Things that make you laugh...

[Loren Pechtel]

So, last month, three of my wife's students handed in their vocabulary homework and for their definition of 'Consolidated' all three wrote 'untied.' She gave them zeroes and wrote in the margins that it was rather easy to detect cheating when they all made the same mistake.

One of them has protested before that no one needs spelling, the computer checks that for you.

This month, the same three students showed some originality. For their examples, 'use this word in a sentence' they didn't copy directly. For Scholar:
"He was a collage educated scholar."
"He became a scholar in collage."
"The collage hired him to scholar for them."

This time, three zeroes, she wrote: "I assume this passed spell-check..."

Spel chequers werk grate.

 

[bigfield]

So, last month, three of my wife's students handed in their vocabulary homework and for their definition of 'Consolidated' all three wrote 'untied.' She gave them zeroes and wrote in the margins that it was rather easy to detect cheating when they all made the same mistake.

One of them has protested before that no one needs spelling, the computer checks that for you.

This month, the same three students showed some originality. For their examples, 'use this word in a sentence' they didn't copy directly. For Scholar:
"He was a collage educated scholar."
"He became a scholar in collage."
"The collage hired him to scholar for them."

This time, three zeroes, she wrote: "I assume this passed spell-check..."

LOL

Dimwits.

 

[Keith&Co.]

My wife got evaluated yesterday.
Her boss came in, sat through 20 minutes of instruction, filled out the form and they discussed it. There was something Mrs. &Co. had done to introduce the topic, which her boss marked as not done, and noted in the remarks that she really ought to conform to the requirment to do that.
Wife pointed out that she'd started the topic last week, and had indeed done the required intro.
Boss says, that's okay. But they HAVE to put something down in the 'needs improvement' block. That way the principal knows that they're constantly improving.

I love this shit. They used to do that in the Navy. If you monitored someong performing a procedure and they made no mistakes, you still had to put something down for an error. The XO would not accept 'they made no mistakes' because "this isn't helping us improve."

Of course, when you're forced to MAKE SHIT UP, holding the guy responsible for an error he NEVER MADE, you're not improving anything, either. Rather, you're dumping morale in the toilet. When the guys realize that no one will ever say 'You did a good job!' and record it, or report it up the chain so that the CO or Department Head can be proud of their proficiency, they lose all incentive to do things right. What difference does it make, you're only going to mark me down, anyway.

Then i got in trouble when they found out that i asked the guys to supply a 'needs improvement' topic, something they wanted to work on. I figured it would be better for morale. Make them PART of the conspiracy, not a victim of it. Then i handed in a dozen monitor reports saying that the worker needed more sleep. "Well, that's the area the workers want to improve on!" "What do you mean, they WANT that?" "Oh, well, i explained that something HAS to be wrong, and asked them to contribute...."

Mother FUCK that lecture lasted a long, long time.

So i started criticizing the missile technician's personal hygiene. Should shave closer, should trim fingernails more evenly, hair cuts more often, shower more often than once per week...

Wife is going to start presenting her boss with a list of things she needs to improve at the start of the monitoring session. "Try to lose the Georgia accent in favor of a Massachusetts one to improve credibility with Massachusetts students." "Cannot have a betting pool of just how badly the dumb kid will do on the exam, even if you split the take with the dumb kid." "Do not slam dictionaries on the desks of sleeping students. Other kids will not be motivated to wake up sleeping students, but will look forward to the squawk of terror and dismay." "We read the classics for the students' edification, we do not 'threaten' students with a Moby Dick assignment." "IF you're going to refer to students as 'the future of our country,' do not add 'dammit all to hell' at the end."

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I love this shit. They used to do that in the Navy. If you monitored someong performing a procedure and they made no mistakes, you still had to put something down for an error. The XO would not accept 'they made no mistakes' because "this isn't helping us improve."

Yeah, he failed to make an error for the examiner to critique.

 

[bilby]

I love this shit. They used to do that in the Navy. If you monitored someong performing a procedure and they made no mistakes, you still had to put something down for an error. The XO would not accept 'they made no mistakes' because "this isn't helping us improve."

