Sentence of Dave

Back to School Night Blues

It's impossible to be in a good mood when you know that 12 hours after you show up to school, you're going to do it all again: run through the entire day in miniature, for the parents (although it is fun to see adults stuff themselves into school desks) .

Traffic Cone = Cinema

Heraclitus warned us that "the only constant is change." For many years, the American school system eluded this inevitability, but not this year. EVERYTHING has changed. No textbooks. A new tablet device. We're wireless. And Bluetooth. We've adopted a new learning management system. Canvas instead of Google classroom. OneDrive instead of Google drive. OneNote instead of something else. And there's the looming threat that the winds of change will soon to remove our desktop computers.

Also, I still have stuff on Evernote.

Yesterday, I couldn't even figure out how to play a DVD. Every year, in Honors Philosophy, we read Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" and then we watch the first thirty minutes of The Matrix. Because it's the best visual representation of Plato's allegory.

But yesterday, I couldn't get the DVD to play. Apparently, Windows has removed this function from its Media Player. People stream now. Have you heard of Netflix? Amazon?

Coincidentally, both of these are blocked at our school. Even if you've purchased the movie on Amazon. So I freaked out a bit (in front of the children) and then I downloaded a bunch of weird free DVD players (and probably infected my desktop with some weird viruses . . . now whenever I use the search bar, it sends me through Yahoo! instead of Google).

Then the tech guy came and showed me that there WAS a player on my computer. The VLN player. The symbol is a traffic cone. It didn't open automatically when I put a disk in, so I didn't know it was there. And when the tech guy scrolled down through my apps and showed me the traffic cone, I wondered: why is orange traffic cone synonymous with playing a DVD? But then he started telling me about all the changes in my future-- they were taking my desktop, my DVD player, my big monitor, and my hardwired internet . . . and so I shouldn't even get used to the VLN player.

"They're not making your job any easier," he said, "and they're not making my job any easier either."

And why is the VLN Player logo a traffic cone? There's an enigmatic explanation on Wikipedia, but it adds more to the mystery than it resolves it: "The cone icon used in VLC is a reference to the traffic cones collected by École Centrale's Networking Students' Association."

If anyone can make sense of that, please leave the explanation in the comments.

Do You Respect Wood? I Respect Wood

Do you respect wood?

I respect wood, but-- luckily-- so does my wife, so I won't have to divorce her. In fact, it's my wife who suggested that I run to TJ Maxx with some of our hard-earned garage sale money and buy a a shelving unit made of genuine Acacia wood so that I have a spot for my amplifier and loop pedal.

The piece of furniture is awesome, shelves on hinges, cool looking hardwood, but when Ian and I got it home, we noticed that there was a crack in one of the bottom pieces. So I took my respect for wood and put it to use. I got some wood glue and a clamp, and went to work. Hopefully, it will set.

All Hail The Town-Wide Garage Sale

It's over. We cleaned out, set up, and raked it in. All day Saturday and half of Sunday, my wife channeled the soul of an Ottoman bazaar storekeeper and turned our driveway and front lawn into a souk. Once almost everything was gone, we put up a FREE sign and hid inside while the vultures picked over the carcass of our sale. Then Alex and I packed up the remaining odds and ends and drove it over to Goodwill.

And while the cash we made was significant, the purging of the house was priceless (as were the arguments between my teenage son and her about exactly what constituted his stuff, the sale of which he could claim full profit on . . . I tried to stay out of the debate and just warned him that you don't f-@% with mom on garage sale weekend, especially since she does the bulk of the set up and organizing).

Never again, my wife says.

I hope she's right (but the fact that the same older son who got into all the debates bought a glow-lamp in the shape of a box turtle doesn't bode well for us keeping the house clear of garage sale crap . . . and I bought an ancient Bakelite View master, thinking it would be worth thousands of dollars, but I was wrong . . . I paid $5 and it might be worth $12 . . . so there's probably another garage sale in our future).

Some Hard Things Are Harder Than Other Hard Things

I often see people running on concrete and I want to yell to them: "Don't run on concrete! It's much harder than asphalt!"

