I’ve got a server running permanently here now, and Bigpond uploads count. That wouldn’t have mattered in the past, but I’ve pushed between 1 and 2GB of traffic from it in the last month… so it’s a contributing factor to the problem of being 800MB over quota at present.

Exetel are looking good to me at the minute (and their Vodafone-resold mobile plans look pretty awesome, too… a part of that is that they’re presented sensibly in a table, rather than spread across millions of pages with promotional crap — as per every large telephony provider in Australia).

Such pages, however, tended toward dullness and infrequent updating.

Or, to put it another way: Such pages tended to fulfill the original vision of the Web, which was to allow absolutely anyone to publish information that might otherwise be lost to the public, in a way that allows it to be searched, indexed, bookmarked, and linked to related information. And accessed by absolutely anybody who’s looking for it.

As opposed to today’s “dynamic” Web, where you need a broadband connection, an industrial-grade graphics workstation, and more plug-ins than a Roman orgy just to look up the atomic weight of molybdenum. Which you can’t bookmark because the URL is a dynamically-generated conglomeration of the hostname, your session ID, the phase of the moon, and the bra size of the webmaster’s current girlfriend, that doesn’t point to a page that’s actually stored on disk somewhere.

As nifty as it is that people have found new ways to make use of HTTP and HTML, we seem to be slowly losing the very concept of “publishing” as “preserving a record of today for future recall”. Instead of being the equivalent of an “address” where one can “go” to retrieve information, the URL has become a “magic incantation” that instructs a distant server to perform some action that may or may not produce the same results as the last time it was used.

In some ways, that’s good: it’s nice to be able to use the same mechanism to say “Bring up the latest edition of Dan’s blog”, “Show me the current pressure and temperature readings of Injection Molder #7″, and “Display page 7 from our company’s 2003 annual report”.

But there’s some very scary Orwellian potential here, as well as the risk of exacerbating the Digital Divide by constantly ramping up the minimal platform needed to access much of the web. Those librarians Dan mentioned lately shouldn’t be the only ones worried about making sure that a large percentage of online content remains “dull” and “static”.

I think the “Orwellian potential” bit is a load of scare-mongering crap (in relation to the other concerns posed in the article, at any rate), but everything else rings true.

I am, at present, working on the first large-scale project I’ve been involved in where <a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AJAX/ title=“Asynchronous JavaScript and XML”>AJAX is being utilised. In this instance, yes, it was my call: yes, I do feel it’s justified (reasons include traffic, and the advantage of not having to reload an entire page — yes, it’s large scale enough for that to be significant — and simple usability, because the architecture is such that users will desire to move quickly between elements of content, and AJAX facilitates that. More details post-release). We’ve been very careful to preserve functionality in non-XMLHttpRequest enabled UA environments, but it’s still not perfect — bookmarking is one (minor, given the nature of the content) problem that still requires rectification: that’s one thing I’m hoping to resolve tomorrow (along with general CSS compatability back to IE 5, possibly 4 — but that’s not particularly relevant). The Javascript is not particularly “unobtrusive” (still using inline onclick), which I’m hoping to similarly resolve prior to launch, but it’s not of any particularly great consequence.

This is not a site to be archived, as the author of the comment above laments. But he shouldn’t. That wasn’t ever this site’s purpose, so I’m not particularly concerned if the markup isn’t prestine. Yes, there will be RSS/Atom syndication. It’s a fairly Web 2.0 buzzword-compliant site, though (I hope) not particularly unneccessarily adoptive of such technologies. We’ll see.

Last time I checked (and I keep a fairly close eye on these things in a web context), bandwidth and disc space didn’t get dramatically cheaper. Nor, I hazard, did recording equipment. So what gives? Suddenly we all decide we can be bothered? Is this just buzzword-compliance 101?

