Monthly Archives: October 2006

Trouble at School

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Last night we got an automated phone call from Lewisville Elementary which is nothing extraordinary since we get about one or two calls a week from the school.  But last night my youngest took the call and listened to it and then informed me that his principal and science teacher had been suspended.  Given the fact that Justin is 10 I kind of took it with a grain of salt because there is no more reliable way to get a muddled message across than to tell a 10 year old boy something and have him pass it along.

After Justin gave me the message I checked the school system’s website and found nothing there and heard nothing on the news so I chalked it up to a misunderstanding.  This morning I saw nothing in the newspaper and there was nothing on the news all morning until about 9:00 a.m. when it was reported on WXII that Principal Rash and Mr. Snow the school’s popular science teacher had been suspended.  The school system hasn’t given a reason for Mr. Snow’s suspension but they did say that Mr. Rash was suspended because of how he handled the unspecified allegations against Mr. Snow.

This is the first time we’ve had anything like this happen with any of our own kids’ principals or teachers.  Both Justin and my daughter Erin really enjoy Mr. Snow’s classes and the few times I’ve been around Mr. Rash I’ve found him to be engaging and popular with the parents.  Hopefully the school system will let us know what’s going on.

I just checked the school’s website and there’s still nothing on there about this whole mess.  I’d like to suggest that they do a better job of using the site to inform us of what’s going on, and I’d also like to suggest that the school have a number we can call in to retrieve any messages that we parents might have missed because our kids listened on our behalf.  I’d suggest putting an audio archive online but I don’t want to overtax them.

**Update**  Here’s another point I’d like to make.  I know that due to state personnel laws the school system can’t tell us too much about what’s going on, but why can’t they at least tell us if this is a potential criminal matter or more of a procedural matter?  We got a call last week about a pellet gun being found on a student last week so I’m wondering if Mr. Snow and Mr. Rash were suspended for mishandling that situation.  Or is it something far more serious like what happened recently at Jefferson Middle School?  They could at least let us know the potential severity of the situation.  I’ve had two kids who were or are students of Mr. Snow so I’d at least like to know if he’s suspected of doing something really creepy.  If he’s not suspected of something criminal it would benefit him and the parents to let us know it’s a procedural matter.

**Update #2** I got around to reading the Winston-Salem Journal’s item about the incident and they got confirmation from the sheriff’s office that they are investigating, so I guess we can assume that it’s a criminal investigation.  Justin came home from school with a note from Mr. Gale who is the acting principal.  Here’s the text:

Dear Lewisville Parents:

As most of you know by now, Alan Snow, the science specialist at Lewisville Elementary, and Ron Rash, the principal, were suspended yesterday with pay. School-system administrators are investigating an allegation of misconduct against Mr. Snow and how Mr. Rash handled the allegation. I understand this is a difficult time, and as soon as the investigation is completed, we will provide more information.

I will be filling in for Mr. Rash as principal for a short period of time until the investigation has been completed. I would like for you to know a little about me.

I retired from the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County School System in June, 2005 after serving the school system for thirty-nine years. I served as principal in three schools:

  • 1990-2005 Piney Grove Elementary School
  • 1978-1990 Speas Elementary School
  • 1971-1978 Fairview Intermediate School (now Ashley Elem.)

I also served as a sixth grade teacher at Clemmons Elementary School from 1966-1971.

As I entered Lewisville Elementary Monday morning, it was quickly evident that Lewisville has a very dedicated, caring staff that is providing a wonderful environment for children.  During my short stay at Lewisville, it is my desire to assist you and the staff to continue to provide a safe learning environment for your child. I can assure you that we will do everything in our power to do just that.

If you have any concerns, questions, or comments, I will be happy to talk to you. I look forward to working with you.

Sincerely,
signature
Thomas N. Gale
Acting Principal

I talked to another parent who did hear the automated phone message that was broadcast last night and she said that a contact name and phone number was provided for calling with questions.  She was quite frustrated that she didn’t have a pen to write down the name and number and there was no way to replay the message.  This just reinforces my belief that for something this important the school system needs to come up with some alternative messaging systems.

**Update #3** Here’s a link to WXII’s October 31 report on the investigation.  According to the report the sheriff’s office was informed of the allegations early last week, which begs several questions.  First, why weren’t parents informed about this sooner?  Second, why was Mr. Snow allowed to keep teaching for another week?  If it went to the sheriff’s office early last week it would lead a logical person to believe that the school system knew about this even earlier.  I think we parents are owed some answers.

**Update #4, 11/9/06** I called the Assistant Superintendent who’s responsible for Lewisville Elementary, Charlene Davis, and she returned my call very promptly.  She discussed the issues with me and shared with me that the investigation is now in the hands of the sheriff’s department and that she’s asked the school system’s attorney to make sure the sheriff shares any developments with them as soon as they can.  She also filled me in on the timeline of events and all things considered it sounds like they moved on this as quickly as possible.  She also told me that she’s spoken with lots of parents (apparently I wasn’t the first to call) and that she’s happy to talk with any parents. So if you have questions please do call Ms. Davis.