Yeah, he failed to make an error for the examiner to critique.

Is there an echo in here, or is it just me?

 

[Keith&Co.]

Yeah, he failed to make an error for the examiner to critique.

Is there an echo in here, or is it just me?

No, i actually should have thought of that. I coulda marked the sheet: "Operator did not successfully distract the inspector with an intentional but non-critical error for the purpose of continuing improvement."

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Is there an echo in here, or is it just me?

No, i actually should have thought of that. I coulda marked the sheet: "Operator did not successfully distract the inspector with an intentional but non-critical error for the purpose of continuing improvement."

Yeah, that was basically my point--he made an error in failing to make an "error".

 

[gmbteach]

Ahhh, the things that come out of the mouths of Preppies.....

Today we were discussing living and non-living things. I have this delightful little chappie in the class I have for a few more days yet who is mad keen/obsessed with dinosaurs. Well, when we were discussing if a toy dinosaur was living or non-living, he insisted that they were living. I insisted that they weren't. He responsed with : 'Well, when I go into a space ship and fly to another universe that isn't this one, I will find a planet and I will find dinosaurs on it. They aren't in THIS universe, but they are in other universes and I am going to fly there in a space ship to find them!' Can't argue with that I suppose.

Later in the same lesson I had a picture of Elmo. The same child insisted that Elmo is real because 'he moves his arms and talks'. When another student pointed out that Elmo isn't real because he as sticks on his arms to help him move, the child responded with 'that because he doesn't have sticks in his arms to make him move - but I saw him in a movie and he was moving by hisself so he must be real'.

I wonder what tomorrow will bring.

 

[Keith&Co.]

The 'interview the next member' thread reminded me of something.
Not to minimize or marginalize anyone's attempts to stop smoking, but it was really, really easy for me to never start.

I hadn't picked up the habit by the time i joined the Navy, but i was starting to think about it. Smokers got smoke breaks, they got to hang out with other smokers, there were certain signs of favoritism between smokers. Not that the act of lighting tobacco bonds people, but the chief saw certain guys in the smoking pit more often than the rest of us, and discussed things, so those petty officers knew more about what was required and expected about any project or effort the chief needed organized.

We made a shakedown cruise after the yards. Pulled into a lot of places to check performance of sonar, weapons, power, control... We were never underwater for more than 2 weeks at a time.

Our next patrol, we went to sea, dove, and we were there for 90 days. People packed based on what they'd packed before, not remembering that if they ran out of shit on the shakedown, they could always pick up more when we pulled in somewhere. That wasn't an option this time.

So every single man on board ran out of at least one thing.

Everyone ran out of cigarettes. Four weeks before we pulled in, i saw a pack of cigs sell for $23. Three weeks before the end of patrol, they were scouring the ashtrays to scrape tobacco out of the butts to roll cigarettes out of toilet paper. Then, for two weeks, there was nothing on board to smoke. Two thirds of the crew went absolutely fucking insane. The chief chewed me out for breathing his air. My LPO beat me for using 'good' instead of 'well.' My bunkroom mates took the batteries out of my Walkman because the tapes were too loud when the capstans turned.

The CO realized we couldn't come into port this way, we'd have run aground or torpedoed the tug boats or invaded Florida, or something. So he called his old running buddy, the Commodore, and asked for the tug to bring out a case of cigs.
Commodore remembered that my CO smoked unfiltered Camels (i think he did this just to watch junior officers try to compliment him on his choice of tobacco and cough themselves unconscious in the wardroom). So we brought aboard a case of this crap.

We configured the ventilation such that the diesel was used to evacuate air from the mess decks. They shifted to a skeleton crew and all smokers convered on the mess decks where everyone got a free pack of nicotine.
I was not qualified to operate our system, but i was the only non-smoker in the division at that time. So they tied me to the supervisor's chair, put me in charge, and left me, unable to touch anything.

Forty five minutes of 'Holy CRAP that's a nasty cigarette gimmee another.'