One of the reasons I have for being wary of podcasting is not so much bandwidth (which can be paid for if exceeded and so forth without too much difficulty), but storage space! Storage space, unless you’re buying a server, is generally rather scant. Especially next to bandwidth: most hosts assume that your entire site will attract enough traffic to have it downloaded in its entirety several times over. To be fair, so does base10solutions — but our storage is geared to the size site that, relative to its bandwidth, could conceivably attract enough traffic to go over without difficulty. What I’m talking about is people with blogs on 6GB accounts with 100GB of transfers — it’s utterly disproprtionate.

The web doesn’t have much respect for permanence. Which is probably one reason why low-storage accounts have lasted so long. With podcasting, if I put something online I want it to stay there permanently, because it’s content! A certain image gallery won’t stay there forever, but to me that’s okay as it’s acting in a ‘closed community’ context — the only door is my website (to the best of my knowledge, few, if any, other people have linked to it).

So I have some burning questions about where all these resources are coming from, and if they’re sustainable. It could just be that people have decided they’re prepared to spend money on hosting now, and more money in the future if storage/bandwidth costs don’t scale as quickly as anticipated. Or — and this is what I think is most likely happening, though not necessarily with the examples cited — people are hosting things without thinking what they’ll do when they come to “that” — “that” being, of course, the inevitable wall at which point they need to expand/upgrade/reach further/… or delete content.

The other question, of course, is why now? We haven’t seen any quantum leap, so it must be that people are only now realising the potential of the medium. You could argue for broadband uptake, but I’d argue back that as podcasting is mostly spoken-word content, its bandwidth requirements are no greater than that of talkback shows that have had 28.8kb streams since 1997. Maybe it’s just awareness. That’s where I’m leaning. I think it’s people seeing a buzzword that’s been given some degree of credence — though little recognition outside of web circles, according to a handful of surveys (I’d meant to find links for that but haven’t got time… there was something on CNet News.com a few months back) — and attempting to catch the wave as it rises.

On the note of waves rising, it should be noted that, yes, I am one of the nay-sayers that believe this “Web 2.0″ thing is a farce and will see some setback. We might emerge more semantic or application-oriented or whatever because of it — just like Web 1.0 left us with a bunch of empty stores and Flash websites that we’re still trying to get rid of/turn into a more appropriate use of the platform –, but money is going to be lost. So there are my thoughts on that, whilst trying to clear my mind of various “I know nothing” stress before going to bed and sitting my last exam tomorrow. Hence “procrastination” in this posts’ title.

No CG (well, probably in the transition at the end, but that doesn’t count). Lots of bouncy balls. The making-of featurette (on the “Behind the Scenes” page) is worth a look, too… the camera operators are wearing head gear, and there are people with those plexiglass riot shield things. All the cars were props, but in the making of you can still hear alarms going off… I imagine that could be a byproduct of the small earth tremor released by 250,000 balls pelting down a hill.

I’m not in the market for an LCD TV, but… damn. I don’t know quite how these things can be technically significantly better than anything else on the market, but I’m now interested to find out. And have a pro-Sony bias, at least for this product (definitely not for their audio equipment or their record label or digital cameras or… the list goes on).

The video is in H.264 format but even the broadband version isn’t massive. I dig the music, though.

The Google Video version will play in your browser (using Flash Video).
The hosted Windows Media version can be saved to your computer (right-click, “Save Target As…” or “Save Link As…”, depending on the browser).

The Windows Media version is ~23MiB, so I’d assume the Google version will be (probably significantly) less than that.

Now with added lyrics!

(Thanks to Ben, though I don’t know I agree with the end bit, and think he’s hashed out sections where it’s entirely possible nothing was even said :P)

I’ve had Mrs Christie for three years,
When she speaks it’s like music to my ears.
Having her has been such a blast,
Marcelo told me that he wants to touch her arse.

I started out with Oud then Sinovich,
Year 12 English proved to be quite a bitch.
You may think you’re pretty far from first,
But don’t worry Tyrone will always be the worst.

