Good Morning, 2010! The Princess' Diary Intarwebs Edition

[Luther Lansfeld]

I'm pretty sure you just insulted everyone Yoshi!

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

This weekend was awesome. Birthday weekend, had a friend visiting from the other side of the country, met up with him and about 12 other friends on Friday evening. DDRed myself half to death, then dragged people back to my house for a few hours.
Saturday, went wandering into town again, DDRed more, said goodbye to a friend who's off to university. Then back home to meet more people for a birthday evening consisting of singing along to the original Kanto Pokerap, You Are a Pirate and playing random games about Pokemon and games. Got to sleep at about 6am.
Woke up the next day, lurked at home for a while before meeting some friends in town for food and drinks.

Long story short, 'twas an awesome weekend. I keep getting told I'm old now, which is quite funny given that I'm one of the younger members of the DL~

I keep getting the impression you live in one of those really cliched slice-of-life anime where you're sent to a retirement home when you hit the age of 22.

[NotMiki]

never trust anyone older than 15.

[OblivionKnight]

Yeah.  They're too old to kiss at that point.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

[20:25] <Hello-StrawmanthedralWaddleDee> ... holy fuck
[20:25] <Hello-StrawmanthedralWaddleDee> holy fuck
[20:25] <Hello-StrawmanthedralWaddleDee> holy fuck my mom is moving out holy fuck my sister is moving in holy fuck what are we going to -do-

[Idun]

There go all the home cooked meals~

(on a side note, is this a bad thing?)

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

I have no fucking -clue-. It's different and change terrifies me.

EDIT: My mother's moving out ain't happening until December, though, so I at least have some time to digest this.

[Cotigo]

[20:25] <Hello-StrawmanthedralWaddleDee> ... holy fuck
[20:25] <Hello-StrawmanthedralWaddleDee> holy fuck
[20:25] <Hello-StrawmanthedralWaddleDee> holy fuck my mom is moving out holy fuck my sister is moving in holy fuck what are we going to -do-

I have no fucking -clue-. It's different and change terrifies me.

EDIT: My mother's moving out ain't happening until December, though, so I at least have some time to digest this.

Uh.

Um.  I... don't understand.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Uh.

Um.  I... don't understand.

Is not his mom supposed to try and get rid of him? I concur.

[Bardiche]

Teacher: "Okay, so we need a responsible volunteer to organise some of this stuff. They'll also be responsible for communications with management and to communicate the students' wishes to us. So, any volunteers?"
Silence.
"Okay! So why don't we have Bard do it?"

And this is a story all about how my life got flip turned upside down. And I'd like to take a moment so sit right down I'll tell you 'bout how I became part of the student council.

... Actually, I still don't know how that happened, exactly. Uh, yay?

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

And thus another harem anime starts.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Harem animes would be better if they were more like Bel-Air.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

There's not much that could make most harem anime even worse. Of course, add the Gundam Wing cast and you just accomplished that.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Somehow I have faith in harem anime to find a way.

[NotMiki]

I dunno man, I mean, Akikan already happened.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Akikan has the Gundam Wing cast?

[NotMiki]

the Gundam Wing cast could only make it better.  Significantly so.

[Hunter Sopko]

the Gundam Wing cast could only make it better.  Significantly so.

[DjinnAndTonic]

The premise of Gundam-based Akikan frightens me far more than just Akikan. Most of all because it suddenly turns the giant mech genre into giant mech porn (well, moreso than the budget hentai-doujinshi industry already has...).

----

Unrelated note!

Today my students were tasked with crafting their own poems in English. We gave them a -very- restricted format and a bunch of suggested easy topics like "Moon, Stars, Hope, Friends," etc.

One of my students came up with this little gem, following our strict 1/2/3/4/1-word format:

Stars
Fighting Friends
Ada, Claire, Leon
Now they're so dead
Tyrant

I chuckled.


Another student picked "Sky" for his topic, and it struck my creative streak.

Sky
It's blue.
Sunny, Cloudy, Rainy,
She has many faces
_____

He couldn't think of an ending for this cute little poem, and it admittedly stumped me. I don't quite know what his intention was, and I couldn't think of a good suggestion for him.

So after mulling it over for a bit, I became curious how the DLers might finish it.

[NotMiki]

*waving up at the sky* Hello!

[Cotigo]

*Staring fixated on his hands.*  Whoa...

[Bardiche]

Hah, that is cute.

---

In other school related news, we finally met face-to-face with the guy doing our timetables. Who turns out to be a she. We had an hour of Languages by a teacher who did not even exist. She came to formally apologise for this screw up, and we've had the opportunity to discuss our timetable's weird hours! Which was good!

We became a little derpherp again when it turned out she'd also mistakingly assigned three classes to a 32-person classroom. (we're a class of 32)

So in the end we started dirt early, and got off dirt late, and only had class the first two hours and last hour. Whooops. Hopefully this won't be a trend.


Our maths teacher had us math out how many years one would need to note down all numbers from 1 to 1,000,000, assuming 40 numbers for every 15 seconds. Ye gods.

[DjinnAndTonic]

40 digits*?

[Bardiche]

Yeah. 40 digits per 15 seconds.

[Lady Door]

The company I work for has been having "financial issues." Not shocking since it's not only a publishing company, it's an educational publishing company. Anyway, we had a Mergers & Acquisitions executive join our office as COO, and one of his goals was to have an in-service focus group where he'd pull representative members of each department (shortest tenure, longest tenure, basically) and run them through this team building thought exercise gauntlet to generate some discussion on our strategic plan for the next 5 years.

I got picked. This meant I got to work yesterday (8:30-5), then stay late (5-10:30), then spend all of today (10-4) with 20 of my coworkers, including the CEO/President and the COO, discussing the state of our company.

It was ... interesting. Informative. Something we should do regularly, honestly (at least as far as reviewing what we're doing, what our competition is doing, and what our market is interested in). Not entirely sure how it will pan out in practice.

I think I may have complained about my job once or twice (hah), and these past two days have made me realize a little bit more about why that is. Primarily, our company is just flat out unhealthy, business-wise. The culture is reflecting this. Our processes reflect this. EVERYTHING reflects this - it's become our identity.

So the reason I liked this company so much was its idealism. I'm an idealist! It appeals to me. The CEO/President has a great vision for what she wants our company to do. Actually executing that vision has turned into the problem, and that has been the core issue. But how much of that is really going to change as a result of these focus group exercises? That remains to be seen.

And the answer to that is the bottom line in whether I'm staying at this company or not.