Finished the 3rd graduate course on Sunday. Many of the teachers were like “We’re 30% finished.” I honestly don’t like to think about the program in this way. Learning is a gradual thing. The courses can be hard, but what we are doing is for our own self improvement as teachers. I wont be “done”.
I have many stories from this weekend. It wasn’t as boring as last week. I gained some useful information, and the new coordinator has been asking for my opinion of things. I consider one of my strengths to be my listening and reasoning skills. We are dealing with some lazy and incompetent English teachers, here.
The coordinator has a strong disdain for one of the teachers. She accused him of being an alcoholic and driving drunk. I thought that was a serious accusation, and I held my reservations. Then, the Thursday night before Friday’s class, I went out to eat dinner with him. He was drinking the hard Korean alcohol without any regard of going to classes the next day. When, others at the table wanted their cup refilled, he would rudely order another bottle. What a loser. Somehow he has managed to keep a wife and hold a job.
During the dinner, he said that he skipped 2 grades of middle school. He graduated high school at 16. I thought, “Dude, you’re either lying your pants off or you might want to keep that to yourself, because these days you look like a total ignoramus.”
At one time this weekend, a small group of us were getting briefed from a teacher from the previous 2007-09 program. We were standing around a whiteboard. This ogre like girl saddles next to me. Unconsciously, she starts edging her way in front of me, and I was like “WTF? You show up late to the briefing and then obstruct my view.” I carefully touched her shoulders and guided her back to the side of me. She said, “Oh, I didn’t see you there.” I was like, “F*ing, ogre.”
Last week, I was pretty adamant about buying the Motorola Roi. It’s like the Motorola Droid, and it runs the Android OS. Then, this weekend I found myself overhearing this conversation about jail breaking the iphone. I know that people can jail break the iphone and ipod touch, but I haven’t looked into it deeply. The benefits sounded convincing, and I went back to thinking that I should buy the iphone as my next phone.
Even though I’m studying Korean, I dont have that many opportunities to “use” my Korean. Living in Korea; that sounds pretty unlikely and stupid, but it’s true. (I’m trying to change that.) I’ve studied how to order food in books, but I never do it just because … I never order food. This weekend, I was asked to order pizza and call taxis. I thought it would be a burden, but I approached it as a Korean speaking test. Can Mers pass the test and have pizzas delivered for the starving foreigners? Let’s find out. The verdict was in, and I passed. Twice!
At the end of the course, we had to do course evaluations. And I gave my 2 cents in the comment section. I said that some of the videos and discussions were irrelevant to the course topic. The teacher appeared very passionate about these discussion, but they still had nothing to do with the course. I wrote how the course should be improved for next time and having all the teachers together should have been used more effectively. The class didn’t meet my expectations.
At the end of last week, I went to a couple of my usual dorrent sites. (You know how it goes. I need my weekly download of “So you think You Can Dance”.) However, I was greeted by an error message. It was a lot of undecipherable garble. I thought the website might be down. So, I thought nothing of it. Websites go down, but they come back up.
Well, today. I go back to the website and it’s the same mess. I went to another website, and it was the same message. NOO. I tried a dorrent site that I never use. Gahhhhh! I went to the blog “dorrentfreak”. RAAAGGGEEEE! I see what you did there.
These websites didn’t go down, but these websites have been blocked from the network. And whose network would I be using? The School. You cheeky bastards.
I guess someone has noticed my bandwidth usage. I’m using a static IP, so they must know its coming from me. But rather than talking to me about it or asking me to lower bandwidth usage, they blocked me from visiting the websites. You think you’re *sooooo* smart.
My dorrent client will keep working. They can’t block that or keep it from connecting to peers. (unless they cut off my internet) But they think they’ve stopped me from downloading dorrent files from visiting the websites. lol
I WILL reduce the bandwidth I’m using. But, if I can’t use the school network to connect to these websites. I’ll just visit these sites through someone else’s network. You haven’t won.
Interesting. The camera won’t be released until July. That will give me some time to think about it, and wait for more hands on reviews.
Yeah, it’s a commitment to have one of these cameras, Melissa. They’re big and bulky, but I’m sure you’ve noticed the quality of lighting and focus are better than point-and-shoots. Camera phones are now a gimmick.