They came back and took the watch. Everyone smiled vaguely, floating in a sex-like afterglow. We came into port at a leisurely bell, tied up, then everyone took a nap. 'Nap' being the technical term for 'collapsed like a puppet post string-ectomy, and drooled on the console.'

I decided i never wanted to be that addicted to anything. Heroin, tobacco, alcohol, sex, oxygen... So i never, ever, ever smoked.


Years later, i read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, where he says 'There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge,' and i had to wonder if he'd ever gone without tobacco for 14 days....

 

[Sarpedon]

Wait a minute: I thought the USN didn't have 'Commodores' anymore.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Wait a minute: I thought the USN didn't have 'Commodores' anymore.

As a 'rank,' no. There's no 1-star admiral Commodore.
It is, however, a position.
Like 'Captain.' There's the O-6 Rank of captain and then there's the position of being the captain of a ship, no matter what the individual's rank is.

'Commodore' is a position of authority over several ships. So the squadron of submarines out of Kings Bay had a Commodore ordering them around, though he had the rank of a senior Captain on his uniform.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Everyone ran out of cigarettes. Four weeks before we pulled in, i saw a pack of cigs sell for $23. Three weeks before the end of patrol, they were scouring the ashtrays to scrape tobacco out of the butts to roll cigarettes out of toilet paper. Then, for two weeks, there was nothing on board to smoke. Two thirds of the crew went absolutely fucking insane. The chief chewed me out for breathing his air. My LPO beat me for using 'good' instead of 'well.' My bunkroom mates took the batteries out of my Walkman because the tapes were too loud when the capstans turned.

Sounds like a business opportunity, bring a bunch of cigarettes along on the next patrol.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Then, for two weeks, there was nothing on board to smoke. Two thirds of the crew went absolutely fucking insane.

Sounds like a business opportunity, bring a bunch of cigarettes along on the next patrol.

it is for exactly that reason that the Navy makes it illegal to buy cigarettes for another person. It's not something that comes up often, but when it does, they hammer the opportunist.

 

[TV and credit cards]

Everyone ran out of cigarettes. Four weeks before we pulled in, i saw a pack of cigs sell for $23. Three weeks before the end of patrol, they were scouring the ashtrays to scrape tobacco out of the butts to roll cigarettes out of toilet paper. Then, for two weeks, there was nothing on board to smoke. Two thirds of the crew went absolutely fucking insane. The chief chewed me out for breathing his air. My LPO beat me for using 'good' instead of 'well.' My bunkroom mates took the batteries out of my Walkman because the tapes were too loud when the capstans turned.

Ah yes. It reminds me of the Great Copenhagen Shortage of '01. There was panic in the p-ways.

 

[Keith&Co.]

I stopped drinking coca cola when I saw what is does to you and when I learned that police keep it in the boot of their car to clean blood off roads where accidents have happened.

Seventh grade health class, our teacher brought in a tooth, i think out of a cow, and dropped it into a glass of Coke. The next day, before we started class, he fished it out. It was pitted and stained. Each day we saw how much damage had been done to the tooth. By Friday, he couldn't find any pieces big enough to fish out.

"So," he asked, turning to the class. "What does this tell us?"

"Swallow quickly," I said. Sometimes the answers are just so obvious....

 

[Keith&Co.]

I very nearly committed murder one night on the USS Hunley. It was the submarine tender anchored in Holy Loch, Scotland, at the time.

One of the guys in my division managed to piss off everyone else in the division just because of his personality. He'd been everywhere, done everything, and probably got a better price than you ever would. No one really liked him, but i thought we could depend on him, at the least. One night, he let us down. I got upset. So while he was on watch, from 2000 to Midnight, i rigged his rack.

Our berthing area was above a few storage areas, so i got a cargo net from a locker down below us and laid it out under his mattress. I ran the lifting ropes up through the overhead and across berthing, over pipes and air ducts and around lights, to the ladder well that went down to the previously identified storage areas.
There were some counterweights down there, too, i brought up a couple and attached them to the lines, then balanced them on the lip of the ladder.

