I have in my hand a PRAXIS score report…containing my latest score, Middle School Mathematics.  For those who don’t know (which is, I believe, pretty much everyone), that test is scored on a 100-200 scale, average performance range is (which is the middle two quartiles, the 25-75 percentile range) 150-176, and Oregon’s cut score is 156.  Yes, you read that right, Oregon had the nerve to put a cut score above the twenty-fifth percentile!

*waits for readers to get done gasping in amazement*

This same score report contains just the scores for every PRAXIS-series test I’ve ever taken.  Both parts of the MSAT (180 multiple choice, 170 essay), and the ESOL (820).  And it tells where my current scores got sent–Oregon TSPC and OSU.  It also tells, on the back, what categories the questions fall into, and how I did in each category.

On the front, it tells my overall score.

(more…)

Crime rate’s up, crime rate’s down, property crime and violent crime are going in the same directions/different directions/sideways (which would be a pretty good trick), whatever. It’s all numbers. I like numbers, but they don’t tell the whole story…maybe she had a good reason for punching him, maybe he robbed that bank to pay his kid’s hospital bill…not really possible to say, from numbers alone, how human decency is doing these days.

But then there’s a story like this one that blows the numbers, whatever they might be, out of the water: a fast food manager got shot by a customer who wanted more freaking chili sauce. Fortunately the shots didn’t turn out to be life-threatening. Unfortunately, we live in the kind of society where people shoot each other over condiments.

Hey, notice me and stuff …I just fixed an issue by taking this change (which was made after my installation’s source code came out) and adding it manually…of course I’m not totally sure how it works, but it works…

So…I told the seventh graders how they’re doing (yikes) and handed out Friday detentions, for more than three missing assignments, to over half the class…they’ve got until Friday to redeem themselves from that by bringing in three past due assignments.  I’ll probably still have a bunch.  BUT…the class’s average should bounce up a bit, from this…I hope.

Here’s what got to me: someone (I really didn’t see who, or recognize the voice since it was whiny) had the gall to ask why it was taking so long to get through the book.  Hellllllll-lo!  Maybe because I have to explain everything three times because people talk while I’m trying to give directions, and then “don’t get it” because they didn’t do the homework!  There’s just a chance that that has something to do with why we’ve been going at, pretty much, half-speed.

Today was better, at least.

It just took a very complete backup, a behind-the-scenes reinstall from the nice support folks at MySiteSpace, and a restore of backed-up files by me.  Let the insanity re-commence!

Note to self: never do a manual update again.  Just not worth it.

Note to others: yes, I’m aware that there are, once again, scattered characters in some of the posts.  I do care but I don’t have time to deal with all that.  I’ll do the front page, then the rest as I get to ‘em.  If anyone I’d trust with admin rights wants to help, comment here.

I mean, I appreciate the use of my uncle’s laptop while mine is in the shop for a fried power jack.  I really do.  It’s going to make stuff so much less evil (i.e. I won’t have to do everything from The Old Dell aka PIECE OF CRAP).  BUT…I’m typing this from IE7 (not impressed) and Vista.  Is it an operating system or a video game?

Inspired by our special friends at 89.202.239.9:

eipdswfry khilw

qtwoj xagfuonvw
fwgz pmknqc
qvcjrn
tjxinsghk wqrt

The first thing I don’t need: A throat or sinus infection, something like that, anyway it’s resulted in crazy congestion in the general area of my vocal cords. My voice is in and out. Oddly enough, I feel almost normal (headaches and tiredness; situation normal).

The other thing I don’t need: A new hobby/addiction. A friend mentioned Worth1000.com, so I started poking around. And then found a beginner contest that looked interesting, signed up, threw together an entry…found another one…stayed up a little too late last night outlining puzzle pieces and putting light and shadows on things to make this…which would be fine, over summer 2008 when I’ll have critical choices to make like “mountains or beach,” but less than a month before I have to have everything ready for oral exams, way less than a month before my second work sample is due, and when I still need to do some paperwork so that I’ll have the job next year (and maybe even get ahold of that apartment I was looking at)…yeah…a new timewaster is the LAST thing I need right now. And yet.

I just feel congested plus a little bit of a sore throat, not even the right kind to be strep.  But I sound awful; the congestion must be all packed in around my vocal cords or something.  Oh, not a whooooooole lot of energy…it’s a testing day so I don’t have to bounce around or talk a lot, so I’ll be OK I guess.

At least I can get online from school again.  I apparently somehow (I’m sure all the mean things I’ve done to this poor laptop have nothing to do with it) fried my ethernet card; it spontaneously reinstalled itself with a MAC address of FF-FF-FF-FF-FF-FF, which I’m pretty sure means “hopelessly F’d.”  Talked to a friend who knows about this stuff in hopes of it being something like “oh, it’s this virus! run AVG and you need that patch to fix what it did” rather than hardware failure; we figured out that it was hardware and I needed a USB gadget to plug in.  So I asked the school’s tech support person where in Salem would have one of those; he told me to go to Norvac.  Norvac told me to go to Salem Computer.  Salem Computer told me to go to friggling Office Depot, where I got one, no problem, but I probably could’ve come up with that on my own…

You know someone at NASA had fun coming up with this mission. And writing this article. I still think telling bad jokes is a Trekkie trait…for proof, see me, my dad, and half the people I know online…

Full version of article; excerpt not covered under Geek97361.com Creative Commons license.