Category Archives: Random

Spiral Bound Bits of Hell

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After using them for a large portion of my education, I finally reached the conclusion that I hate spiral bound notebooks in all their various forms.

I only bring this up because at last year’s ISOT I was given a spiral notebook as a free sample from a Korean notebook manufacturer. I frowned inside at it, and since I have no poker face whatsoever that means I frowned outside at it too, but I accepted it because it was free and I was interested in the smartphone app that accompanied it. (As used notebooks pile up around me in the variety room/office, digitizing my scrawls and scraps has become increasingly important to me.) I put off testing it but feel that since it was given for evaluation it’s only fair that I evaluate it.

I’ll get to that review in another post. Today, though, I want to trash the binding. As I’ve used the notebook, I’ve begun to remember the reasons I stopped using spiral bound notebooks. (Note: I count anything bound with continuous metal rings as “spiral bound”.)

–The binding is thicker than the notebook which means the binding inevitably gets mashed and mangled if it’s carried in a bag.

–The binding is thicker than the notebook making them impossible to stack.

–If you do stack them, they wire binding gets stuck together.

–They only work well on one side but your hand rests on the binding when you’re using the other side which makes them uncomfortable to use.

Since I’m right handed, this is the only side of the spiral bound notebook that works for me.

This side sucks and leaves marks.

–When you tear pages out you get the fuzzy bits that seem to get all over everything.

–When you tear pages out there’s always a piece of fuzzy bit that gets stuck in the binding.

I remember professors insisting that we cut off the fuzzy bits before we turned in assignments. The fuzzy bits were only slightly less hated than the dreaded slippery plastic cover.

I’m more forgiving of top-bound notebooks like the Nock Co. DotDash Spiral Pad or the Field Notes Byline, especially as the Byline attempts to protect the binding, but they are still problematic.

I dug through some old writing journals and found an old spiral notebook I saved for some reason, probably the contents (more on those in a future post). The spiral is getting grungy and probably about to rust.

It may be time to digitize the contents and rid myself of the last remnants of spiral bound in the house. Well, at least once I finish the review of the one I got from Korea.

 

 

 

Days Off After the Rush

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Had a surprisingly good day off, but alcohol was involved. And food. Lots of food.

Since I’m finished with all my marking, I tracked down closer to Tokyo to join a picnic one of my colleagues was throwing in honor of his birthday. There was chicken of various sorts, including a jerk chicken that was to kill for, steak, brownies, beer, whiskey and, somewhere, salad.

Unfortunately, all the girls were busy today for various reasons so it was just me there. Granted, this earned me a surprising amount of respect from those at the picnic who thought I’d manipulated events to achieve that end. The truth is, I was learning about events almost as they happened.

I ate too much and drank more than I should have at around noon. (Note: Jameson Whiskey melts the seals on cheap paper cups.)

When I came home, all I did was relax as I’m in the “okay, so now what?” phase of post-marking. Eventually, I’ll know what I should do, and then find something else to do.

Getting Ready for the Normal

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I’ll be normal again soon, but I’m not sure if that’s a good thing.

I finished marking exams today and even managed to figure out all the final marks. This means I have a chance to fall back into normal rhythms for a while, at least until I have more free time and that’s when things fall apart. Granted, part of that “free time” will be served under a de facto house arrest where the company I work for forces me to work at home because there’s no work for me to do.

The trouble is, that for a few days after I finish marking, I enter an anxious period where I feel as if I should be doing something and that keeps me from relaxing. Oddly, during those periods, I can manage to waste time in a way that’s not even fun. I’d actually feel better about it if I just wasted the time playing games. Instead, the time is just wasted.

Eventually, I settle down and start taking advantage of all the extra time. The trick this time around is to keep the extra time from being filled with planning how to fill the extra time.

That’s not always the case, though.

The State of Zooming Out

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The end is near, but like the vertigo effect, the closer I get, the farther away things seem to be.

Because I don’t always think things through/have aspirations that outshine my abilities and focus, I decided to mark the exams that are due last first and the exams that are due first last. This will, of course, give me a weekend off.

The problem is, that it is also slowly driving me insane–or maybe that’s the Bond movies (more on that in a different post)–by blocking off my chance to do any outside activities.

That said, if all goes according to plan, and we all know what happens to the best laid schemes of mice and men, I’ll finish relatively early tomorrow.

Actually, because of my odd plan, I have to finish tomorrow. If I don’t, Friday will be interesting in the “may you live in interesting times” curse kind of way.

 

Cake Around Midnight

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If it hadn’t been for the cake, I’d probably be asleep by now.

Yesterday was Hina Matsuri, the doll festival which celebrates/honors the girls in the family, and although we at the traditional sushi, which looks a lot like fried rice with a raw fish topping, we never managed to finish the cake. Everybody was so busy that even I got involved in baking the cake. (Granted, my part involved only waiting, removing and flipping the cake, and several burns.)

Today, though, we got to eat the cake, but as fate would have it, the cake wasn’t ready until after 10:00. (Long story.)

I ate a piece and that, on top of the coffee I’ve been consuming as I mark final exams, has me wide awake around 2:00 a.m. Unfortunately, because I’ve been marking exams, I don’t have much to report.

I’ll make this one a short one then. Maybe tomorrow I’ll have a few adventures to report.

Or maybe not.