Quixotry = 365 points

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ScrabbletileWhen I was a kid we played a lot of Scrabble in our family.  In fact one of the defining moments in my adolescence was the first time I beat my Mom and I was pretty sure she wasn’t tanking the game to make me feel better.  So I read with interest this item (found via Lex) about a guy who scored 830 points in one game and his opponent scored 490.  They set three records; highest score by one player, highest combined score and highest score for one word (365 for QUIXOTRY).

I feel for the guy who lost since normally you’re the winner running away if you score almost 500 points, yet he was beat by 340.  To his credit that means that if you removed the 365 point word he actually played his opponent even.  Most mortals would have thrown in their tiles after that one. How bad was that pun?

I Can See This Going Over Well in the Miss America Bathing Suit Competition

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MuslimbikiniDavid Boyd points to an interesting product from an Australian company that produces swimwear and activewear for traditional Muslim women.  I truly love watching entrepreneurialism at work and these guys have found what has to be a truly unique niche.  Of course I truly hope the fashion doesn’t catch on at the Outer Banks.

These things kind of remind me of the uniforms the sports teams at a fundamentalist Baptist high school that my school would play against once a season.  Neither the girls nor the boys were allowed to show their legs so the girls would wear these pants that looked like bloomers and the boys would wear sweat pants.  They looked very uncomfortable so I’m willing to bet they would have welcomed this kind of activewear sans the hoods.

We’re Screwed Part Deux…or Maybe Trois

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There’s an article that you can read here (found via Lex)that explains how any one person can steal a statewide election if certain electronic voting machines are used.  Luckily here in Forsyth County our Board of Elections said "nyet" to these machines and the director, who wanted the machines, quit in protest.  The bad news is that she’s now working in the state (NC) elections office.

As the author of the article says the average person will probably see warnings about possible election tampering to be alarmist or far-fetched, but I personally have a few reasons to believe it.  Among them:

  • We’re talking politicians here.  I’d rather be surrounded by convicted felons than these folks since I’d at least know that the convicted felons were dumb enough to get caught.  These politicians are some of the smarter crooks out there.
  • I spent a year or two managing the website for a non-profit with zero visibility.  For absolutely no reason other than having a little fun someone hacked the site and posted porn…twice.  If someone’s willing to hack merely for grins and giggles don’t you think there’s more than a few hackers who would consider hacking an election to be the ultimate in cool?
  • These are computers.  Anyone who’s gotten the blue screen of death needs no further proof that things can go radically wrong.  Put another way, "Microsoft."

So yeah I’d say we’re screwed.

Do Winston-Salem City Council Members Have Internet Access?

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Do Winston-Salem City Council members have internet access during council meetings?  I just checked out online video of the last council meeting and it doesn’t look like they do, but I can’t see what’s right in front of them.  If they do have internet access, I’m thinking we need to check their user logs for those time periods.  Why?  Look what a TV station in San Antonio found when they checked the San Antonio city council members’ user logs during council meetings.  Here’s just a taste:

Trouble Shooter Collister asked Bob, "Do you feel like they’re listening to you if they are on the internet?"

"Of course not," answered Bob,
"They’re not listening to me. They’re not listening to anybody. They’re
turned off. They’re just waiting to vote on that issue and go onto the
next one."

Councilman Chip Haass
apparently wanted to get onto the next issue. During the hearing, he
was checking out the website of a photo gallery of the New Orleans
Saints Cheerleaders.

Haass explained to the Trouble
Shooters, "In that case, I was actually researching New Orleans Saints
things, trying to see if it was going to work in New Orleans or whether
or not they would be looking for a home in San Antonio. Happened to
have some cheerleaders catch my eye on the web page and went and viewed
the rest of their site."

However, the councilman was
checking out their cheerleaders six months after the Saints announced
they were going back to New Orleans.

Hey, at least it wasn’t porn.

Need a Little Help?

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I have a couple of acquaintances who recently became available on the job market and I thought I’d share their information here in case anyone is looking for a little help.  If after reviewing their CV basics you’d like to contact either of them just contact me and I’ll send you their full resumes:

Friend A has a background in sales, work force development, sales
training, community development and multi-cultural logistics.
He is bi-lingual (Spanish/English) and spent many years in South America.  Recently he was the COO for a Piedmont area granite and marble company and before that he was the regional sales manager and office manager for a latino publishing & communications company.

Friend B has a background in computer sales and IS management.  Here’s the description from his last position: Duties include hiring and supervision of staff members in sales, service and business office. Further duties include consulting with Information Services staff, administrators, and manufacturers to develop and maintain institutional computing standards.  Develop sales strategies. Research and maintain current knowledge of new technology.  Manage multi-million dollar budget. 

Perhaps the Greatest Spontaneous Gift of My Marriage

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Frenchiefart14+ years of marriage has offered many surprises, but Celeste sprung one of the all time great spontaneous gifts on me this week.  While on a shopping spree she found some PJ bottoms from a company called National Underpants.  The bottoms, pictured at left, have a Monty Python image on them and the phrase "I fart in your general direction."  Unfortunately for Celeste, and the kids, this phrase is all too accurate, but I guess if I’m gonna possess the "talent" I might as well advertise.

