Clearly I’m a terrible liar
SEK accidentally cracks the control panel on the Smart Lectern trying to turn on the lights after playing a clip. He calls the tech people. Afraid that The Library will somehow blame him for this, SEK asks his class not to tell on him. TECH PERSON arrives.
TECH PERSON: What happened here?
SEK: Don’t know. Was like that when I got here.
TECH PERSON: (points at the clip still displayed on the wall) How’d that get up there then?
SEK: It was working at first.
TECH PERSON: At first? Before you got here?
TECH PERSON looks up from behind the Smart Lectern and eyeballs SEK’S STUDENTS.
SEK’S STUDENTS: (SIMULTANEOUSLY BURST INTO LAUGHTER)
SEK: (to no one and everyone) Almost done?
SEK’S STUDENTS: (WEEPING UNCONTROLLABLY)
TECH PERSON: (turning on the lights) All done.
SEK: Thank you. Now as for you lot …
More visual rhetoric posts shortly. For those of you who don’t read my place, this is why. For future/potential legal reasons, I don’t host the images over here, so before you ask, that’s not an option. Hopefully I’ll have this all sorted out shortly and normal posting will resume.
Dude, there are plenty of image hosting services – imageshack, tinypic, photobucket, etc. Just load the images there and paste an embed here.
Since you’re obviously providing commentary and only using still photos from videos, there’s really no basis for a legal claim under fair use, and no, you don’t have to be a lawyer to realize that. Hell, half the “news” sites on the internet grab whole segments from news shows and put their own logo on them (that’s something both sides do!), so it’ll be a long time before they’d even bother with you.
And when those sites go out of business, or their policies change, I’m left with a lot of empty posts. Point being, I like to control where my images are hosted, if only because that way I can back up the pages wholesale on my computer. The problem with fair use is, according to the people we’ve talked to, is that I really stretch its limits, especially when I discuss an episode over multiple posts. So long as I’m a teacher — however long that lasts at this point — I can claim pedagogical intent, so I’m safe. Should I become a real estate appraiser or something, I lose that protection, but as long as I’m hosting the images, they’ll only come after me, not everyone here.
So why are you paying TypePad (which sucks) and not just paying $10 a month for a hosted server with wordpress or something? TypePad could go out of business as well.
Also, I’m not sure how much you “really stretch the limits” considering it’s all commentary about something (you’re not showing the actual movie or reproducing the entire script), even if you’re not an educator. Comment and criticism is prime fair use grounds.
LGM makes money doesn’t it? At least a little? I mean, you sell ads, right? So it’s fair use. It’d be one thing if someone hit you with a cease and desist, but unless that happens, go nuts- this is fair use.
Why in the world would you think they’d blame YOU for it?
You were just standing there!
…in a dark classroom innocently tapping the touch screen a little too vigorously because it was 9 a.m. and I’d just finished a 2 1/2 hour commute.
Meaning I was a tad worried because I would’ve blamed me.
Two and a half hours?
Where the hell do you live, man?
Seeing it’s southern California and 9am, probably about a mile away. Maybe two if the commute is the other way.
I live in Corona, commute to Irvine, which means I must traverse the parking lot that is the 91 West. It’s about 27 miles, it just takes me three hours to get across them. (And that’s with the toll roads. Without, and I shudder to think.)
It takes you three hours to go 27 miles? Jesus. If I lived two and a half hours commute away from where I work, I would be in France.
In decent shape, you could bike that in two. Do you mean round trip?
Twenty-seven miles each way, two hours each way. My heart would love for me to do that, but I think it’d start to wear on my knees.
A bike that is sized correctly will not wear on your knees.
If I had normal human knees, you’d be correct. I think I’ve mentioned it before, but if not, I should note that I played competitive soccer in Baton Rouge, and like everyone who did, we played on fields built over the old airport. The problem was, they didn’t put enough sod between the old tarmac and the grass, which means that there are two generations of BR soccer players whose knees are hilariously brittle. As in, I was diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis at fourteen, and by the time I graduated from high school, had MCL surgery on both knees and ACL on my right one. To this day, if you listen closely when I type, you can still hear the faint pop of my knee reacting to the slight movements of my fingers even if I keep my elbows perfectly still.
Point being, I don’t think biking is a viable option.
