Once again it was another Alternative Curriculum Day. My form, being the kids they are mostly decided today wasn’t worth turning up for, with there being a whopping five in morning registration, then a slightly more fuller (but still poor) seven in the afternoon.

I spent all day doing ‘marketing’ which involved the students making a product out of glo-sticks and marketing them.

Now, it sounds a great idea, the kids have to come up with a product and then market it, and then pitch their idea to the whole class, with the rest of the class deciding on which is the best. The problem is when you combine kids, scissors and glo-sticks.

Yep, we had glo-stick juice up the walls and in someone’s mouth. The best we can say is that the stuff is non-toxic and she won’t be chewing them again.

My form room is like an oven, it’s horrible. My classrooms are like furnaces, and the students are unable to sit calmly when too hot or too cold. I have no idea why they pace around, it makes no sense. Sit down you silly buggers and stop winding yourselves up.

I have to teach in my form room tomorrow. No idea how this is going to go down. Fortunately the idiots in my form are off on other things that lesson, and the rest are quite nice.

Think I’ll make food for tomorrow and go to bed. I’ve got an observation tomorrow in the first lesson.

Yeah Me and Amy have just been to Lincoln to meet another Llamasoftie, and once again to collect yet another piece of junk retro hardware. This time it was an Atari 1040STFM. I’ve also had a Philips 14″ monitor and several hundred Amiga floppies from Amy too. It’s like I’ve just been handed the whole of 1990 in the boot of my car

Today was also a tactical way to allow Amy’s highly irritating housemate to leave quietly without causing hassle. She told him to get out by Saturday night, so we went off to Lincoln and had an excellent day, and came home to an empty room which we can now turn back into a front room.

We win all round

… OK own up, who wiped my students’ minds? Who restored them to factory defaults? They’ve all forgotten how to behave and how to sit still. Stupid bastards. Year 7s first thing on a Monday is not a good thing; I’m not quite awake and they’re unable to shut up and let me explain the new fun things we’ll be doing.

Oh well, back to basics it is then. Seven weeks before we break up, and five weeks before year 10 go on work experience (which is nice).

Amy went off to visit some people in Doncaster today, leaving me at home to do some tedious school planning. We almost missed the train to Doncaster, me dropping her off at the station and saying “I’ll ring you in five minutes to see if you made it” and her running into the station.

I went for an amble around Maplin for a bit, coming out with a new A/V switcher for my various consoles. I rang her and got no answer, and a quick check at the station confirmed she must have made the train. Still, bit odd not being able to ring her. I continued home…

And when I went into the front room I found her phone on the settee… with 17 missed calls from the people she was going to visit. It rang another six times before a Doncaster number came up which I answered and discovered a slightly pissed off Amy on the other end. I was instructed to text the people she was meeting, explain the situation and get them to collect her from Doncaster station.

This I did, and she called back about ten minutes later asking me to ring them and ask where they were, she having now been stood there for at least half an hour in the cold and rain. So I did and received the news that the other people were “lost” and couldn’t find the station. This was duly relayed to Amy and was greeted with a certain amount of swearing

She said she’d ring me when she was coming home and I continued about my afternoon slightly bemused and wondering what was happening.

Later that afternoon I got a call from Amy saying she was at Doncaster station and about to get on a train back home. I made plans to leave after half an hour to meet her. Ten minutes later I got another call saying she was there, it seems trains go a bit quicker on Sundays.

After the day’s ordeal we sat down for some tea and watched Resident Evil before making a trip to my parents’ to drop off the dog.

Like many people, I read the Dilbert strips. They’re amusing and poke fun at the types of people I have worked for. Having been a long-term subscriber to the Daily Dilbert email, I almost missed the steaming pile of gash that is the “new” Dilbert website.

Really… why? Just… why?

Do I want to share a comic with friends? Yep. Do I want to do this with some Flash-based viewer? NO! The old method of sending URLs around is easy. Do I want to comment on comics? No, not really… look at the quality of comments on YouTube for a good reason why. Do I want to put my own text into the strips? No… and I don’t want to sit and read through other people’s idea of “funny” either.

I hope the daily emails continue to use embedded images, rather than this nasty Flash thing. Wrapping a picture inside a Flash viewer is just so illogical it sounds exactly like the kind of woolly-brained thinking that Dilbert pokes fun at.

YouTube = good use of Flash
Dilbert = bad use of Flash

After trying to read something on tabletblog.com my work PC decided to curl up its toes and fall over. MSIE completely failed to do anything until I’d repeatedly mashed the “X” in the corner and someone noticed. How did I trigger this fatal death of my web browser? Did I run some crazy Javascript or ActiveX control? No, I did the outrageous thing of clicking on a hyperlink.

Helpfully Microsoft offered me some further information about the crash. Here it is:

Problem caused by Windows

This problem was caused by Windows, which was created by Microsoft Corporation. Currently, there is no solution for the problem that you reported.

Also, when attempting to edit things on my Wordpress site I got this moronic error from our stupid web filter:

Access to the page:

http://www.piku.org.uk/diary/wp-admin/edit-comments.php

… has been denied for the following reason:

Weighted phrase limit exceeded.

Whisky Tango Foxtrot…

And of course, I have now completely forgotten what I was doing.

The TV has just told me I can text “mate” to 80333 to receive the first initial of my future husband/wife. This feat of superior mind powerz costs a mere £1.50.

Yes. £1.50 for some automated robot to send me a letter of the alphabet.

Who the hell signs up for this crap? Evidently there are a lot of stupid people on the planet to make this even viable. People dense enough to waste £1.50 on a message that contains a letter of the alphabet.

So… how can I take advantage of them too? The way I see it, if you’re thick enough to do this, or have that much cash to waste, you deserve exploiting.

Tell you what, give me 50p through my PayPal tip jar and I will send you 26 letters, one of which is guaranteed to be the first letter of your future mate (subject to you getting one, of course).

My Macbook is back from being repaired in the Apple Store. The LVDS cable has been replaced and the screen doesn’t do any random pixel errors any more. When I booted it in the Apple Store the screen had a large sticky line across it which looked like they’d stuck a label or something to it. The man behind the counter gave it a clean, but I hope he doesn’t use glasses from the amount of smear left on it.

Me and Amy then wandered around the Meadowhall Centre for a while looking at random stuff. I needed to get my hair cut so went into one place, and promptly walked out when they said “Our haircuts start at £29…”. £29 to get my hair cut? What planet do you think I come from? I went for a £16 SuperCuts job instead, it took 45 minutes of waiting before I could be processed, and I am unsure about just how much hair they have chopped off. Still, it was cheap.

The parking in Meadowhall was awful. Only livened up by two people trying to reverse into the same space at the same time, and by one moron blinding us with the lights on his giant 4×4… who as we passed a few minutes later had forgotten to turn his twin portable sun-lights off. Hopefully he’s stuck in the carpark with a car that won’t start.

Oh, and there was a trip into the Disney Store where I bought Amy an Eeyore plushie. She also bought some fairy stickers and has now stuck them all over her iBook.

I did it again… left my sodding interior light on and drained the car battery. I’m going to buy a battery charger I think. One of those portable things might be worth it.

Fortunately I have jumpleads, and with the help of a neighbour had my car running within minutes. Of course first I rang work to tell them I would be late and to expect me in a few hours (going on worse case scenario here of having to catch the bus). I arrived a mere 15 minutes later than normal, but still in plenty of time to be ready.