Always try to steal my essays from you,
’Coz when it comes to English I just don’t have a clue,
And now it’s coming down to HSC,
I’m going to need the Lord to pray for me.

I went down to class just the other day,
And I had something really witty to say.
I was just about to speak but then just my luck
{the part where} ? except Garrett never shuts up.

Always have to steal my essays from the ‘net,
Here good looking dont know what to do,
And now it’s coming down to HSC,
I’m going to need the Lord to pray for me.

We’re going to take it down a bit.
(Hums)

So let’s get down to Module A, B and C.
Oooo, Ondaatje’s making love to me.
Oh baby, baby, won’t you come, come with me,
To an imaginary journey on pages seventy two and seventy three.

When I get that feeling, I need textual healing,
Ondaatje is making me feel, so damn fine.
The syntax literary techniques and devices all showing,
Shakespeare is getting my juices flowing.

I’m going down to Kubla Khan, (Oooooo yeah)
And sweetheart I want you to come, (You come)
When I take that Coleridge off the shelf,
Damn, he makes me want to touch myself.

When I get that feeling, I need textual healing,
Ondaatje is making me feel, so damn fine.
The syntax literary techniques and devices all showing,
Shakespeare is getting my juices flowing.

(Textual, textual, textual healing,
Textual, textual, textual.) x2

When I get that feeling, I need textual healing,
Ondaatje is making me feel so damn fine.
The syntax literary techniques and devices all showing,
Shakespeare is getting my juices flowing.

Textual, textual, textual healing,
Textual, textual, textual.

Now, who wants to timecode it for me?! Captions await! ;-)

Get the dialup-happy version here (it’s 5MB or something), or [25MB decent quality version coming, if it ever uploads. Their site sucks. Watch this space.] See this update for more.

OurMedia is terrible to use aside from the whole free bandwidth and storage thing. I honestly don’t mind supplying ridiculous amounts of metadata, but its interface is absolutely painful — and, to make things worse, if I do as they recommend and use their crappy “OurMedia Publisher Tool” (it sucks, don’t use it unless someone has a gun to your head, and think twice even then… the gun to your head may have nothing to do with OurMedia!), I can enter all the metadata I want in its “helpful” wizards, and none of it will make it through to the actual site. Thanks guys. I’m now uploading a higher resolution version again via HTTP, because… yeah, you guessed it, the Publisher tool crashed.

There must be something about that name and crappy software. Microsoft’s product was (I haven’t used it for years) far more stable, but equally pathetic.

I’m thinking about switching across to Google Video instead, but am reluctant to because it locks data in a little bit more… so, we’ll see.

Okay, I got sick of trying to publish it for free… so it’s going up on the same server hosting the year12.joahua.com site (appropriate, niet?). Audio is a little cleaner in the WMV version… but if you want near-source quality instead, get the DVD. Here’s the broadband version. If someone feels like contributing captions, be my guest.

Use a mirror — I’m getting about half a MB/second from mirror.isp.net.au by FTP.

Alternatively, waiting 48 hours would probably do a lot to make the experience less painful, but my theory is I don’t need to think about it whilst it’s downloading, and I have to do it at some point anyway, and they’re going to use the upstream bandwidth at some point regardless.

Interestingly, this release features OpenOffice 2.0 beta 2. The full version release was scheduled for today, but it’s now anticipated to come out sometime next week. I can understand Ubuntu/Canonical’s wish to get it in, though, seeing as they don’t change the CD images after a release goes ahead, and from all reports even OO.org 2.0 beta is a million times better than 1.0.x. Thank goodness.

Looking forward to having a play with this once it’s done downloading. Because of the weird way Synaptic’s sources.list manager works, I’m now stuck downloading some packages from archive.ubuntu.com. Next time I’ll go the command-line route. Bleh, I’ll check back in a few hours.

Or not. I got sick of waiting so I manually changed all the slow sources and started again. Estimated time just went down from 12 hours to 30 minutes, ooohhh yeah!

