Well, that Thursday entry was less than exciting I think.  Hopefully this will be an improvement- 8th grade.  In near-city district.  At the end of the year.  When another job popped up in a different district I was tempted to dump this one for it, but in the end I didn’t have any issues thanks to required worksheets to be filled out while watching a movie.  It was a social studies class, but she also taught one literacy class- I think all teachers teach one class outside their specialty to save on paying for another teacher since the numbers allowed for this.  Obviously, if this would cause the class sizes to be 35+ they would probably pay for an additional teacher.

So I arrived in the morning to handwritten plans, a videotape, a few stacks of papers, and two machines I could play the tape in- one a TV on a cart, the other a projector with a combo DVD player/VCR.  Being the tech person I am, I chose the projector, but first I had to hook everything up.  I plugged the projector and DVD player in and connected them with the supplied A/V cable.  Well, finished connecting- for some reason some connections were already there while others were not- interesting.  I had time to test it out, so I did.  Eww, was that it for volume?  I turned the projector volume to max but then it just sounded bad.  Hmm.  Wait, there is an additional speaker on the bottom of the cart, but how to plug the video into the projector and the audio into the speaker?  The cable was such that it couldn’t be split.  What was this?  A second audio cable!  Only- no.  It had a mini-end to plug the computer (also on the cart) into the speaker, but neither the speaker nor the player had a place to plug in the mini end, but all was not lost- the projector had an audio output and it was a mini- problem solved.  The player went to the projector, the projector to the speaker.  Done.  The only issue I had all day with this setup was the speaker A/C plug kept coming loose, but fortunately not during the video.

So in the end four classes saw the video ( a very unexciting one about Congress), the one literacy class had a quiz and a reading assignment from their books, and the tutorial (study hall) was… very small.  Only a handful of students apparently had tutorial with this teacher.  I caught up on some book-reading during this time.  Then I was done with an off period.  Or not.  The office called me and had me watch over a group of kids in the gym where they had some free-time (it was an LD class, but I saw a few friends from the BD/ED class there as well with another teacher).

So that was my week in review, in five posts.  How was yours? 🙂

Another political post in two days?   Wow! What is up with that? Just this,  for at least the few months local television stations have been pushing the switch to DTV in Feb 2009.  I purchased my digital converter before any local stations were using any sort of signal strength on the digital side.  On Feb 18 2009, the signals on all the digital channels should have been boosted to a higher level when the old analog signals were shut off.    Our congress, in the infinite wisdom (sarcasm!!!), decided it would be a good idea to delay the switch.   ARRGH!!!!!  The president will probably sign this bill.  ARRRRGH!!!!!!!!

So instead of getting better signal strength on the 18th of February, I’ll be stuck with what I currently get.  I live out in the middle of nowhere (I like that,  so I’m not moving) and I can’t get cable.  I live in the middle of the woods so satalite TV is out, unless I want to cut down some very large and living trees (I don’t).   So I’m stuck with the signal I can get over the air.

I did my part.  I got my new antenna (the old one would have never gotten a good digital signal).  I got my converter box.  I’m just waiting to get all the local channels.  1 station still hasn’t upped their signal to something I can get.  3 others are hit and miss right now.  I can only get 1 station most of the time.  I was hoping to get all of them in the middle of February.   Can I say ARRRGHH!!! again?

I’m really not sure why anyone who watches TV enough to miss it, could miss the fact that digital TV is coming.  It has been forced down our throats over and over again, comercial after comercial ( I was hoping they would stop soon).   Now those will probably continue until some time in June.  All because of a supposed 6.5 million people who aren’t ready for the switch.  My question is: “Where the heck were they for the past 6 months”.  Get your government coupon early we were told.  Get ready for the switch was said.  DTV is coming on Feb 18.    Now we will get those same messages for the next 5 months….  GRRRR…

The Federal Government forced this switch on us years ago.  Saying we had to keep up with the technology.  That started over 10 years ago.  I’m sure that the way technology goes, there could be something better for transmission by now if somebody wanted to develop it.  10 years is a long time for tech stuff.  Don’t ge me wrong, I’m all for the digital TV, but this switch really should have been done a long time ago.  I’m just worried that this will go the way of the metric system.  We’ve all seen how far that went.  So in 50 years will we still have analog TV and Digital TV side by side?   I wouldn’t bet against it.