One Foot Out the Door

Word of warning to anyone using iTunes. The latest version sucks great, big, hairy donkey's balls! I updated it the other night, bought a couple of soundtracks last night, put them on iTunes and then tried to sync my ipod...

iPod got wiped, but not really wiped, it just looked like there were no tracks on my ipod. The files got burried so far down in the directory that it took a lot of digging through hidden files to find it.

But before I realised that, and still thought that iTunes had just completely wiped my ipod, I was trying to resync my ipod. Didn't work at all! iTunes just kept freezing every, single, time, I plugged my ipod in. It'd work fine, plug in the ipod and freeze.

Queue lots of swearing, googling, and general attempting to fix whatever the hell type of cock-up Apple had managed to cause this time with their updates....

...it took me pretty much 24 hours, 15 resets, tricking iTunes into reformatting my ipod (3 times!!!), god knows how many computer restarts, and you don't want to know how many cups of coffee today just to get my ipod back into some form of working order. I basically had to sync in directory mode just to get the majority of my music on there. I'm missing about 30 of my songs (hopefully none of my favourites), they just won't sync onto my ipod, and it won't recognise the videos at all, but I have music back for when I'm travelling around town.

To top it off...it's started making the occasional weird click/thunk noise when I'm turning it off/resetting/switching to directory mode. Add on to that the random freezes it's been doing lately and I'm getting worried. Am really hoping it's not on the way out.

But, yeah, that's been me for the last 24 hours or so.

What a way to end the week.

Staff meeting today. DOS had his serious face on and was using his quiet voice before the meeting... scary!. Turns out that our school has the worst student satisfaction rating in Australia (79% are happy, which I would've thought is pretty good. That's nearly 80% and you can't please everyone, but aparently that's the worst rating in the whole country for our chain of schools... I'd like to know how much the next school was).

They (the students) do surveys when they're leaving to let the school know what they think of it and he'd taken the worst of the comments (cutting out names etc) and given them to us to see. Some of them were really biting. i.e: Things like the teachers don't know how to teach, they should check that before they hire us that we can and that we're only in it for the money.

Ouch!

Yes, the pay is good, but I'd still do this bloody job even if it didn't pay well. I actually like my job! It's the first one I've ever found that I actually look forward to going into work.

Of course, we as the teachers never hear about any of this until it's time for staff meetings. Some of the older teachers got quite cranky about that (Older as in age wise, not length they've been at the school. Babara, the lady who sits across from me, was having a good old rant... I agreed with some of it. He really should've given us some of the nicer comments that students were saying as well as the really nasty ones). It was decided that, if we want to hear it, the DOS can give us a general outline of what's being said so that we can, hopefully, improve what we're doing.

Ugh... just ugh... What a way to end the last few weeks. Week before last was 'Hell Week' (with exams and ISR's), then the counselling last week and then this today.

Thankfully, my leaving students this week were happy. They enjoyed the classes and they'd recommend the school to anyone who wants to come to Australia *breathes a sigh of relief*. There were a couple of things they said that they wished I'd done more of (Grammar and Vocab) but generally they were happy. Some of the teachers when they went in to talk to teh DOS... yeah, they had to close the door. I always worry when he tells me to close the door.

Right, onto good news. The desk I've been using is now officially my desk! I came back into the staff room today for lunch and the big pile of folders that have been stopping me from getting my feet comfortable were gone. Then I checked the drawers, which had been full of folders and junk, to find them all empty. w00t! I have a desk! And my handbag can now go into the drawer instead of being dumped on the floor. My CD player can go under the desk drawers instead of sitting out in the middle of the walk way.

Other good news:

I has an iPod. It is shiny! 120g iPod Classic. I've spent the last week playing with it and iTunes trying to work out how it works. I think I've got it all figured out (could someone tell me why I avoided iPods in the first place? It's much simpler to use than my Zen). My old Creative Zen is starting to die a slow and painful death. I turned it off the other day and then a few hours later discovered that it had gone and turned itself back on when I wasn't looking. It's also been freezing on me for a while. It started when I was in Poland. I'm beginning to wonder if it was the extremely cold weather that half killed it. Dropping it a few times probably didn't help either.

It needs a name. My new laptop is called 'Precious' so I need to work out what to call the iPod. I bought a case to go with it. Impact resistantish plastic so if I do drop it the plastic will take the hit, not the iPod.

That's the theory, anyway.

I'm going out with one of Mum's friends (who I also get along with) tomorrow night. We're going for dinner and then we're going out clubbing. Should be interesting if nothing else. You know you spend too much time at home when your parents start telling you you don't go out enough and then organise for you to go out clubbing with someone *laughs*.

I'm also thinking about taking up dancing again. Not Irish, I still limp first thing in the morning, and when I've been sitting still for a period of time, so I don't think that would be the wisest course of action if I want to keep walking in my old age, but possible something Latin? There's a school here in Cairns that does Salsa, Flamenco (which could be fun) and Argentine Tango. I'm going to check that out and if it looks okay I might start that up.

It will get me out of the house if nothing else.

Dad: *attempting to imitate my voice* I'm not going to do competitions!
Me: Well, I'm not!
Dad: Yeah, I've heard that one before *laughs*

Oh, headslap moment of the week:

American Tourist in line at KFC: Do fillets have bones in them?
Server: O.o o.O O.O... um... no...
Me: *mental headslap* no.