Ah, fair enough. I had failed to account for the vortex-of-tragedy aspect of your identity…
I think that you’d get there faster by horse. (I know, then you’d have to find a hitching post… seriously, though, Aaron B. is correct about the bicycle.)
I’ll go break one of ours in solidarity. Years ago they kind of worked, but successive rounds of improvement by the tech people have made them all but unusable.
Funny thing is, I’m always assigned the same two classrooms — one in the Physical Sciences, one in the Engineering Gateway — so I feel like I know these lecterns. I can kick the one to get the DVD to play, and normally on the other, pressing really hard on the touch screen makes the lights come back on in unison (as opposed to having to click them all on section by section). But apparently I abused the privilege of familiarity, because I got burned.
They made you fill out a form 27B/6, didn’t they?
You showed weakness to a tech person. Your life is now worth nothing, and I have no sympathy whatsoever.
Your mistake was to say unnecessary words. Why add “was like this when I got here”? Just say “Don’t know.” Then, when he asks how the clip got up there, simply repeat that you don’t know.
In the trade it’s called “pulling an Alberto Gonzales”
If you’d only spent a few years at Indiana Tech Law, you’d know this.
Three little sentences that will get you through life–Number 1: Cover for me. Number 2: Oh, great idea, boss! Number 3: It was like that when I got here.
Hopefully, in about a month, the special prevarication coaches employed by famed professional liar Mitt Romney will have some spare time and be available for lessons. Though you probably can’t afford them.
Yeah, as I said, broke when I got here is not compatible with working at first.
Classic beginners mistake with lying – don’t over egg the pudding.
Oh, I don’t know. Given that this is America, I expect the Pew Class Evaluation Tracking Poll will show a twelve-point swing towards SEK by the end of the week.
I meant in regards to the techie.
At least you don’t have someone coming in and unplugging shit and not plugging it back in after they leave at the teacher’s tech station. Grrrrr.
Roping other people into a lie brings with it certain responsibilities.
You gave those students nothing to work with.
You’re busted!
Damn it, I should’ve thought of that.
Don’t worry, I’ll be here to remind you for a very long time to come because I STILL HAVE THE DAMN EARWORM YOU GAVE ME!!!
Don’t worry, I’ll be here to remind you for a very long time to come because I STILL HAVE THE DAMN EARWORM YOU GAVE ME!!!
They gave me pills to feed my cat to fix this.
I tried feeding my cat those pills, but it still didn’t get rid of my earworm.
As one of the tech guys at a big state school, it’s worth noting that we almost always know. Laptops pulled to the floor, or filled with wine, keyboards fallen under the influence of Luddite toddlers, poking damage to non-touch screens, and horrifying accumulations of filth tell their own stories. But I haven’t worked anywhere that put faculty or staff on the hook for negligent or even seemingly deliberate damage.
That said, we treasure and share the truly creative stories users provide.
The last time I
brokewas in the room when one malfunctioned, I just told the tech guy “I kicked it wrong.” He looked at me, laughed, and replaced the DVD player.(pet peeve): please stop abusing the noble name of Ned Ludd, the (probably fictional) leader of a movement that fought against the exploitation and abandonment of workers by capital – not against the advance of technology as such.
I’m curious — are you faculty at UCI or just a graduate student?
This seems like a loaded question, but in all honesty, the answer is that I was the latter and will never be the former. I’m a lecturer who’s held on to his teaching position because he knows how to teach, but who can’t land a job in this market because there are no jobs in this market.
You know those experiments with teaching gorillas non-verbal language in the form of ideograph keyboards? They have some really really well-armoured unbreakable computer interfaces. Just saying.
Are you suggesting that SEK isn’t capable of understanding phonograms!?
To be fair, phonograms are so twentieth-century. It’s all texting and skyping and tweeting nowadays.
I spent a year working on the Help Desk for a law firm here in NY. The first, best piece of advice I was given? “Users lie.” I have yet to see that notion disproven, so you were simply following your nature. Much like the scorpion riding the frog’s back, no?
scorpions are generally more creative.
SEK, next time you break some piece of very expensive, probably old, not-going-to-be-replaced-in-this-century piece of tech eqpt., tell the IT guy, “i think the framistat fried. when i turned it on, i could smell melting insulator plastic.” it’ll take a minute or so, before he realizes you’re full of shit, giving you just enough time to walk out the door, abandoning your now openly mocking class.
And then the cylinders started going ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa.