A New Teacher

Hello one and hello all. First of all, I apologize for the great break in posts on this blog. I have been super busy with one thing another from day to day. I have a ton of things to write about, I just havent felt like posting to be honest. Well now I am back and Im back with a bang! Here is what is new in my life.

As of a week ago I am officially old. I started my new teacher orientation this past Monday and I am getting ready to start teaching Geometry at Windsor Forest High School in Savannah, GA. This is the career path I have chosen, and I know it is what I want to do. I can only hope my first year goes well.

I have done a number of things related to the job.

1. I stopped by and saw my room for the first time. Here are some pics after the jump (online blogging terminology practice is today)




This week was a lot of meetings about board policy, ethics, and so on and so forth. Next week is Teacher Planning week. The following week I actually get the kids and have my first lesson. I am looking forward to bringing technology into the classroom and am extremely fortunate to have all the resources I need either in my possession or at my fingertips in the school media center.

So how did my first week go? Windsor Forest High School has an excellent mentor program set up. I have been assigned to a one of these wonderful Math teachers (whos name I will leave out for purposes of privacy). The entire math department, staff, and administration are full of energy and are very excited about having me and the other teachers along for this year.

As a new teacher I have been assigned as a "Squire". My mentor is my "Knight". This is funny because we are the Windsor Forest Knights. They call the school itself "The Castle", which at first hearing is terrifying but upon arrival is found out to be a fun term that is tossed around casually. Everyone as been positive and that really helps. I have little to none classroom experience, which puts me one step behind most of the crowd. I did find out that one of my new colleagues is in the same boat though. I have already made friends with some of the new staff and have spent some time outside of working hanging out with them. Meeting teachers my age in similar situations makes me not feel as nervouse about the whole situation.

So now I go forth to mold the minds of tomorrow. I can only hope that my goal to help the kids can be executed how I like and want. Wish me luck.

Live free of Die Hard Song

Dont worry about me not posting much. With bloggers feature to save drafts, I have started 2 or 3 blogs that are a few pages each on feeds that i read, recent event, and funny stuff. I have just yet to post them yet. I saw this and figured it would hold everyone over in the mean time.

No one has been wearing their white wife beater and rooting for the new Die hard sequel more than me. I loved all three movies, and just like Bon Jovi, here we are 15 years later producing quality 80's stuff that is exactly the same. Here is a brilliant, hilarious, and totally awesome music video to sum up the ...quadrilogy???

Enjoy

Long time no post

Ok so its been a while since I posted. So here are some cool things that have happened recently

I moved into a new house with two cool roommates. They are down to earth individuals and I think we are really going to get along. My new room rocks. I will give pics to those who deserve them soon enough. I took pics already, but my usb mini cable is broken at the time so I will have to get a new one before I can get them uploaded.

I have signed all official paperwork and received an official certificate of teaching from Chatham county and will begin teaching in August.

I found someone to go see the Transformers movie with that is JUST AS PUMPED AS I AM! I cant wait because I think it will be awesome despite its minor discrepancies from the cartoon.

This trailer was released and I think "Shoot Em Up" is going to be a SWEET movie.

I am STILL playing Ogame and I am rocking. Almost all my mines on all my planets are level 20 or higher...(almost)

I started playing Windwaker again...hrmmm...

Vultron Gets Served

I used to worship Voltron as a kid and i used to have the sweet toys that added up to make the voltron guy. I almost died when I saw this because I laughed so hard i couldnt breath.

Strategy gaming dream come true

I am a HUGE fan of strategy games. I was at the store the day Warcraft I and II (not WOW) came out. I drooled when I found out that Command and Conquer was releasing a new sequal. But my favorite strategy/war game of all time was Starcraft. I absolutely love the inovation, fun, and overal play of the game. There isnt anything much more brilliant than the design of the alien Zergs and the keen sharpness of the Protoss.

Every few weeks someone comes out with supposed screen shots of a new game. After years of rumors and MUCH hiding on Blizards part, they have finally announced an official sequal to one of my favorite games of all time. And when I say annoucned, I dont mean then intend to or they are going to...I mean they have developed most of the game and put up an official website for it. With all the millions they have comming in from WOW, there is no way this game will not have the funds to rock everyones face off.

Now all Blizzard has to do is throw "Battle.net" in a trash can, shape up a new connection system, and let everyone lean back and have a good time.

From the looks of the site, there are TONS of new units and plenty of sweet new graphics (all 3d like Warcraft 3) but they havent added a bunch of new species with overcomplicated systems and weird attributes. I loved WC3, but the addition of the night elves AND the undead was too much. Not to mention they were tactical nightmares to learn, but once learned...dominated everything and everyone leaving new players in the dust (as usual for most online games...oops!). They are sticking to 3 (i think) species in the new game, but concentrating on making the game innovative and good.

Now I just have to go get a computer that will actually PLAY this beast of a game/resource monster. Check out the videos of the hi def play...SWEET!

Spiderman 3

SO for those of you who know me, you know that I have kind of wanted to see Spidey 3 for a while. While I did not have high expectations for the movie, there were a few things I was looking forward to.

1. Venom as a badguy
2. Sandman as a badguy
3. The black suit in general (not just Venom)

While destroying plot lines and utterly disappointing comic book readers across the nation by doing everything short of ultimately been posted on golden-rod paper with flashy lights and a neon border, the spider man series has, up to this point, remained a pretty decent series of movies. The first one, while cheesy was one of the first comic book movies so it is difficult to look back and actually judge it. I had a pleasurable viewing experience with it many years ago and havent really seen it since. Spiderman 2 was great. Doc Oc was played perfectly. One of the major boundaries for comic book movies is the line between actual/comic book reality. For instance, wolverines original suit in XMEN the comics was bright yellow...which had to be translated to black...this, with much thought, was pulled off rather seamlessly and made most people happy with its execution.

Most of the things in the movie were CG. I think I remember parts where CG animals were put into shots to make it look better, and simply made the entire movie robust and completely non-fluid. There was a lot of action, I will give it that. The movie jumps off to a quick start, and keeps the action at a steady pace most of the film, but there are HUGE sections of random romance and CHEESY dialog...not the necessary romance dialog you usually find in these kinds of films...these were shots of total cheeseball crap that made you just want to get up. For instance, the scene where Spiderman/Peter Parker get consumed by the suit and they are trying to shot how it changes his everyday attitude is totally ridiculous, contradicatory to the meaning of the suit itself, and serves no purpose other than pissing me off and earning a few cheap laughs from idiotic audience members.

Sand man was pulled off perfectly and was by far the coolest part of the whole movie. This movie is worth going to pay for just to see his scenes. I felt like his creation (how he became the sand man) was shoddily thrown together just so that they could pack in more crap. The reason for this is my major complaint...TOO MANY BADGUYS. There are easily enough bad guys in this single movie to make 3 movies in itself. Ultimately they took every idea that hit the cutting board before Toby McGuires contract ran out and shoved all of them into one film. They kill the whole Venon/Eddie Brock story by jamming it to the side, and the ambiant life/suit just seems to randomly fall from the sky in the intro sequence rather than its actual arrival story. What they should have done was choose one cool vilian and make one sweet movie out of it.

Now to my final and ultimate complaint. VENOM SUCKED. The black suit was cool on spidey and they pulled the look off fine, but when the suit gets to Eddie Brock the crap hit the fan. WHile everything in the movie was CG, the one person that should have been ENTIRELY cg was NOT. When I think of venom this is what I think of...when the suit is busy taking over peoples bodies and being by itself it is amazing and has all kinds of cool special affects...I thought for sure an AWESOME spidey/venom fight was on the way...

What does the viewer get instead? Instead we are delivered a man in a cheap outfit that has some CG teeth. Venom is supposed to have dripping saliva, huge muscles....think ALIEN...instead it looks like just another person in a different colored spidey suit. His head is not even the right shape...it looks like a normal persons head...See the pic above linked to see what im talking about. I was completely and utterly disappointed with the execution of this baddie. They have prety much ruined one of the best bad guys of all time. What few scenes he did have were ruined by the clutter of him only being involed with a 4 person battle between sandman, green goblin, venom, and spidey (TOO MUCH GOING ON, TOO MANY VILLIANS!).

I repeat. Sandman was sweet and totally worth seeing, but the rest of this movie was just a big CG orgasm mess that I dont want to be responsible for cleaning up. Thank got this series is over.

Last.fm

So I just got back into Last.fm (formally Audioscrobbler). Its a site that keeps track of what you listen to in ITunes or whatever player you use and gives you recommendations. Its very low maintenance and straight foward to use.

My Page is here. This will give you an idea of what I have listened to recently. I also added a "Recently played" list to the right side of my blog for (for the few readers who actually read the blog and not the feed).

Also, I updated my blog pic.