While I've never actually yelled this out my car window, I'm factually in the right. Concrete is definitely exponentially harder than asphalt.

But it may not matter. Running shoes and other factors may make the difference negligible. So while I'm going to continue to run on grass or asphalt, I'm not going to chastise anyone for running on concrete (until I finish my advanced materials physics degree).

Some Bueno Advice

Head down Woodbridge Avenue to the Edison Tex-Mex Deli and get the al pastor tacos-- I promise you won't be disappointed: the pork and pineapples are on a spit!

Dave Parks the Bus

Someone (or something) has hacked my Blogger account and so Sentence of Dave keeps doing weird stuff, which is as good a reason as any to start writing sentences over here.

I might write one sentence a day, or I might write several.

I might write nothing at all.

But the best thing about the whole hacking of my blog is that I was able to import all my brilliance from Sentence of Dave over to Park the Bus. So if you need to catch up, it's all here.

Being able to migrate all my sentences (and zman's comments!) is almost as awesome as listening to my son Ian dictate quotations from Catcher in the Rye into the journal entry he is writing on the kitchen desktop computer (he is doing this as I write).

Dave's Not Here, Man, He's Over at PARK THE BUS

There's something weird going on with my Blogger account, so I'm closing up shop at Sentence of Dave and posting all my sentences, paragraphs, and other random garbage at Park the Bus . . . and-- in case you have some catching up to do-- I've imported all my fabulous sentences from here over to there.

Double Technological Miracle Sunday!

Freedom!

Yesterday, with the help of my wife-- who claims she is an expert in Velcro-- we installed a magnetic screen door behind our sliding glass porch door, and this is the best 15 dollars I've ever spent; it's an absolute miracle, and while it took a little while to train our dog Lola to walk through it-- at first she thought it was weird voodoo and didn't want anything to do with it, but the kids got down on all fours and showed her the ropes, and now she's got it down now and can enter and leave as she pleases . . . and then-- miracle number two-- I wanted to watch the US Open Finals but we don't have cable and it was on ESPN, but I was able to set up a free trial of Hulu Live TV-- which I will cancel today-- and I was able to watch the match with having to constantly get up and down to let our fickle dog in and out of the house . . . double technological miracle Sunday!

Double Technological Miracle Sunday!

Freedom!

In The Meantime . . . a Bout of Namenesia

Blogger has been acting weird since Friday, and so I wasn't able to post yesterday or this morning . . . here's what went on:

Soccer practice was cold, wet, and rainy Friday afternoon and I wore my stupid blue jacket that looks like a rain-jacket but is actually just a windbreaker and I froze my balls off.

Saturday I did some rollerblading while listening to 90's instrumental guitar rock (Steve Vai and Joey Satriani) and this was the right music choice;

then, in preparation for the Grant Ave block party, Cat and I went to Cypress Brewery to drink a beer and purchase a growler's worth of 17 Mile IPA and the waitress in the little tasting room greeted us warmly and hugged us and I thought it was Rachel, a teacher from my wife's school and then the waitress left to get our beers and my wife informed that she was NOT Rachel, the teacher from her school-- though she admitted that this person looked just like Rachel-- and so we racked our brains, trying to figure out who had just hugged us, and while we were under a serious time constraint, we were able to discuss our namenesia aloud because our waitress had gone next door to check on a large party that was drinking in the brewing area and she literally had to leave the tasting room and walk outside the building and then enter by the large bay door-- so we discussed and used process of elimination and then I took a stab when she returned with our beers and said, "Are you doing girl's soccer again?" and she said, "No that's Rebecca, we always get mistaken for each other" and that's when I remembered who she was-- she had taught both our kids English in middle school-- but she was wearing a baseball hat and a Cypress Brewery tank-top and jeans, so it was tough to identify her-- normally we would see her in back-to-school-night clothes-- but I got it in time, no harm no foul, and my wife was duly impressed;

today I went to the gym early and lifted, then played 90 minutes of soccer, but I erased all that fitness at lunch-- my son has had a Taco Bell gift card since Christmas (a grab bag gift) and we finally used it, he ate some large hexagonal shaped item with several meats and a giant tortilla chip inside, and Ian and I had quesadillas and tacos-- this is the first time I've had Taco Bell since college and I'll admit it was edible and it hasn't done anything awful to my stomach . . . yet.

