Nerd Pride Radio

My God, how awful!

On Tuesday a student loudly said he supports Kanye in my class.

The next day, he wrote in another student's notebook that that student should kill himself because no one loved him.

And yet nothing has been done with this student. There are no consequences for behavior problems. None.

This seems crazy - is this the responsibility of the school principal or vice principal?! I can tell you far worse punishments are meted out at our grade school for far less wrongdoing! Geez wth. I guess that's stupid because of course anything is worse than nothing? I mean punishments are meted out.

Getting older:
Is it an emergency or is it back pain, migraine, carpal tunnel, teeth grinding, acid reflux, the bad knee, stress?
How much does a water heater cost?
Why can't I go back to sleep?!

Been in lockdown for more than an hour.

Yikes. For what?

Not sure. I’ve heard that a student had a knife.

It’s over.

We were in lockdown for about an hour and a half. It's a weird combination of nerve-wracking anxiety and boredom.

Ugh that's terrible! Unless you're clearly aware of the reason I imagine it's also very stressful. Did they bother to mention it? My kids have had to go through this on various occasions and sometimes they tell them why, so everybody knows it's probably not a big deal, but other times the communication is poor. Imagine how that feels, you know - Is this the day some idiot strapped with guns comes into the room? Or is it just that the police are doing a raid of a house down the block?

I've not heard a conclusive account of what happened--heard 3 different stories.

I fucking hate my job.

The algorithms have started showing me ads for cremation services and I want to know what the f*** they know that I don't? Monstrous.

Every type of work probably has its frustrations and I've been glad to have such minimal ones over the years. Usually if I did, they were challenges I chose to take on in order to accomplish something specific. There were always off ramps that could have made life easier.

But lately it's very much not like that: to do the basic minimums we are constantly being messed with. It's like the average person is experiencing some negative aftermath of pandemic affects on work life, but people have gone very different directions with it: some seem to naturally respond by trying to impose pointless order and restriction on others, while others respond by wanting to minimize such restriction. I am by nature in the latter category and do not find myself appreciative of those in the former category. Like I take it to be beyond obvious that under present circumstances, we should try to be gracious with people and do the minimum to mess with them. If we must, let there be a reasonable purpose or plan. Err on the side of making life easier and not weirdly reacting by trying to control every little thing that people want to do.

Yet here we are, so my Monday can't just involve doing the normal set of tasks I have to do, but you get that extra hour of dealing with people's pointless b*******. You can't get work done when you need to deal with people's pointless b******* and it's also base level insulting. I'm a professional, I know what I'm doing, and I want to be left alone to do it in peace. We have built-in mechanisms to control what people do, by exercising the appropriately sanctioned authority. Why do we need to pretend to new authority? And it's always the people who pretend to care about freedom who will be telling you why you can't have any.

A contractor doing utility work in the neighborhood caused a gas leak, so we’ve been without heat for a good part of the day. In Wisconsin. In February. It’s back on, thanks to gas company employees working overtime on Valentine’s Day and going house by house to make sure everyone is back up and running.

Everyone is wanting to watch The Lord of the rings now that it's on the free streaming or whatever, so by chance I witnessed the scene where Sam calls (at that point Strider) longshanks! It just was so much funnier this time around. I'm going to start calling all the tall people in my life long shanks. If you can reach to shelving that I cannot then you're going to be long shanks.

People I just showed a picture of an attractive potential table and chair set to my marital partner and he said to me this One Word In Reply: HOBBITS! He spat it out like Smeagol! HOBBITSES!
Wtf kind of answer is that when I show you a table, what does that even mean???!!!
It means, apparently, a table that looks like it's for short people.

When the public school celebrates Mardi gras but not Ash Wednesday/maundy Thursday/good Friday/easter Sunday. Sigh.

Morning when you get confused about whether your dog's joint pill is your vitamin. I have successfully not taken the dog medicine, but just barely.

Phoebe wrote: ↑Tue Feb 21, 2023 7:53 am Morning when you get confused about whether your dog's joint pill is your vitamin. I have successfully not taken the dog medicine, but just barely.

I actually have to put my similar-looking meds in different rooms. That way I don't dose myself with the wrong stuff before a long drive to work.

I feel like I'm at war with my students today.

There was a package on my neighbor's porch that sat there all weekend. He didn't answer the door or his phone. Called the cops for a wellness check Monday night. Turns out he had been dead for a month according to how much mail was piled up. He was a bit of a recluse and we weren't close to him, but very sad that it took that long for someone to think "hey, I wonder if he's alright."

poor guy. I don't remember if I told people here but in September a coworker of mine died, they missed work on Friday but my boss called for a wellness check on Monday when they still didn't show up. I've been bummed out that it wasn't a friend or family member who realized something was wrong, it was us. Ugh. Still working through this.

Oh wow these are such sad stories. But a lot of people are really alone in this way. They don't have someone to check up on them, or people at work might well be the ones who see them most regularly.

Is Members Only back?

I think of MO as being quintessentially 80s, and assumed it had gone away.

But I saw a student wearing a jacket labelled Members Only. Is it hip again?

I do not even know what this is. I feel like I was alive during the time period you must be referencing, yet no idea. Whatever version is running, like me.26, occasionally has gaps in its record. This might be one?

TL;DR Get stuff checked out


my coworker passed away this weekend. 53 y.o., avid cyclist. He and his wife had just finished a ride (they rode a tandem) and he fel a little odd, then he had some irregular heart beat stuff, heart rate went up breathing was funny. He laid down in the bedroom and a few minutes later when his family checked on him he was purple and did not respond to CPR.