I’m using a Dynamic DNS service instead of just setting up an A record (much simpler, plus that would mean I could have a catchall on the domain… my current DNS host — also my registrar, Joker.com — doesn’t like wildcard CNAME records, though) because, theoretically, my plan only has a dynamic IP address prone to changing at any given moment. Dynamic DNS services really should only be used by people with dynamic IP addresses, for a number of reasons… the most obvious one being that they are designed to change, and expire if you don’t let them. (At least with DynDNS, which is pretty excellent for the price… free.)

With this in mind, I received this message today:

A hostname you have registered with Dynamic Network Services at DynDNS, sn0239410.dnsalias.net, with current IP address 60.225.85.25, will expire in the next 5 days. This expiration is due to an automatic timeout; your host has not been updated for 30 days, and hosts are removed after not being updated for 35 days. This is our policy to prevent a stagnant DNS system. Users with static IP addresses can use the Static DNS system, which does not have this timeout.

There’s more, I just can’t be bothered repeating it here.

That’s the fourth time I’ve read that paragraph in separate messages. That exact paragraph. Yeah, not even the IP changed.

To give that some time scale, see the quoted portion above: “hosts are removed after not being updated for 35 days”. I’ve manually touched my subdomain’s record once every 35 days or thereabouts for the last four months. Before that, the same situation existed, but then only for three months. Before that? Two. (And before that was iiNet, back in the day, and that doesn’t really bear commenting… every time your modem disconnected you’d get a new IP, and sometimes more often! Though it seems to have improved since…)

Seems to me as though Telstra is slowly and quietly making its dynamic IPs more and more static as broadband adoption picks up. So, Telstra, when are you giving us (mere plebs) IPv6?

VoIP (using Skype on Linux) wasn’t playing nice, so we wound up using a PSTN, with the phone at the remote end (remote to me, anyway) hooked into a sound console with three microphones patched in (as well as computer audio, but that doesn’t bear mentioning!) for each participant. Using VNC (I’d have preferred to use MS RDC, but that doesn’t allow multiple simultaneous users on one session), we collaboratively worked on a website design in Photoshop simultaneously from opposite ends of Sydney.

Sure, it helps that one end was a sound studio, and that both ends were using real — as opposed to 256 or 512k “broadband” — broadband… but that just goes to prove even more firmly how much technology rocks!

No, it is their distribution methods that are at fault here. I don’t mean to launch on the usual tirade regarding their apparent neglect of the existence of electronic global distribution infrastructure, although that certainly plays a part of it (Peer-to-Peer and the role it plays is addressed further on, although hopefully not in the usual rhetoric-filled manner we’re all learning to ignore); I’m more concerned with the way in which, given the self-established impact (or claimed impact) of Peer-to-Peer technology and the Internet as a distribution tool in general, the studios (I refrain from making locale-specific references such as the MPAA, etc.) persist in their old distribution model in terms of their film to home consumption (VHS/DVD) release cycle.

It is clear that piracy is not greatly hindered by staggered international release dates, as DVD rips of most movies are immediately available on Peer-to-Peer networks after their release ANYWHERE, and studio rips of many before then. As such, the notion of staggered international release generally is now fundamentally flawed and is clearly detrimental to the business prospects of the production houses, more than “traditional” (read: VCD/SVCD Asian organised piracy ring reproduction) ever was, if only by economies of scale (whilst a restricted number of people from affluent nations which present a target to the production studios could conveniently acquire these “traditional” pirate copies, now significant numbers of people are connected via broadband in these affluent target areas, presenting an ever-increasing problem!).

The solution to this, it would seem, is simply to use co-ordinated International release dates — this is not, however, an absolute solution, and is still flawed in that it does not recognise the degree of consumer sovereignty that undeniably does exist. It is important that the studios recognise that people do have access to file-sharing facilities, and release their products accordingly. As such, the gap between VHS/DVD consumer release (n.b. NOT rental release) and the end (or even winding down) of cinema screening must be decreased to such a point as to be utterly inconsequential — consumers have no reason to wait, as they enjoy sovereignty (legal issues aside) over their access mechanisms!