The tag on the PJs was entertaining as well.  Here’s what it said:

National Underpants is the worlds leader in advanced underpant technology. With over 8000 years of research in underpants bending, elastic testing and thong rehabilitation, we know what goes in your pants needs to be able to stay there.

National Underpants. We’re here to support you.

Did We Loose or Lose?

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One of the more interesting aspects of reading blogs is reading the comments that each post gets.  You may think I’m talking about the "community" aspect of blogs engendered by the "conversation" between the blogger and the commenters.  Nah.  I’m talking about some of the amazingly BAD communication that goes on, what with poorly thought out arguments and horrible spelling.

Now I don’t want to be one to throw stones, because Lord knows I’m prone to horrible grammar and my own share of misspelled words, but there are two words that I find to be the most commonly misapplied.  They are "loose" and "lose".  If one were to depend on bloggers and their commenters for the proper usage of these words we’d soon find ourselves loosing games and tightening lose shoestrings.

Why these two words?  I mean "loose" has a very long OOH sound and "lose" has a much shorter, sharper U sound.  You’d think that the two Os in loose would prompt the speller to think "loose" and not "lose", but that isn’t the case.  Perhaps it’s the same mental malady that causes people to associate "republican" with "fiscal conservative", or "pat buchanan" with "moral", or "hummer" with "SUV".  Who knows, but it’s as irritating as the sound of some looser rattling the lose change in his pocket.

Misery, and Every Home Improvement Moron, Loves Company

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I’ve written before on this blog about some of the crazy stuff we inherited when we bought this house.  By far the craziest is the alternate water heating system the previous owner built and I figured it’s about time I gave a little visual evidence of this fiasco (you can click on any of the pictures to enlarge them).

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

First is a picture of the outdoor fireplace that the previous owners had built behind the house.  Besides the fact that it looks like a giant phallis the other problem with it is that it is too short. Some would say this is fitting, but this isn’t about me. If we were to burn wood in this thing the smoke would come in under our eaves and when the wind blows it would send the smoke into our neighbors’ homes (something we’ve been informed used to happen quite a bit).  When they had the fireplace built they had water pipes passed through it and hooked up to the main water supply of the house.  Brilliant!

crazywaterpipes
The water pipes exit and re-enter the house through a hole in the wall in the garage (pictured at left) and then are attached to a radiator-type contraption which you can see pictured to the lower right (the silver looking thing).  After passing through this radiator the water was routed to several other sets of radiators and the hot water heater.  The result?

First we found that the pressure in and out of the water heater was all screwed up so it leaked through the pressure valve.  We had the water heater replaced before the second set of plumbers to look at it figured out the problem.  (For this my eternal gratitude goes out to John’s Plumbing).

Then when we removed the drop down ceiling in the basement we found out that there was a set of radiators between the joists of the main floor.  Double brilliant!  Finally when we had our ducts cleaned we found that they’d put a set of radiators inside the ducts, which of course let to mold in the HVAC system.Triple brilliant!

To top all of this, in my mind, is the fact that all of this was driven by an outdoor, wood burning operation in North Carolina.  So the logic is that you freeze your butt off for hours on end while you’re sitting outside burning wood to heat water in a climate that’s bitterly cold about three weeks out of the year. Quadruple brilliant!

We’ve had all of the water disconnected from our inherited Macgyver-esque alternative water heating system.  My next job is to physically remove the radiators from between the joists and the ductwork, which ought to be all kinds of fun.

radiatorinjoist

Celeste and I were pretty well convinced that we had the craziest water heating system ever seen, but of course this is America and there’s always an ass dumber than yours out there.  The last picture I have is one that I found on the This Old House website that shows someone had a similar idea except they used an old car radiator.  I guess we should thank our lucky stars.  BTW, you should check out the photo galleries here and here on This Old House for some truly nightmarish home “improvement” projects (found via Boing Boing).

I’ll end with this piece of advice:  When you’re looking to buy a house and the home inspector looks at something and says, “What the heck is that?  I’ve never seen anything like that” you might want to reconsider or get some major concessions in your contract.  That’s exactly what the inspector said when he saw the contraption in our garage and it’s a sentence we’ve heard many times since.

Google = Butt Protection

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So I was reading something about Iraq and WMD (weapons of mass destruction) and I thought to myself "WMD might as well mean ‘words of mass deception’."  Suddenly I found myself to be clever and witty, but knowing that I had rarely been clever or witty in the past I decided I better check to see if anyone else had used that little turn of phrase.  Turning to Google I typed in "words of mass deception" and was rewarded with many references including the website wordsofmassdeception.com.  Just as I suspected I was not witty or clever, probably just regurgitating something I’d heard or read and long ago forgotten.

Once again I have to thank Google for its utility in CYA (covering your ass) and avoiding FUBAR (f***ed up beyond all recognition) situations.