See, my idea was that once he'd gotten into his rack, i'd tip the stack of weights over, they'd fall, the lines would pull taut, and he'd be compressed into a fetal ball in his bunk. I was done a lot sooner than i'd planned for, soi got to thinking. YOu know, in that position, his legs are going to be perfectly aligned to just push his way out of the ball. So i went and added some more weights.
Time passed, i got bored, and i started to second guess the weight required. I got more weights.
I heard his relief get up, dressed, and go out to relieve him. THen the excitement of anticipation got to me and i got more weights.

Of course, he didn't just turn over the watch. He had to talk to his relief for a while. So i gotmad at how long it took him to get down to berthing. More weights.

He came down, brushed his teeth, pissed, then stopped in the berthing lounge to talk to a guy who was sitting there. I didn't add more weights at this delay, but only because the damned locker was empty.

Now, my victim was short and he slept in the top bunk. He couldn't just easily climb in, he took a running leap and bounced his way up on a locker and two footholds then threw himself into bunky. I heard his feet on the deck, then the locker.

I waited a second, calculated that he must be in the bunk by now, so i pushed the stacks of weights over the side.

The weights just disappeared. Gone, just fucking gone. Then this big ass ball of mattress shot past me and disappeared. The weights had yanked the entire bunk up and out, through thepipes and ventilation ducts in the overhead and straight down the ladderwell to Hell.
Oh my god, i thought. I killed him. I was looking down to see where the body had come to rest when i heard his texan accent: What....the....HELL? Oh, good! He's alive. I went to bed.

Seems that he had a psychic vision. He couldn't explain it later, but SOMETHING convinced him to pause, standing there in his underwear, one foot on a locker, one on a little bar welded to the bunk below him. He told everyone for months how he'd paused, then the Hand of God snatched his mattress up and away. "Took everything but my laundry bag! Gone, just fucking gone, man!"

To this day, i don't think he's figured out what happened.

A month later, someone from Supply showed up in our lounge with this nasty, torn mattress, shredded sheets and blanket, tattered pillow.... "Anyone know where this came from?"

"Golly, no," I said. "Looks like someone's initiation went wrong."

"Ah, that must be it. Chief's initiation," Everyone agreed.

 

[Keith&Co.]

I'm in WalMart, waiting for them to fill my prescription.
A woman's at the end of one aisle, with i assume her family. Five kids of varying ages and heights but all the same hair color. They're in relatively close orbits around her, most of them checking out stuff on the weight loss aisle, a lot of which looks like candy, or is some sort of fake candy.

Another woman comes along. She's got six or seven little girls with her. They don't look alike, though they're of similar ages. I suspected she was hosting a party before she spoke. The girls wanted to check out a display of Frozen-related merchandise across the wider aisle from the pharmacy area. Hostess was at about the end of her rope. "NO! We're not here to shop, we're not going to get Elsa dolls, we're not looking at the movies. We're going to get the ice cream and then go back to the party!" So she gathers up all the little girls around the display stand and shoos them all in the direction of the freezer section. Three girls start to protest, but Hostess is just not in the fucking mood to hear it and they go on.
One of the protests was not really connected to the Frozen display, though.

About this point, Mom turns around and does that quick spot-check you learn to do, keeping track of how many of your kids you can see? She asks, "Wait, where's Katy?"
Two kids point helpfully.
One kid says, "The angry woman took her."

 

[Underseer]

A chess set made up entirely of vibrators:

http://www.fastcodesign.com/1662399/vibrator-chess-set-makes-you-want-to-bop-the-bishop

 

[Keith&Co.]

A chess set made up entirely of vibrators:

Ewww.... Suddenly i don't want to promote a pawn. I don't want the queen back after it's been captured. The problem is that you DO know where it's been....

 

[Underseer]

Sounds like a business opportunity, bring a bunch of cigarettes along on the next patrol.

it is for exactly that reason that the Navy makes it illegal to buy cigarettes for another person. It's not something that comes up often, but when it does, they hammer the opportunist.

So the Navy is a bunch of communists stifling free enterprise?

No wonder patriot McCarthy went after the military!