Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Stop The Inanity!

I have issues. Issues with this newfangled technology.

Let's go back to the good ol' days of those mimeograph machines with the purple stuff and smell that just might have made you high if you sniffed enough of it, and those old projectors with a big reel and a take-up reel and a light bulb, and those film strip thingies where you had to read a caption for each frame, and slide projectors with a big tray that you had to get just right, and then not tip it and dump the slides. Yeah. And slide rules, and charts in the back of the trig book for sine/cosine/tangent, and blackboards with white chalk that kids begged to get a bucket of water to clean for you, and no cell phones, and no computers, and one old black-and-white TV that they kept in the cafetorium to call the whole school down to watch something historic.

Not that I'm old enough to remember any of those things.

I am not fond of our new Gradebook program. Or the learnin' modules about Word and PowerPoint and Excel that we are supposed to master by going through them at our own pace on our computers. HELLO! We need training in technology, so you make us do it individually on computer? What is wrong with this picture?

My dear sweet Shiba even acted up lately. It was not so much her fault as the fault of Mitzy, the Mitsubishi projector. You'd think they would be compatible. They come from the same homeland. But no. Mitzy runs hot and cold. Sometimes she can't be turned on. Sometimes she refuses to acknowledge Shiba, or belittles her. Then I have to go deep into Shiba's psyche and have her alter the basics of her personality, just to suit Mitzy. Then, I had trouble with the twins, Kenny and Kendall, my Kenwood speakers. They just wanted to buzz and not make the proper sounds. I had to yank their cord and jerk them into line with Shiba.

And once I turned off Shiba, she would not give me back my DVD. Cheeky little minx! The #1 son was ready to fix her good. He said, "I'll get your DVD back. Do you have a pencil?" Without waiting for my answer, or considering the inanity of asking a teacher if she had a pencil, he rifled through my desk and came back with my purple mechanical pencil, and proceeded to shoot out four inches of lead. He discarded the pencil and approached Shiba with the lead, pointing it like a switchblade in a street fight. I told him to back off. I did not want my Shiba jabbed nor jammed with a piece of 0.5 lead. I thought the boy knew better. He's a regular technology aficionado, that one.

One thing is for sure. Hillmomba will not have a financial crisis. Only the barter system here. No credit. We'll take chickens and pot-bellied pigs in trade. And we bury our money in a mason jar in the back yard. The back yard we plan to mine for copper one of these days.

7 comments:

Marshamarshamarsha said...

Isn't it scary that all this new technolohy is supposed to make the educator's lives easier? I loved the sound of the mimeograph machine...not that I am old enough to know such things personally either...

Hillbilly Mom said...

TriMarsha,
It's just like ordering off the internet. It takes four times longer than just picking up the phone and calling in your order.

Jennifer said...

I had to go and get a mini workshop on all that SmartBoard Technology... talk about making me feel like an idiot.

I almost miss the mimeograph machines too.

Stewed Hamm said...

It's possible that your speakers are buzzing because of someone's cellphone activity. We had mystery buzzing in ours at work for weeks until the one day I happened to bring in my own phone. The speakers buzzed right before I got incoming calls, and no other time.
Once I knew what to look for, I could see that someone's cellphone set it off every single time.

I like the technology training via computer. It must've been designed by the same brainiacs that made the web page to report problems with my cable internet service.

Word Verification: dongfiss. Really, you can make up your own joke for this one... I just wanted everyone to know it exists.

Mommy Needs a Xanax said...

Stop this sacrilege. I would kill for a smartboard.

Hillbilly Mom said...

Jennifer,
I had to go to one of those last year, when I didn't have a SmartBoard and had never even seen one in operation. You can guess how much that workshop helped me when I got this one. I'm surprised they didn't give me a technology refresher course to take over the SmartBoard.


Stewiknowwhythespeakersbuzztheybuzzforthee,
No, the cell phone activity causes my TV to buzz when I'm showing a video, so the kids hate videos because it's so easy to catch them texting.

My speaker problem was even more low-tech. I did not have the plug inserted completely into Shiba. I was trying to be gentle with her. Thank the Gummi Mary, a freshman told me what was wrong.

Dongfiss. I told you I don't get no respect. Now even the Word Veri has turned against me.



Miss Ann,
What you REALLY mean is that you would kill for a SmartBoard that has a laptop configured to it that actually works, without having to toggle between the SmartBoard view or the monitor view, and that the laptop is still on the cart and not on the desk of your Arch Nemesis who took it two months ago without explanation and never brought it back, OR a SmartBoard that the Tech Dude will give you a keycode for to use on your own personal laptop, a Shiba if you will, after your 30 day free trial runs out.

Just so you know what you're killin' for.

Mommy Needs a Xanax said...

I stand corrected.