Mini-Rants for April Fools

What the hell is the matter with youse (both of youse)? Green pepper and mushrooms are two essential pizza toppings. Add pepperoni and chopped white onion, and optionally black olives and anchovies, and you have the enduring classic, Pizza a la Wolfpup.

My non-rant for today: I was pissed that my Samsung phone’s battery is rapidly failing – it can barely hold a charge for more than a day – thinking I might have to get a new phone. But I had momentarily confused it with famously unserviceable Apple products. The back is actually easily removable – in fact you have to pop it off just to insert the SIM card – and the battery is right there. And replacement batteries are abundant and cheap.

Wolfpup, All your toppings are ok by me except that bell peppers of any color are not edible.

You are sadly misguided, cat lady. Green, red, and/or yellow peppers are all excellent pizza toppings (I prefer green) and also are great when grilled alongside almost any main course from the barbecue, like steaks, chops, chicken, or sausages. I will allow, however, that they need to be served in moderation. You can overdose a pizza with green peppers, for instance, whereas you cannot overdose it with mushrooms – the more the better! Some may disagree, but they are wrong. I have spoken.

“I didn’t know copying code verbatim from Youtube was plagiarism!” Eyeroll emoticon.

I’d be hard-pressed to make it mini-er or rant-ier than that.

Just had a discussion of plagiarism at happy hour with some fellow teachers.

Gutsiest was the guy who, walking up to turn in his work, passed by the classroom printer. Another (better) student’s work was coming out, so he snatched it and signed his name on it (on his way up to the teacher’s desk to turn it in… sigh).

No, student did not get away with it. Teacher knew what was going on.

Heck, they took it from YouTube, not a more easily searchable format. Pretty obvious they knew what they were doing.

My first analysis of their code showed 97 to 99% similarity between four submissions. So when I confronted them, they first played dumb, then one of them admitted they copied from Youtube, and then their collective house of cards came tumbling down with very little effort on my part.

So, with respect to you of course, it shows these guys really don’t know what they’re doing.

I just meant they knew they were plagiarizing, not that they were good at hiding it. But I do agree it sounds they were particularly stupid about it.

Holy shit.

My “gutsiest” was a student who copied the assignment of a previous student, and left the original student’s name in. I don’t want to use gutsy, as that’s kind of a positive term. Face-palming suits.

I completely agree with you on this.

Yeah, dumb criminals are so entertaining (see Home Alone, A Fish Called Wanda, Fargo, and of course Three Ninjas ). We should be grateful we get to watch them shoot themselves in the foot.

Now, the students who are really good at cheating? We don’t even know about them…

Yep me to, but green are the worse!

That’s the best combo of “ballsy” and “dumb” I’ve encountered in a while. Damn!

Oh, the story didn’t end there. He got a zero on that project, but he got to stay in the class. At the end of the semester, his parents threatened to sue because Poor Little Billy flunked the class because of how he was treated on that project.

“Ok, so how about I give Little Billy an A on that project? Do the math…” They did. We had so many projects that he’d failed that he’d still get an F for the semester.

I’m mostly the fool here. Was expecting a package, got a text that a package delivery had been rescheduled, clicked the link to be informed that I had won an Amazon gift card if I would just click another link.

So now the spammers presumably know that they have a working number to mess with.

On the positive side, I called the company that I was waiting on the package from, they agreed that it is likely lost, cancelled the original order and placed a new one. So that was nice (ereplacmentparts.com, I guess they deserve a mention for good customer service).

God damn it. I was supposed to receive Moderna dose #2 tomorrow and I got a fucking cold. I feel miserable. I called the Health Department and they told me not to come in if I’m sick. They said to call back when I feel better, and I only have until the 19th. Mother fuck. I just want this over with. I was so so so excited to finally get it over with.

Good news: Every part of the Ninja chopper thing I have is dishwasher safe.

Bad news: the blade assembly is just awkward enough that it can get wedged in the utensil basket.

Good news: I have learned that the utensil basket has a front that can fold down, which removes an entire side and unwedges everything.

Bad news: I did not learn this before managing to slice (NOT deeply) my right index finger, which is also the one I use to unlock my phone.

Good news: I can add a second fingerprint to the unlock mechanism

Bad news: It can’t be my thumb, because I managed to slice that (even MORE slightly) when I was washing the blood off the blade from the first slice. Also, thanks to having small fingers it took about 20 or so scans before the sensor was happy with me.

Good news: Yes, I’ve had a tetanus shot within the last 10 years. I’m due next year and the blades are, believe me, NOT rusty. Also, they are sharp.

Typing is going to be fun for a day or two.

Or as it’s called in this house, “the whirling blade of death.”

Mom won’t get near the dishwasher if she knows I’ve put the blade assembly in there, and it’s banned from being placed in the dish rack to dry.

Accurate. I think it took about 3 pulses to reduce an entire Vidalia onion to mush (which is what I wanted, it just happened really fast).

The Ninja brand of choppers/blenders is amazing. We have a few. But you gotta be careful with the blades. There’s a reason they work so damn well.