Whitewater Rafting: Canceled

So. Whitewater rafting. Love it. Gonna go. Got canceled. Frowny face.

Topia was going to go whitewater rafting today. It cost about $30 for everything, traveling, eating, and rafting. I was pretty excited. Then yesterday, I got to work and was told too many people had canceled last minute and transportation therefore became more expensive, so they canceled it. I'm almost speechless...almost.

The online overtime that they're outsourcing to the Philippines got a little change. They're not ready to outsource it yet, so they're going to allow us to do them for 1 more month. I'm really hoping that it continues to get pushed back. Anyway, since it's the last month, I told my boss that I'd do as many as I could, up to 100 per week. That'd be about 10-13 hours/week overtime, and would get me about $200+/week. I ended up grading 70 this week, but you have to factor in those students who didn't do it for one reason or another, so I've probably got 80-100 students who, if they all do it, will get me lots of money. As it is, 70/week is W175,000/week, or $143 right now, according to google. That'll be a nice chunk of change, at least for one last month. And another nice thing is that the quality of the ones I'm grading this semester is much better. One week, last semester, only 19 did them, and I had to fail 10. I nearly always faild 30% or more of them. This week, however, I failed 1/70. Not bad.

Yesterday was 9/11, and as fate would have it one of the books that the students had to read for the online overtime stuff is called Capital Kids. It's about kids who live in different capitals around the world or something. Anyway, the first part is about America, and one of the kids lives in D.C. It talks about the terrorists hitting the Pentagon, and 9/11. It was kinda weird to be grading them yesterday. Got me a little patriotic and I told my first two classes what 9/11 was (most know about it, but don't necessarily know the date, I mean, they're 7-9 years old).

The new iPods came out Wednesday, and should be available in a few weeks. I'll be saving up for one this month and it'll be my birthday present to myself. There was a lot of hype, as always, and Apple responded by delivering a wet fart of an announcement. All iPods got a video camera (but no still camera), except the Touch, which would benefit most from it. The nanos did not get a memory upgrade, while all other models did. The nano did, however, get an FM tuner which I don't need or want, a microphone which I don't need or want, 0.2 more inches of screen which seems paltry, ever-so-slightly better battery life, and an almost-useless pedometer. The prices on nanos dropped $20, and the Touches dropped as much as $120. The classic got a memory upgrade and price drop, and the shuffle got a price drop. Nothing special in the least. Quite disappointing. Some, however, will love the new features on the iPod, but I just want it to play music, and do it well, and it took 5 years for iPods to become as good at that as the competitors such as Creative. EDIT: Just found out that the iPods are available now, but the prices in Korea are expensive. A 16gb nano in America is $179, while it's $220 here. Very disappointing. Not sure I want to buy a new one now.

To end on a positive note, I'm enjoying this new semester with 2 less teaching hours. I am actually able to go into work at 2pm, and not early. And even then I don't always have much to do. Sometimes I just sit at my desk and read. However, as the semester gets into full swing, there will always be "something" to do, just like at any job, and I will try to always do something.