November 13, 2008 at 9:48 am · Filed under Music, Techy
I’ve told you how I felt about the standard music players and their restrictions. So, let me tell you about what got me on this train of thinking. It was my modded Nintendo DS.
The modded DS works using a homemade operating system (OS). The Nintendo DS starts up like it normally would. Then you go into the OS like you would start a game. It utilizes a soft mod, so there is no hacking of the DS involved. You cant break the Nintendo DS. It boots and now you can run the DS like a media center. The two key features are playing backed-up games and the media player. With the media player, you can read e-books, view pictures, and listen to music.
Watch this video for a visual walkthrough.
When I didn’t have my PC, I was using the music player quite a lot. It utilizes the DS speakers like a boom box. When playing music, it will go into standby mode, so that it will use less battery. Pretty slick. I’ll use it in the mornings when I stretch or to listen to my Korean lessons out loud. I use the e-reader for game faqs. I’ll load text files onto the DS and revert to them when I get stuck in a video game. Therefore, if I’m on the train and I get stuck in a game, I can find the answer right away.
But, here’s the icing on the cake. Adding music, games, pictures, and text files to the storage is simple. The memory storage is a microSD card. I bought a 4GB card for cheap. Slide the microSD into the provided USB adapter, and it will function like any thumbdrive.
The thumbdrive will work with any computer, and everything is drag and drop. Simply copy your music from a PC to the memory and whooop there it is. There is no iTunes or Zune software necessary. I know where I store the music on my computer. I don’t need iTunes to build a library for me.There are no restrictions to music files it will play. (Well there are a few, but they’re moot). If you want to copy your music and files to another computer, once again, just drag and drop them off. Simple.
Why can’t my iPod or the iPod Touch work like this? (Well, I know why, but nevertheless…) I dont want to install iTunes or any chunky software. I want it to play any music or video format, so that I dont have to re-encode anything. Any PMP, should be this easy and I think there is: the Cowon O2.
I’ve read a couple reviews, and the Cowon O2 appears to have everything I would want. It will play a plethora of audio and video codecs. It has a big touch screen, built in speakers, upgradeable storage, and drag and drop file transferring. How cool is that? When my iPod nano dies as my primary mp3 player, I know what I’m stepping up to.
November 10, 2008 at 10:36 am · Filed under Lifestyle, Techy
Over the weekend, I went back to Daegu and visited some old friends. I brought back my desktop PC, and I set it up last night. I’m still going to dual boot Windows and Ubuntu Linux on it. However, I need to get the internet in my apartment up and running. Then, I’ll be satisfied.
I think I’ll be buying my beerkit soon. Apparently, my Daegu friend has already tried one of the Korean kits. He made me a list of the things I’d need to puchase with the kit, and he told me about his tribulations.
Also, I’m wondering “What happened to this guy?” When I first met him in Korea, he was planning his Tran-Siberian trip. He loved exploring. He was blogging. But since he returned to Korea, he seems so institutionalized (if that’s the right word). He has no real desire to try anything new or break out of his daily routine. He doesn’t blog anymore. He wants to change jobs, but he doesn’t want to leave the neighborhood. He has a girlfriend, and I know she’s a factor. (The way he acted around her made me gag.) For some reason, the flame is burning out on him.
I may have found an iTunes work around. (You remember my previous gripe about the mp3 players.) The solution may be YamiPod. It’s a small application that will run off the iPod and allow you to have functional access to your iPod library. I’ll test it out tonight.
I finished playing Sonic Chronicles on the Nintendo DS. Man, that was brutal. I finished playing the game for the sake of finishing it, but it wasn’t that fun. The gameplay, the battles, and story were all weak. Time to try something new.
I can’t wait for the new WordPress 2.7 update. This is the blog software I use. The new dashboard looks cleaner, more efficient, and functional than its current state.
Today, I’m going to hit E-Mart or Lotte for some pepero. I’ve heard stories of Korean teachers seizing pepero in the classroom. But I’ll hand some out to the cool kids.
Lastly, I was watching a TV program, and they were baking a large cookie. Or I thought they were baking a large cookie. They were putting cookie dough in a pan, but actually they were putting cookie dough on top of a cake. It was cookie dough for icing! Why didn’t I think of that? Cookie dough icing, YUM!
