Caveat: Chrome. Caveat: Vaio.

Unlike most of my "caveat"'s, these are "real" and not just a convention of this blog.  Which is to say, I am developing some disgruntlement with respect to Google's Chrome browser.  And I've got one last chapter to provide to the long saga of my disgruntlement with Sony Vaio.  

I have been a major user of Google Docs – it's where I do most of my writing, these days.  I like that my writing is out there in the cloud, because it feels safer than having my writing confined to a local harddrive.   You see, I lost well over 300 pages of writing, including two novels-in-progress that I was actually rather happy with, in 1998, to a harddrive crisis.  Since then, I have been meticulous about back-ups, but I also like to put my active works out in the cloud, since that way I can work on them and get to them whenever I have internet access, and regardless of from what computer I happen to be on (for e.g. when that laptops dies – see a few paragraphs below).

And as time has gone by, I've been using Chrome more and more, on the assumption that it would be the easiest and best environment to work with Google Docs – same company making both, and all that.  This was a bad assumption.  For the third time in less than a month, this morning, I had Google Docs "hang" and lose written material for me.  I've NEVER had this happen in either Firefox or Internet Explorer.  So I guess Google Chrome can't handle Google Docs.  Which is downright weird.  But… whatever.  Fortunately there are lots of choices in the browser market, these days.

In other, related, Jared-rants-about-tech news,  my old laptop died last night.  It had been a long, slow, dying.  That's why I had bought a new laptop (netbook, actually) before coming back to Korea in January – I knew the thing was sickly, with random crashes, and occasional boot failures.

It's been suffering from a decaying harddrive problem of some kind – corrupt and inaccessible sectors on the C: drive.  I can still get it to boot into the Windows Server 2003 that I hacked onto it, and although that will be useful if I find there's any data I need to recover, it won't be very practical, as I never was able to find a Win Server 2003 driver set for the video card on that laptop, which means I get a very crappy, lo-res screen when I'm using Win Server, on that box.  I only ever booted to the server if I was doing programming, which I basically don't do anymore.   And the Ubuntu Linux OS I'd installed seems unbootable, too, although I may be able to rescue that by re-installing. 

As an end-of-life review, I only have this to say:  I will never buy another Sony Vaio.  It was a universe of problems and issues during its entire life, from the memorable August day 3 years ago when I bought it.  That one laptop destroyed almost a decade of built-up brand loyalty I'd had toward Sony.  So… good riddance.

Still… I'll miss the high-speed video card (even though it sometimes would crash the box by overheating) – this netbook can't come close to competing, with its slow video card and small screen.   I suppose I was playing too many games on that box, anyway.

Caveat: Des Moines, SK? Paris, SK; Washington, SK.

When I first got to Gwangju, in April, I was inclined to describe it as the "Des Moines" of South Korea.  But having lived in glorious, hillbilliac Yeonggwang for the last 4 months, and returning there to spend the afternoon today, I thought, "jeez, it's like coming to Paris."

I hung out in a cafe (Yeonggwang doesn't really have cafes).  I had a scone.  I bought some real "imported from US" cheese (for about a dollar an ounce), took it home, and now I'm watching NCIS and eating cheese and crackers.  Call it a break from Korea.

After one week of teaching summer classes, here are my thoughts on the curriculum I developed and rolled out for myself.

For first grade:  medium-to-OK;  about what I expected; it could be more organized, but those first graders are hard to manage, especially on my own, so I figure it could be worse;  the best material is when I have them moving around playing (role-playing, vaguely), acting out story-lines from stories we've been reading.

For third grade:  not going well;  they were really into the role-play last month, but I think I got too serious about it, and showing them videos (i.e. Spongebob) to give them ideas actually distracts them and they lose their focus;  I'm going to have to rethink, and change something.

For sixth grade:  I've never had a more successful self-developed curriculum!  They love it;  they come in early and demand that we start immediately, and they refuse to leave the class after the time is up;  mwahahaha – I win ^_^.    They've named our simulation bulletin-board town:  Washington, SK (cf. Washington, DC, I guess, but in South Korea).

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