It is clear that the time to release between the cessation of cinema screening and home release is now utterly redundant — previously, it existed to protect the interests of cinemas, but now consumers widely have access to pirated resources as they wish, at or even before cinema release time! Clearly, in this present climate, consumer sovereignty is demonstrated by electing to go to the movies rather than simply downloading them and watching them at home. With this in mind, the respective anti-piracy propaganda messages displayed in countries around the world at the beginning of movies are now even less relevant than they would have been five to ten years ago! Then, consumers made active choice to partake in piracy — now, they make active choice not to, by patronising cinemas at all!

It is clear that cinemas, therefore, have intrinsic appeal in their presentation of content, rather than any exclusivity of content that may exist or be contrived to exist as a result of manipulation of releases by studios. If this intrinsic appeal is acknowledged, there should be little detrimental effect in a minor overlap of cinema/home release at the conclusion of a screening period, surely! Likewise, the video and DVD rental chains would not suffer substantially by changing their business model to permit the sale as well as rental of content — it is simply a matter of habit; habit which is proven to be outdated and rapidly becoming irrelevant in this new market of extreme consumer sovereignty.

I have a specific example in mind when I write this article, but that isn’t overly relevant. Suffice to say, I have seen this movie at cinema release, and was going to purchase it from Video Ezy (a local rental/sale chain; there was confusion on their website regarding the respective release for rental and sale of this movie) — but couldn’t. The movie is still in Overnight release stage, and I was planning on studying this film for academic purposes — something that is financially unrealistic given imposed rental conditions, and something which may be easily circumvented through the use of peering technologies. Will I buy it when it becomes available? Most probably. That’s not really relevant, though — I could elect not to, regardless as to legal/moral obligations.

The failure of major studios to recognise this capacity for choice and adjust their strategies accordingly is apparently far more damaging than the effects of piracy and human greed alone.

Well, whatever. I’m still using PDF documents, and probably will be for a while, but I’m going to rant about it anyway. So there’s an installer, right? Okay. Preferred method of installation: Evil Adobe Download manager. Option for normal download? Yup. Why didn’t I use it? Call me stupid or something… I’ll get to exactly why.

So last week some time I was at Steve’s office, and he said that Acrobat Reader 7 is loads faster than 6. I’m not sure if I started dancing then and there, but it was good to hear. Today, I bother to do something about it on this laptop (which, incidentally, has just had a long-overdue RAM upgrade, and still loads Acrobat 6 like crap), which involved going to the Adobe website and following the links, then filling out three dropdown menus to present me with more choices.

Language: English.
Operating System: Windows ME
Connection: Broadband

Wonderful, it’s offering to let me download Adobe Reader 6. Again. I know I’m running Windows ME and that’s a crime against humanity. Right now, I’d argue that Adobe download software and internal policy is a crime against humanity. Not only would it offer to let me download an old version of software, I also had my choice of spyware ridden toolbars and some crappy photo management software which they’re pimping like it’s actually making them money. Scary, no? The first hit is always free… no, I’m not a cynic. Never.

Josh trots off to Download.com to try and grab the latest Reader “illegally”, just for the hell of it, to see if it’ll work on this computer. Download.com, searches, finds Acrobat Reader, downloads Acrobat Reader, discovers it’s actually a crappy download stub (hey, I’m on snappy cable here, I don’t *do* checking file sizes!), which then proceeds to download (unannounced) three different pieces of software. “Ummmm.”

It finishes downloading these mysterious three components. Installer one launches. Yahoo! Toolbar? No thanks. Really, no thanks. No, really, take that toolbar away from me before I do something untoward with it. Crappy Adobe Photo management dru… err… software? No thanks. Really, no thanks. If I cared that much for your crappy software, I’d ask for it. As it stands, I’m perfectly happy with the most excellent Irfanview on Windows, and miscellaneous web-based photo management applications.