He had an embolism that caused a heart attack.

Folks, as we all get older (I am 55) please do not ignore chest discomfort as being minor or only heartburn.

Get to the ER immediately. That one thing saved my life back in 2021.

My friend who is a GP said after one of our Sunday School members passed away that it is in the 50s that congenital heart defects show up without warning.

I know an embolism isnt at all similar, but if my friend had taken things seriously he might have only had a close call.

Oh, I am so sorry about your friend! And when someone is so accustomed to going cycling and is in good shape, it's probably the last thing on their mind that this is going to happen. How sad for the family going through this.

Trying not to lose my shit on the last day before Spring Break.

I am so bad at this job.

Just got an email from someone who listens to my podcast, and she said that it's helping her a lot to prepare for her citizenship test. That's pretty awewsome.

Awesome!

Can't get my students to do a fucking thing.

It is definitely that time of year! I can't get my kid to do his homework even when sitting on the top of him asking every 5 minutes. The children are restless.

I have a vivid impression of what my dad's feet looked like when I was younger and he was either a little bit younger or approximately the same age as I am today. I looked down this morning at my foot while putting on my sock and suddenly realized it is the same foot, slightly smaller. I feel shaken by this observation for unknown reasons. I am old and mortal. I have the weathered old foot of a middle-aged man except smaller and only slightly more delicate. Sometimes I catch myself spacing off and making the same expression on my face that my dad would make when spacing off and I wonder if whatever weird thought about geometrical objects is in my mind was the same thought he was having. The great chain of being... I don't know, man. I feel very old this morning.

Couldn't sleep last night for some reason. At the crack of dawn dogs will have to go potty regardless. One of them is like a canine rooster - every morning in the same time and place and presumably for the same reason known only to him, he makes an enormous howling bark. Perhaps his goal is to wake the entire neighborhood but either way I'm sure he gets it partly accomplished. I went back to sleep. Then the kid woke me up. Then I went back to sleep. Then another kid woke me up. Then a couple hours ago I got up and stayed up and decided I should have coffee as a concession to being awake. There's no milk in the house. I had to drink coffee without milk. I don't know what's wrong with you monsters who drink coffee without milk but it's uncivilized and improper. My whole tongue has shriveled and fallen off.

I downloaded this game where are you assemble little blocks that are labeled with numbers going up as a factor of two: 2, 4, 8, 16, etc.. I was looking for a mindless game that could be played on the phone during the 5 minutes I am constantly having to go and sit here and there in the car every day of my life. Downloading this game was a terrible mistake. Clinicians could understand everything they need to know about what might be wrong with my brain via this game. I started playing this game so innocently. Within about 2 minutes I experienced exactly what it was like to be the rat that would press the little lever in the cage to get the sugar water or the cocaine or whatever it was going to do instead of living. It would press that bar as if it was the only activity worth doing in life until it died pressing the bar.. I'm telling you this game is toxic and somebody made it on purpose to damage brains like mine and thus deliver more ad content. I don't understand why it works the way it does but it would be useful to know. It's like all the things you want to be able to do in your real life, like classifying things in a neatly and orderly fashion, are imitated through this activity. You store up all kinds of things and the stores become bigger and bigger and collapse in on themselves becoming ever more neater and well organized. It's like the opposite of what happens as you collect and try to sort the items in your bathroom. The game comes from the devil, that's all I'm going to say.

Have you got to 4096 yet? Yeah I had to delete that from my phone, but every few years I bring it back.

Hmmmmmmm I don't know what version we're playing but if you get to 32k/two to the 15th then the game is probably worth saving for later instead of letting die when you have to get out of the car. 32K is the minimum? Did I mention that it was sent up for me from the devil as a torment and punishment and test of whether I have even a scrap of self mastery? It's like they did a brain scan while I was sleeping and decided this was my kryptonite.

My father is in the hospital. It seems that this lung cancer has returned.

So sorry to hear that. Hoping for strength for you, your dad, and your family.

Well said, co-sign. Will be thinking of you and your fam

Thanks.

The news is very bad. We're waiting on oncology tests to confirm what we think is going on.

Oh, I am sorry this is happening. Hoping you get some answers and accurate information.

We'll be helping my daughter and her boyfriend move to Boulder, CO, next weekend. We'll be driving through Nebraska and near Denver on the way, so I'll be sure wave to all of you as we pass!

Boulder is beautiful. Good for them.

Tahlvin wrote: ↑Thu May 18, 2023 3:52 am We'll be helping my daughter and her boyfriend move to Boulder, CO, next weekend. We'll be driving through Nebraska and near Denver on the way, so I'll be sure wave to all of you as we pass!

Oh my goodness! If you're coming through during the day you should stop and say hello! We could have a lunch or a dinner or a snack or whatever. Depending on your route we are either really convenient to it or could meet you at an even more convenient place.

Phoebe wrote: ↑Sat May 20, 2023 4:53 pm

Tahlvin wrote: ↑Thu May 18, 2023 3:52 am We'll be helping my daughter and her boyfriend move to Boulder, CO, next weekend. We'll be driving through Nebraska and near Denver on the way, so I'll be sure wave to all of you as we pass!

Oh my goodness! If you're coming through during the day you should stop and say hello! We could have a lunch or a dinner or a snack or whatever. Depending on your route we are either really convenient to it or could meet you at an even more convenient place.

We’ll be passing through Omaha and Lincoln on I-80. But we have to drive about 9-10 hours that day, not counting stops, so probably won’t be stopping for a meet up.

The wife and I will be going to Scotland in June 2024! We’re doing a Rick Steve’s tour.