Sometimes "trying harder" does not produce better results, not everyone can "pull themselves up by their bootstraps."

Every time my mom demanded a retest, their initial response was that it was "impossible" which really meant "this will make our madam math teacher look bad." Eventually a psychologist gave me the RAT, an alternative test. Suddenly, outside of the shitty meatpack classroom of my poo school, my performance increased. After that I was bounced out of that school.

And madam math teacher got her revenge. Her husband was my student advisor at the next school. Every interaction was a battle. I never got any of the electives I wanted.

I feel bad thay you find yourself in a shitshow like this, but hell, she's worth fighting for, right?

I used to wonder why I was such a bitter and angry person, looking back, how could I have turned out any other way.

[brickbatz]

Cussing AMD. We bought a 29" ultra-wide monitor with AMD FreeSync for my old PC. It has an AMD 7870 video card in it. Come to find out FreeSync is supported on the 7000 series cards but not on the newer 7800 series cards.

AMD FreeSync™ technology puts an end to choppy gameplay and broken frames with fluid, artifact-free performance at virtually any framerate. 

Behold the next breakthrough in PC gaming performance. The FreeSync™ technology in select AMD APUs and GPUs resolves the communication issues between processor and monitor, eliminating image tears and choppiness for effortlessly smooth gameplay. 

[goldshirt*9]

recovering from riding my new road bike, talking a little high atm

[6pairsofshoes]

So... remove the distraction and retest? Explain that this is more important than any youngin crisis she may be embroiled in?

My SNES found itself in the car trunk a few times when I was a kid. It wasn't actually the problem, but my mom sure as hell thought it was.

It was actually my sleep cycle and poo diet, along with a misdiagnosed learning disability. They declared from on high, ADHD, and forced me to take ritalin.

I bombed quite a few tests before it was discovered that I have a learning disability, but good luck getting the state to recognize or acknowledge it. They still haven't, the gits. They're willing to say I'm disabled as long as I don't seek aid. When I do, there is nothing wrong with me but "some fatigue."

Sometimes "trying harder" does not produce better results, not everyone can "pull themselves up by their bootstraps."

Every time my mom demanded a retest, their initial response was that it was "impossible" which really meant "this will make our madam math teacher look bad." Eventually a psychologist gave me the RAT, an alternative test. Suddenly, outside of the shitty meatpack classroom of my poo school, my performance increased. After that I was bounced out of that school.

And madam math teacher got her revenge. Her husband was my student advisor at the next school. Every interaction was a battle. I never got any of the electives I wanted.

I feel bad thay you find yourself in a shitshow like this, but hell, she's worth fighting for, right?

I used to wonder why I was such a bitter and angry person, looking back, how could I have turned out any other way.

I'm so sorry you had to deal with this missed diagnosis.  I've taught plenty of really bright kids with learning disabilities.  They make themselves pretty obvious once you have been exposed to a few because the symptoms are really typical:  smart oral responses but fractured syntax and lots of misspelled words as well as short answers.  Most students did fine with a little more tutoring or longer test times.

Smokes, I'm with 8ully on the limitation of access to electronic devices.  I think they tend to interfere with students' abilities to concentrate deeply on learning and foster a short attention span.

[8ullfrog]

Um, not really what I meant. It's a parental option to remove screens, but it tends to be a bit of a boogeyman.

Unless they're texting and driving, in which case you run over their phone as they watch.

[6pairsofshoes]

It's not a boogeyman at all.  I've seen students spend lectures playing games on FB instead of listening or taking notes with their laptops.  The effects were apparent in their grades. 

It's hard to ban laptops and phones in class, but I really think students retain more if they use pen and paper to take notes.  There's a cognitive step involved in graphic representation of what they just heard.  It's necessary to process something in order to write it down.  This is not the case with random tapping of keys on a computer and as for highlighting books, that's also utterly ineffective.

[smokester]

It's hard to ban laptops and phones in class, but I really think students retain more if they use pen and paper to take notes.  There's a cognitive step involved in graphic representation of what they just heard.  It's necessary to process something in order to write it down.  This is not the case with random tapping of keys on a computer and as for highlighting books, that's also utterly ineffective.

And the boot time for a notebook and ballpoint is remarkable.

[6pairsofshoes]

And the boot time for a notebook and ballpoint is remarkable.

 

[brickbatz]

Trying to make room on one of my hard drives by deleting a copy of Windows that used to run one of my PCs. So many files that require you to take over ownership to delete. I have too many applications installed on that drive to just format it and start fresh. Been on it for about 4 hours.

[6pairsofshoes]

I fear windows platform machines are in my future.  There's software that won't run on a Mac.  I may do some kind of Bootcamp or split drive so I can run it, but Windows strikes me as frustrating and clumsy, or at least not as intuitive as the GUI on the Mac OS.