miffy495

My personal favourite from seeing all the bilingual DVD covers when I worked at HMV: "Mom, I missed the plane!"

Bionic Commando is installed. I have a substitute job Monday morning, but the class' regular teacher is supposed to be back at noon, so I should be home around the time this is starting. Yay for flex schedule!

YOU can edit your posts. That's what the "edit" button is for. EDIT: See? EDIT 2: It works!

Koloktos is rad as shit. I'm really enjoying replaying TP because 8 years later, all I remember is that the Fire, Water, and Sky dungeons blew my mind at the time. I don't remember why. As a result, re-discovering that the fire dungeon revolves around using giant magnetic mining equipment and the iron boots to let you walk on the ceiling and strap yourself in to huge magnetic cranes is rad. As the last thing I did is the boss fight against Stalord, I got to see that new all over again. I'd been wanting to play a Zelda again, and I'm glad I chose TP because I'd played all the others more recently. I actually feel like I'm discovering things again. In 6 years, I'll go for Skyward Sword again. I'm sure I'll love it.

Yeah, "wearables" has been around for a while. Notably, stuff like Google Glass.

I loved the way that they turned the overworld bits into nearly dungeons in their own right, don't get me wrong. I just feel like there's way too much extraneous shit going on as well. The amount of side-questy weirdness going on in that game is nuts, and why is there a crafting system? I don't play Zelda to catch bugs to upgrade things, and then learn that I need to upgrade my bug net as well? The fuck? That said, I did really like that game and finished it. I'm not saying it was THAT frustrating to me. It was just a lot of distraction that took away from what made the game good, in my mind.

TP does it a lot, but as I said, there are no crafting items so the most it can do it is for each different denomination of rupees. It may do it for bundles of arrows too, I can't recall right now. I just went through the spinner dungeon last night. It's really too bad that TP and SS have so much extra baggage, because I feel like Zelda dungeon design has been improving steadily across the games, but the things surrounding the dungeons have been degrading at a roughly equivalent pace. The dungeons in SS and TP are nearly all SO FUCKING GOOD, but all of that other crap is really starting to weigh the series down.

As long as you're not doing it to their face. I talk about "the kids" or "my kids" when I talk about my classes to friends and family, but never use the k-word when I'm talking to them.

Yay!

This is my block right now. Trees are downed on nearly every block in the city because of crazy snowfall weighing them down. Loads of places are without power. Since I'm not subbing today, I got called in to the starbucks that I work weekends at to load my car up with milk to move to a place a few neighbourhoods over that has functioning electricity. Messed up weather, man. (Congrats, Twig!)

On the teaching side (because I can't program at all and have never tried), just do your best to remember that middle schoolers are at a point where they feel like adults and will get really resentful of anyone who doesn't treat them like that. Be frank with them, be honest, and don't talk down. If you go in thinking of "these kids" you're starting at a loss. You'll need to explain yourself a lot, of course, because they simply don't know a lot of these things, but if you act like you're explaining it to a kid they'll get frustrated with you. Honestly, kids that age are super fun because as long as you can explain yourself thoroughly, they're easy to collaborate with. Think of yourself as facilitator, not "teacher" (whatever that is), and you're on the right track.

I bleed even with a brand new blade. Super sensitive, I suppose, which is why finding good shaving cream was so important for me. When I'm bleeding A LOT, I switch blades.

Yeah, my social networking is pitiable at best, but if there are a tonne of invites, I promise to get interested in it for a few weeks and then either continue with it or forget that it exists.

It's not THAT weird. As it's my second year as a professional, I'm stuck in the temp cycle, where I go from temporary contract (usually a maternity leave) to sub roster and back to temp contract for a few years. After a while, the stars may align and a principal likes me, has me on staff as a temp, and has enough budget to make a real position for me. At that point, I will be offered a probationary contract. This is just a fancy way of saying that I have my very own class rather than taking over someone else's because they have to be away for a while. After two years of probationary contract, they have to decide to either boot me back to the sub roster or give me a permanent contract, at which point I will only ever be a sub again if I choose to be and, even when switching schools, they have to have a full position for me. Kinda like elementary school tenure. At the moment, I don't feel slighted by this. I have exactly one year of experience and don't feel like I've been "on top" of anything for any time. I've been told that I'm talented by a lot of people, but there is SO MUCH that I have no idea about just due to a lack of experience. Having a good rapport with kids and an enthusiasm for the subjects your teaching is one of the most important things, and I've got that, but there are loads of practical things that I can only get good at by bouncing around and experiencing as much as I can in this temp cycle while I'm here.

Really? I don't recall a single complaint. I guess I was frequenting the wrong places in 2006. In fact, aside from Idle Thumbs, I don't think I was frequenting ANY places in 2006.

I don't know how it works with other boards, but I have a woman at the downtown office who works kind of like an agent. She has me on file as a young male teacher who wants to work with elementary students, and any time a job that would fit that comes up, she advocates on my behalf to the principal of that school, at which point I go in for an interview. If I get a temporary contract, when that contract runs out I default back to the substitute teacher list and take calls until the next contract rolls around. Right now I am without contract, but have had a few interviews and will probably get something in the next few months. Maternity leaves happen kind of a lot. I am working for the school board still, despite having no formal job, and am expected to be available to work as a sub a minimum of three days a week (so taking any other work aside from Friday nights/Saturday days at a Starbucks as I currently am is not an option). I am employed by the school board until I (or they, I suppose) decide that I'm not anymore, so I don't need to reapply or anything. I just go back into reserves when I'm not on full-time.

It's for feminists only, so you had to be keeping up with the community.

I trim my beard using a comb for length and running an electric trimmer along it, then sculpt the bottom using a Gillette Fusion. As I'm only shaving my lower neck every few days, one blade lasts a couple of weeks. Also, for god's sake man, get some shaving cream. If you're not having results with one, try another. I would break out every single time I shaved until I went to Lush and got some of this. It completely changed the quality of my shaves, and I eventually started switching every single thing in my bathroom over to their products (they are staunchly anti-animal testing as well, and I'd been looking to get a more ethical bathroom). I don't know if they operate outside Canada, but I'd recommend them if they're around for you. If not, find something similar that works. It'll make shaving easier on the blades as well.

Actually, I'm replaying Twilight Princess* at the moment and have noticed that it does it as well. Nobody got pissed off about it until Skyward Sword, but every time I turn on the console, I'm treated to "You found a blue rupee! That's 5 rupees!" the first time I pick one up. Ditto yellow and red. There were no crafting items in that game, so that's the only time it does it, but it struck me as odd that everyone thought it was new for SS. *aside, but man: the dungeons in that game are really well-designed. The art style wasn't great to begin with and doesn't hold up at all, but those are some GOOD levels.

MAYBE they do.

I've had a Galaxy 4 for about a year and a half now and it's pretty great. I haven't charged it since I took it off the plug yesterday morning, and as of this writing (almost 4:15 in the afternoon, so more than a day and a half since last charge) it's at 47%. It has never crashed on me, though SCUMMVM has some stability issues as an app. It's the only app I have trouble with though. On three separate occasions over the last year and a half, it has stopped recognizing my SIM card for a reason I couldn't figure out. This has been fixed with a reboot each time and hasn't come up again for at least several months. In short, I like my Galaxy, and will probably get whatever the newest one is at the time when my next upgrade happens.

I wear a watch. It's the only piece of jewelry that I own, and as such I like it to be pretty classy. Leather strap with a silver analogue face, thank you very much. Digital watches have always struck me as tacky, and now phone watches have taken that like 50 steps further. Oh well, they've got to appeal to SOMEBODY or they wouldn't get made, right?

Man, has anyone else noticed that Ben is really reaching for attention lately? In life news, I'm still on the substitute teacher roster for this year after 3 job interviews. Each time, I'm getting interviews for early elementary positions (last one was first grade) and being told that with my approach and sense of humour (wordplay), I'd be incredibly well-suited to middle school. Every single principal I talk to tells me that they're sure I'll have a job very soon and that they're recommending me to anyone they know who needs a teacher for older elementary, and as much as I know that they're right and appreciate that they're still helping me along despite not hiring me, it's still getting frustrating. Being on a pair of contracts last year let me save up enough that the money doesn't run out until December, so I'm not hurting or anything, but shit is it frustrating spinning my wheels here. Blugh.

Man, if you hadn't said it first I was gonna. Dude's got some fuckin' STYLE.

My dad died when I was 10 and the N64 I got the following birthday was my escape from that. As a further result of this, my teachers and my mum's coworkers (she was a social worker with AIDS patients. In the 90s, that means that her coworkers were nearly exclusively gay men) were my only male role models for the rest of my adolescence. I am now a school teacher who plays a bunch of video games and is incredibly liberal about sex/sexuality. Coincidence?