FINALLY. This is the part where I have the Acrobat installer itself run. But no. “I don’t like your Operating System, you anti-consumerist pig. Go grovelling to our buddies Microsoft and upgrade, quick smart. And buy some new hardware from some vendor that Microsoft approved so your new OS will run, okay? That’s right. In the meanwhile, we’ll punish you by making our reader software continue to run just as slow on your crappy four-year-old OS.”

Recommendation: Use plain text, or (if it’s absolutely necessary) valid (X)HTML, to send me documents. I’ll receive them in a better mood. (This comment endures only until I move into the new house, get my Linux desktop back, and can resume reading Adobe PDF files without even needing to see their product name. Ahh, Open Source.)

According to the Whirlpool website, normal pricing is as follows:

However, until the end of September (that’s 18 days away, folks), Whirlpool visitors can get the following plans from Veritel, without even being bound to a contract:

These prices can be kept by anyone who signs up to them as a Whirlpool reader for as long as they want, according to Veritel’s press release, available on the Whirlpool article webpage. Ivan Hurwitz, a representative of Veritel, posted a link to a page on the Veritel website detailing how the offer works. This page is not linked to from the rest of the Veritel website, however if you’re interested, it’s available here.

Disclosure: I’m not associated with Veritel in any way, shape or form. I just thought the offer was cool, hence the promotion. This lack of association will may cease in the next 18 days, if I decide to go with this offer, but that’s still speculation. The webpages linked to from this blog entry are available and publicised in an open forum, readable by anyone with internet access. These links are published in good faith, without any malicious intent. If Veritel desire the removal of these links, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Hat tip: Michael Dale

And this is take two, as Mozilla crashed.  Actually, why am I typing this in Mozilla?  Konqueror has nice spell checking and stuff!  I’m normally pretty good, but a second opinion can’t hurt, now can it?  *switches browsers*

Ah, that’s better.  Haha, “Mozilla” is showing up in red text… no, we’re not anti-competitive ;)

Yay.  So, about… life.  Seminar presentation.  I’ve already bitched to half the world (so it seems… half my world, anyway… probably more!) about how poorly I thought it went, but hey, for the other part of my world (the purely-connected, non-“Met” half), I’m ranting here, too.  Feel free to ignore me if you think I just need to STFU and get over it.

Yeah.  This seminar was meant to go for ten minutes.  Mine went for fourteen.  I’ve never been great (read: utterly hopeless) at timing things, especially of this nature, and brevity has never been a strong point either (phonecalls should be billed in 30 minute blocks, not per 30 seconds!).  This, however, was appalling.  As I said, it went for fourteen.  That isn’t too bad, in and of itself…

Had I finished.  Knowing full well that my timing was probably way out, the seminar was prepared with designated “exit points”, for use in a scenario such as… oh, say, the one that occurred.  Essentially, there were premature conclusions which wouldn’t appear premature should I have to use them.

All that is based on the presumption that I actually DO think to use them… oh, yes, that old “thought” thing.  Evidently too much.  So I hit a break in presentation, and asked how long I had gone for: they said 14 minutes.  I thought I was perhaps just over 10, 12 at the most.  It shouldn’t have been panic inducing, but then, I’d just endured a pointless 30–45 seconds of DVD footage due to impossible cueing (my frog, the buttons on the front of those things are fiddly.  Give me a remote anyday.), and knew I needed to make up for that somehow.  I don’t know.  I basically forgot that nice conclusion which was glaring fiercely up at me from the sheet I held less than a meter from my face.

That, of course, isn’t the thing which annoys me most.  If my stupidity doesn’t affect the overall quality of content delivered, then that’d be no problem.  Unfortunately, without my use of an appropriate conclusion, the whole thing falls down somewhat.  The study of ONE appropriation, no matter how in-depth or well presented that may be, does not constitute “a range of” other contexts.