In The Meantime . . . a Bout of Namenesia

Blogger has been acting weird since Friday, and so I wasn't able to post yesterday or this morning . . . here's what went on:

1) soccer practice was cold, wet, and rainy Friday afternoon and I wore my stupid blue jacket that looks like a rain-jacket but is actually just a windbreaker and I froze my balls off;

2) Saturday I did some rollerblading while listening to 90's instrumental guitar rock (Steve Vai and Joey Satriani) and this was the right music choice;

3) then, in preparation for the Grant Ave block party, Cat and I went to Cypress Brewery to drink a beer and purchase a growler's worth of 17 Mile IPA and the waitress in the little tasting room greeted us warmly and hugged us and I thought it was Rachel, a teacher from my wife's school and then the waitress left to get our beers and my wife informed that she was NOT Rachel, the teacher from her school-- though she admitted that this person looked just like Rachel-- and so we racked our brains, trying to figure out who had just hugged us, and while we were under a serious time constraint, we were able to discuss our namenesia aloud because our waitress had gone next door to check on a large party that was drinking in the brewing area and she literally had to leave the tasting room and walk outside the building and then enter by the large bay door-- so we discussed and used process of elimination and then I took a stab when she returned with our beers and said, "Are you doing girl's soccer again?" and she said, "No that's Rebecca, we always get mistaken for each other" and that's when I remembered who she was-- she had taught both our kids English in middle school-- but she was wearing a baseball hat and a Cypress Brewery tank-top and jeans, so it was tough to identify her-- normally we would see her in back-to-school-night clothes-- but I got it in time, no harm no foul, and my wife was duly impressed;

4) today I went to the gym early and lifted, then played 90 minutes of soccer, but I erased all that fitness at lunch-- my son has had a Taco Bell gift card since Christmas (a grab bag gift) and we finally used it, he ate some large hexagonal shaped item with several meats and a giant tortilla chip inside, and Ian and I had quesadillas and tacos-- this is the first time I've had Taco Bell since college and I'll admit it was edible and it hasn't done anything awful to my stomach . . . yet.

They Might Actually Be Nice

I told my colleagues in the English Office that my students seem really nice this year, and Chantal said, "They always seem nice for the first two days, you idiot."

They Might Actually Be Nice

I told my colleagues in the English Office that my students seem really nice this year, and Chantal said, "They always seem nice for the first two days, you idiot."

Barking Up the Right Tree

I couldn't figure out why my dog Lola was barking like mad, trying to scale a thick oak tree, so I took some time and looked through the branches very carefully and realized Lola's instincts were dead on, as there was a squirrel napping on a branch (something I've never seen before, the squirrel's eyes were slits, and it looked way more groggy than the squirrel in this picture . . . it was hugging the limb and must have been out cold-- until Lola rudely woke him).

Barking Up the Right Tree

Technology Marches On, Sweeping Dave Along With It

We've got new devices and new LMS (Learning Management Software) this year at my school and it's all making me feel very old: the screens keep getting smaller (now we're all on tablets) and they're threatening to take our desktop computers away (even though I can actually read stuff on that screen and my computer has the only DVD player in the room) and we've replaced the simplicity of Google Classroom-- which is free and seamless with Google docs, Google slides, and YouTube-- with an expensive program (Canvas) where everything is very small and every task requires a lot of clicks . . . I'm hoping I retire before this happens again.

Technology Marches On, Sweeping Dave Along With It

It's Over (Except for the Crying)

Nothing coherent to report: I'm in a befuddled haze from endless first-day-of-school meetings, room preparation, running soccer practice, my older son's botched summer assignments, Taco Tuesday, and an endless argument about how much my kids tipped the barber today for their back-to-school-haircut . . . it looks like the summer is coming to an abrupt close.