The Syndicate

G-Man wrote: ↑Sun Jul 18, 2021 11:08 pm It seems that I am becoming more and more of a stranger around here, and that is partly (mostly?) my own fault. I’m still very busy at work (don’t ever ask school district business office staff what they do all summer or you may get slapped), but I am also dealing with some medical fun as well.

Over a month ago, my bad knee (ACL replacement in 2008) crunched in a way that it sometimes does but this incident didn’t let up like in the past. I thought it might get better in time but after two weeks it was clear it wasn’t just going to go away. Luckily I had my annual physical coming up.

The week before my appointment, my knee swelled up like a grapefruit and the swelling seemed to cause more pain than the previous few weeks. My doctor put me on a hardcore ibuprofen regimen for a week to bring down the swelling and said he would send a referral in for an orthopedic appointment.

The swelling went down, but the doctor didn’t send in my referral for a full week. Then it took almost another full week for the ortho to call. At the appointment last Friday, the doc spent all of three minutes in the room and told me we needed to do some imaging to figure out what’s up. He also wiggled my leg around and said it didn’t seem to be my ACL at the very least.

The earliest they could schedule me for imaging is August 1st- the day I get back from my family vacation. Then the doc will be on vacation the rest of that week, so my follow-up appointment for him to read the MRI will be a full two months after the initial crunch that started it all.

In the meantime, I can’t fully straighten my knee joint and I get sudden flashes of stabbing pain stronger than anything I have felt in a long time. Happy summer to me, right?

Anyway, it might take me longer than I hoped to get back into action around here than I thought it might. Just wanted to let you know why.

"Old age has little to recommend it, but at least I can do as I please."

Pretty inaccurate quote, it seems.

Get well G. Let me know if you kneed anything.

Try $125 per plexiglass desk barrier.

Dragon D. Luffy wrote: ↑Wed Dec 09, 2020 6:42 pm So, I finally got a job, after 3 years looking (in the meantime I did an internship for 6 months, but it wasn't an employment in the strict legal sense). As a logistics analyst in a big company. It's located in one of the cities that make the São Paulo metropolis, though for now the job will be as home office, which means I'm probably only moving there after the pandemic ends.

I'm saying it here since I always tell everyone when things aren't going well, so imma tell when they are going well too! 2020 wasn't that bad, in the end.

Gainful employment attainment after that long of a stretch truly boosts the morale. I should know. Good luck to you.

See.

I would've poured red food coloring all over my face and yelled DADDY GOT SHOT.

But I'm a decent human being and would not do that to my children.

Welcome to parenthood.

Dragon D. Luffy wrote: ↑Thu May 02, 2019 10:16 am For my next game I think I'm going to ban night posting. Not that I think there is anything wrong with it, but mafia is so more relaxing when you have a day to take a break, not worry about the game, and maybe even catch-up. Especially in a 48 hour game.

What do you guys think?

I'm going to be implementing in all my games moving forward.

dunya wrote: ↑Mon Apr 22, 2019 5:20 pm i had the longest pee of my life. holy crap. it felt amazing. that is all.

I have now just heard someone describe her pee as a holy crap.

I buy my own pencils and pens to give out to students lacking one.

And I am impressed if a student phrases a question using something resembling a subject and a predicate at the same time.

Isn't DDL from South America? Don't they dish out beat downs for things like that?

Dragon D. Luffy wrote: ↑Fri Apr 19, 2019 3:18 pm

Epignosis wrote: ↑Fri Apr 19, 2019 3:16 pmNarc.

If the teacher catches the plagiarism (which he already said he has the tools for, so I wonder who those guys are trying to fool), I could fail the module because of it.

Well, hope my responses so far convinced them.

I'm teasing.

These people are dumbasses for even posting their intentions.

Narc.

Sloonei wrote: ↑Thu Apr 18, 2019 7:52 pm There’s something poetic about cheating on an ethics assignment.

DDL should abort his group.

I fucking hated group work.

Perhaps.

I just got a sign from God that I am going to be done teaching after this year. A few of them, truth be told.

We are the same soul in two different bodies.

Or, if you prefer, the same wine in two different glasses.

G-Man wrote: ↑Thu Mar 14, 2019 8:38 pm Breaking news: Lori Loughlin’s defense team has added John Stamos as a character witness. They anticipate he’ll ask the judge and jury to have mercy.