 

The End of the Month As We Knew It

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My schedule at the start of the third month works out in twos: two days left; two classes each day; two sets of exams to mark; two sets of exams yet to get; two threads of sanity remaining.

However, I’m also looking ahead to the end of March when I enter a period of house arrest where I’m supposed to be working on things that help me at the school where I work by researching and creating things that help the company I work for. This will involve researching more about the town where I live and running around taking pictures of things and then writing about them. (Spoiler: At least part of the research will be on pen shows in the Tokyo area…)

Somewhere in all that I also have to do actual work to prepare for next year. (Note for the uninitiated: Japan’s school year runs from April to March with a three week break between the school years.) I’m going to experiment with a different note taking system that lets me see at a glance what I’ve done and which classes I’ve done it to. My current system, which I’ll write about later, involves lots of pieces of paper and folders and it’s easy to lose track of who has done what.

In addition to the analogue part of the system, I also need to upgrade the digital/electronic part of the system. Although I tend to use a tablet in class to record marks on the fly, the system I have doesn’t let me use a version of Ms Office or a version of Google Docs. Instead I’ve been using a clunky program that, well, clunks along and has failed to save enough material correctly that I’m wary about using it. I’ll either upgrade the tablet or the software.

All this assumed the final two threads of sanity hold. If they don’t then things will get crazy.

 

On the Nothing New

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A short one today because it’s the time of year when pretty much every day is the same. The only thing that changes is the level of whining involved with what is going on.

This is especially true when you realize that nearly every student did badly on the long writing section of the exam you wrote. When they weren’t off topic or using random topics, they only covered half the topic. This is especially disheartening when you thought you were giving them an easy topic. (More on that in a future post. You have been warned.)

The only interesting things involved ink and pens and they weren’t that interesting. I sent out some ink (and a pen) and got a pen in the mail. The pen I got was not mine, though, and I now have to ready it for shipment. I’m pleased it arrived though, as this was my first adventures with Yahoo Auctions here in Japan.

I now have an actual rating, which means this may not be last adventure with Yahoo Auctions.

Not sure if that’s good or bad.

 

Other People’s Notes and Your Own

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Two of my colleagues have been overseas for personal reasons this past week and they returned to find their desks and teaching plans in shambles. Or maybe everything was okay but the notes the substitutes left were vague despite being reasonably legible.

Part of the problem is we all have our own versions of shorthand that make sense to us, most of the time, but are incoherent to someone else. This is true even when we type things and print them out. Of course, because of this, my colleagues’ problems started when my colleagues left notes for their substitutes who were then forced to interpret the notes and then leave other notes that my colleagues had to interpret creating a written version the of the Rumor Game. Student A says “The train came out of the tunnel into Snow Country.” and after going down the line the last student says “Kill the chicken.”

Unfortunately, this isn’t always the result of group effort.

As my colleagues struggled to figure out what to do, whilst cursing those who’d left the notes, I found myself trying to interpret my own notes so that I could figure out what to do.

There was also a lot of cursing involved.

The main issue is that, depending on the amount of time I have, and my level of concern for the class, my note taking system varies wildly. On some pages they are detailed and coherent, but on others they are little more than random scratches that resemble letters but not entire words.

I finally figured out what to do, but I’m sure I won’t be able to read my notes next week and figure out what it was.

 

Lost in the Gathering Detritus

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At the end of the school year, both my desks typically look like something even a hardcore hoarder would consider excessive and in need of an intervention.

On my desk at school I’ve got student assignments I plan to keep as future examples for future students; student assignments I need to give back to current students; and student assignments that need to be shredded and burned.

I’ve also got stacks of leftover worksheets and folders full of final exam rough drafts.

On my desk at home, I’ve got stacks of notebooks that are currently in use; stacks of notebooks that have been used but need to be photographed and reviewed; and stacks of notebooks, some of which arrived only today, that need to be used to that they can be added to the stack of used notebooks that need to be photographed and reviewed.

Somewhere in the piles are pens that need to be reviewed, pens that need to be sold and bottles of ink that need a new home. There are also random bits of electronics, old batteries, and a cup full of pens.

Eventually, once the school year is over, all this will be cleaned and organized. Well, most of it anyway.

The last stack is a mobile procrastination stack of various forms of work that, in theory, is intended to shame me into finishing the projects. However, they stack too easily and that makes them too easy to move out of the way.

Winning and Blacking Out

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I was watching a game streamer stream this evening and was lucky enough to win a prize in his first giveaway. Then, as I was claiming the prize, and before I had a chance to say thank you, the power in our apartment went out.

It seems that a combination of air conditioner and hair dryer caused the circuit breaker to throw a small fit.

After power was restored, I then had to log back in to everything and confirm that I’d received the prize on my account and then thank the streamer who’d given it to me.

Start up, of course, seemed to take a long time and by the time I got back to the site, the streamer was trying to give the prize away again and they were accusing me of being a giveaway sniper who gets what he wants and then runs away. This meant that, on top of everything else, I had to restore my honor (I’m not a giveaway sniper, I’m a shameless giveaway whore) and then I had to break a fellow viewer’s heart.

Luckily, everything got resolved and I was as gracious and apologetic as Japan has taught me to be.

Soon after that, though, the streamer’s stream died as he experienced technical difficulties. I had nothing to do with that, though. At least I’m pretty sure I didn’t.