I looked over the presentation again, and I’ve estimated that were I to run the full length of my prepared content, it would have gone for approximately 25 minutes.  Damn, my timing sucks.  I say “prepared” content because I should have liked to go longer… perhaps I’m not a public speaker for a reason? ;)

Despite all that, I continue to agree with others who have described this assessment as one of, if not the most enjoyable assessment they’ve ever undertaken.

But it’s over.  So that probably means I should stop working on it, and focus on myriad other assessments building up, hey?;)

Oh, it’s not so bad.  A moderately huge business thing on Monday, which I’m a tad nervous about, an English listening task on Wednesday, which I could care less about, but not by much, and a Modern History essay which is due Thursday.  Then a week?  Maybe two?  I don’t know… until yearly exams.  Bleh!

And a certain Herr Goldrick is trying to convince me to do HSC stuff.  I’m uncertain why.  Apparently is shall “reassure” year 12.  More so than paid staff shall?  Bleh.  I don’t see why a certain person continues to be employed.  It’s funny, seeing he’ll be present for their rehearsals, and yet Goldrick is convinced that I need to be there because I was there for the trials.  Yes, well, certain others who shall be witnessing aforementioned rehearsals WEREN’T there for the trials, because they had better things to do with their time.

Grrr.

To go off on a complete tangent, my parents are going to New Zealand tomorrow evening.  (YAY!)  This’ll probably mean a several-hundred fold increase in productivity, for various reasons (namely that there is no pressure to “appear” to be doing work of any particular kind — time management CAN occur unheeded, thankyou very much).  The lovely LCD device is going with them, in the hope of attaining a tax break… I don’t know how all that stuff works, so I won’t speculate further…

That’s the last few days in a nut-shell.  Today was a write-off.  Absolutely.  Apparently Heath is upset about the en mass desertion of his school, but given that they’ve never had an established “Bring your school books and work in case it rains” policy, I don’t think he has any right to be.

I left it too late to escape, and subsequently lost a day which could have been spent tending to assessments.  St. Andrews Cathedral School embraces academic achievement and efficient time usage.  What a joke.  Six hours of absolute nothing.  Sure, we did work in physics, the one subject I’m adamant about dropping.  Wonderful.  Other subjects?  Oh, I’m sure I could have worked, had I come prepared with BOOKS.

I’d like to take this opportunity to extend my gratitude to the administration of the school for their astounding short-sightedness in dealing with this situation.  Duty-of-Care and truancy is one matter, actively refusing parental permission to release students so that they may possibly make some use of their day is quite another.

Apparently he is angry.  Well, so am I.  I value my time more than that.  I was looking forward to this carnival, but I can cope with it being cancelled — I’d like to be able to get work done in it’s place, though.

“Normal school day” was a fond catch-cry of administration.  I certainly hope you don’t consider that normal.  This isn’t like broadband, there is no such thing as a “fast churn” process between schools.  Not that I’d really consider moving, anyway — I do love SACS, despite all its capricious oddities.  This sort of thing does irritate, though.  Yes, the situation was unavoidable, but the response left much to be desired.

Hah, the male parental unit is a source of much amusement.  In the morning, whilst hopes of escape still dwelled in the echelons of the imagination, I called the parentals in hope of them calling and ensuring some means of ess-cap-ee.  He was in a meeting, but sent a TEXT message as a permission to leave.  You have no idea how hard I fought not to fall off my chair laughing.

“I give permission 4 josh 2 go home now that the carnival is cancelled”

No joke.  I haven’t laughed so hard because of a text message EVER!  Mrs. Earle found it just as amusing, hehehe.  That element of humour made the day lastable, methinks ;)

Anyway.  I’m off to compose an essay.  Or something.  Hooray for ridiculous SMS messages!