I laughed.

Straight up hammock weather today.

For once, I am glad that one of my students failed at something.

Think about it.

A website dedicated to a Japanese series and is named after a cartoon pirate ship is afraid of their competitors.

Okay then.

Damn, I knew I had left something.

Acid splash.

Happy Groundhog Day.

Winter has not been bad at all for us in NC this year, touch wood.

I am in the hunt for a "did not participate" trophy.

I think that's the real prize.

One of our students was shot and killed either last night or this morning.

This shit keeps getting harder.

Someone said that "he had a bot watch over 1,000 hours of Hallmark Christmas movies and write its own Christmas movie."

I don't know to what extent this is true, but the script is gold.

juliets wrote: ↑Thu Dec 06, 2018 6:10 pm

Turnip Head wrote: ↑Thu Dec 06, 2018 11:13 am My car caught on fire yesterday No one was hurt.

OMG TH what happened?

His car's name is Russell Westbrook.

dunya wrote: ↑Fri Oct 26, 2018 1:29 pm

Sloonei wrote: ↑Thu Oct 25, 2018 2:59 pm Have you thought of any good curse word substitutes?

I've gone back to saying "poop" and "ouf" and "grrrr" a lot. Also, "akhh" and darn it! I should probably lose the poop since I'm not 4 years old. ;-p

got any good ones?

"Bob Saget!"

I miss the real Lizzy.

That sad truth is that many of those 18-year-olds are freshmen.

Turnip Head wrote: ↑Thu Oct 11, 2018 3:36 pm I feel completely safe posting here.

Oh, do ya now?

Might be our first area of total agreement.

Today I learned something. Always glad when that happens.

I'm not going to lie:

The first thing I think of when someone says "Brazilian" is this:

Blows me away that Trump has a Brazilian cousin and yet he still wants a wall.

I drink, therefore I do not judge.

DharmaHelper wrote: ↑Tue Oct 02, 2018 10:48 pm

Epignosis wrote: ↑Tue Oct 02, 2018 10:45 pm

DharmaHelper wrote: ↑Tue Oct 02, 2018 10:35 pm One of my old HS teachers had an intake/outtake system. Kinda dumb in retrospect but basically a bin for each period with graded work stapled together or w/e.

I have a bin for each period and an out bin.

Students routinely put their work in the wrong bin (including the out bin). That results in delays (but I get to it eventually, since it's somewhere on my desk). They just bitch that they got a zero for something that they turned in.

What you need is a T-Shirt canon. Blast the lil fuckers with plastic tins containing 3 pounds of homework and written essay projects.

Yes. Cannons at school. I will surely be keeping my job.

DharmaHelper wrote: ↑Tue Oct 02, 2018 10:35 pm One of my old HS teachers had an intake/outtake system. Kinda dumb in retrospect but basically a bin for each period with graded work stapled together or w/e.

I have a bin for each period and an out bin.

Students routinely put their work in the wrong bin (including the out bin). That results in delays (but I get to it eventually, since it's somewhere on my desk). They just bitch that they got a zero for something that they turned in.

DharmaHelper wrote: ↑Tue Oct 02, 2018 10:34 pm
Easy fix

"Who wants to hand back these papers?"

Easy way to lose your teaching license.

Grades are protected by FERPA.

"Under FERPA a school may not disclose a student’s grades to another student without the prior written consent of the parent or eligible student."

I have been teaching for ten years.

Today I got a walk-through observation from an administrator, my first of this school year.

Today, after ten years of teaching, I have received a piece of criticism that I have never before received, and would wager that, if I taught for another hundred, I would never receive again.

It must be the key to unlocking my fullest potential as a teacher. It can't possibly be anything else.

Do you want to know what it is?

Here it is:

I am inefficient at handing back students' papers.

That's it, folks.

Someone who makes a lot more money than I do dropped that pearl of teaching wisdom on me this afternoon in an email.

To be clear, the issue is not that I wait too long to give back student work (which is a criticism I'd own, because I do find myself behind with grading).

It's that I am physically too fucking slow when I hand students back their graded work.

I am a turtle.

I am the Shizo Kanakuri of returning student work (look him up).

Your grandma could hand back papers faster than me.

I want to respond, but I fear the administrator will have retired and died before I successfully hit the "send" button.

Maybe I could say, "I used to be able to hand out papers like you, but then I took an arrow to the knee."

Nope.

No.

I refuse to accept this.

I am going to write back:

"Fuck you. I quit. The United States Postal Service just hired me."

I don't think there are many more encouraging scenarios than that. Well done.

Dragon D. Luffy wrote: ↑Fri Sep 21, 2018 8:20 pm So I finally got invited to a real life job interview, after a year (I had done a few internet ones). And it's at the big aircraft manufacturer of my country, so it's a good one.

Not sure if I'll get in since there seems to be some competition, but it feels good, man. I was starting to feel like I was unemployable.

It will be tuesday, only two days after I do that exam for a public job I mentioned on Discord, in a completely different city, so that will be 5 days of travelling starting from tomorrow. It's okay though, this makes me feel more alive.

DharmaHelper wrote: ↑Sun Sep 16, 2018 5:44 pm

Epignosis wrote: ↑Sun Sep 16, 2018 5:43 pm Can you talk Aces into doing likewise?

Probably not RE: Costume pictures, but probably RE: New Orleans pictures lol.

Got it.

Can you talk Aces into doing likewise?

I'd be interested in seeing what you come up with.

Though I acted a long time ago, I never got into the live-action RPG thing. I do like seeing the costumes though.

We want to go when the kids are teenagers.

And there is no way in hell the lady of the house would dare set foot in NYC in under 60F weather.

DharmaHelper wrote: ↑Wed Sep 12, 2018 9:17 pm Just play the new Spiderman game and swing by Central Park

In Florida, I saw a billboard for an erectile dysfunction drug.

The reverse of that same billboard showed Spider-Man (ad for Universal Studios), and said "SWING INTO A NEW ADVENTURE!"

So about the trip:

Our visit to NJ and Manhattan was far more educational than I expected. I learned a college class worth of history, architecture, and presidential mysteries. Our second tour guide was part stand-up comic, part history professor (I did exchange the favor by giving him an art lesson on a structure that had always perplexed him), but he was top-notch.

Small sample size, sure, but avoid the fancy expensive restaurants there. They aren't very good, the service sucks, and the experience is costly. Instead, opt for the cheap hole-in-the-wall places. Dear God, these are people who have mastered their crafts! In a fancy place, I got soggy fried chicken smothered with a heavy handed sauce and linguine (really?). In the shit hole pizza place, I had two slices ($2.50 a slice!) of the best thin-crust pizza I think I've ever had, made by a guy who barely spoke English, but knew the language of deliciousness.

Speaking of languages, I heard more foreign languages than English. You can people watch all you want. Forget understanding a word they're saying.

The smells of the city are just as diverse. One moment you smell glorious cuisines; the next, it's something that's already been digested. The wind blows a lot.

We didn't get to make it to Central Park because of a fucking Labor Day parade (a week after Labor Day), but a student informed me today that Central Park isn't anything to write home about, so I'll take her word for it and feel okay that we missed out on it.

Times Square is a great place to go to buy things and get trampled.

Speaking of Times Square, the New Years ball doesn't actually drop to the bottom of the pole. It stops sooner because Toshiba wanted more ad space. I saw the ball and it wasn't even close to the bottom of the pole. More lies our media feeds to us. Also, Walgreens is the only tenant in that particular building.

The welcome party was lovely. The first person I met was from Orlando (my wife's home town), and the second person I met was from my home town, so that was weird. The food was good and there was an open bar, so I had a good time.

The least favorite part of my trip, I am sorry to say, was the football watch party the next day. The food was great, and the open bar was in constant demand by yours truly (staffed by the greatest bar staff I have ever witnessed- 45 seconds tops to be served), but the place was miserably crowded and loud. We were at a table full of insufferable Browns fans (made all the more insufferable by overtime...which ended in a tie ). We met Brandon Jacobs and Tiki Barber and got autographs and pictures. The Carolina game was boring. Three of my players got injured, so I didn't win any money. I met a guy from Toronto who was in charge of placing signs for the event and he informed me that he hates "fucking Rush." So I met the the Canadian version of The Dude.

Despite the parking garage being across the street from the hotel (it cost $102 to park for the weekend, by the way), it took me ten minutes to get from the garage to the hotel.

You could not pay me to live there.

But you could pay me to visit.