The teachers in our school district have gone back to work after a 9-day strike, the first in the district’s history. I wonder if they realize the depths of the division and bitterness they’ve created in the community by setting themselves as a profession apart, deserving of special consideration far beyond that afforded other vocations. The state of public education in this country is deplorable, and the demands of the teachers in this strike only made those deficiencies all the more apparent. I have one child in private school as the result of the district’s inability to provide what is their legal responsibility – a free, appropriate, public education. Charter schools and privatization are looked on with disdain and fear by the public education community, which is unsurprising, given that they are unmotivated by competition, competency or measurements of success that are the hallmarks of other occupations. I come from a family of public school educators – my father was a teacher and an administrator, my mother was a teacher, as was her sister. It’s sad to see the legacy of public education so thoroughly corrupted by a factory mentality accompanied by a sense of entitlement on the part of teachers.

Now, switching brain channels, on to more pleasant topics...

Over the past two days I drove down to Baltimore and back to visit a client. On both trips I had several phone conversations and noticed that the speed I was driving directly correlated with the speed with which I was talking. As I talked faster to make a point (sometimes complete with hand gestures), I noticed the speed of the car creeping up. The speed of the car influenced the speed of my conversation as well - as I slowed down to pay the tolls (even with E-ZPass you have to drop your speed to a crawl as you drive through Delaware and Maryland toll booths), I noticed that I almost stopped talking, perhaps because I was concentrating on whether the little toll message (TOLL DUE changes to THANK YOU when your E-ZPass tag is recognized - I'm surprised there isn't yet any advertising on these signs) had changed, or maybe because I unconsciously kept the car and my voice in sync.

I bought a headset to use with my cell phone. The hands-free set in my car doesn't work very well - I can't hear the people talking on it clearly and I feel as if I have to shout to make myself heard through its mike. The evil German car has a different hands free set installed, which is even worse, because the phone constantly pops out of the thing that's supposed to hold it in place - yet another reason why I will never set foot (or any other body part) in that car again. A headset seemed like a good alternative, although I don't even know if it's legal to use one here in PA while driving. Anyway, everybody else has one, I never buy many gadgets for myself, and this was pretty inexpensive (note: rationalization at its best). So I ordered one from Amazon (I got it in 3 days, despite having used their free shipping option, which they threaten will take anywhere from 5 to 147 business days to arrive - I've found that the free shipping option differs very little from the paid shipping), and it arrived yesterday. The first problem was the packaging it came in - a solid piece of clear plastic that appeared to have no seams or other way to pry it open. This, of course, meant that I needed to attack it with a dull pair of scissors (the MacGyver tool was nowhere to be found), images of arterial spray across the kitchen counter clear in my mind. After finally stabbing it enough times to rend the plastic, I found that the operating instructions were entirely made up of pictures. You might think that this would be preferable to mangled English ("from top of screw to the head of handle, each position and size such as follows, so pls make standard object & choose the most suitable position" - from an actual instruction sheet), but you would be wrong. The headset came with a variety of little doo-dads that apparently could be applied to the earpiece to customize it for your use. There were the foam earpiece covers (are they for comfort, hygiene - in case you share your headset with others - or fit?), one black plastic circle with a protrusion on one side, the same circle in translucent plastic (to coordinate with your outfits? to share with your friends?), and an over-the-ear piece of wire. I still have no idea what the little plastic circlets are for and don't even want to imagine - they seem to fit over the earpiece, but I can't figure out how they fit in the ear, and the pictures don't help. They also seem to be mutually exclusive with the foam covers, which would rule out the hygiene usage. The over-the-ear piece snaps onto the headset, but not in the same manner as pictured, and then digs into the back of your ear in a manner not unlike some sort of bizarre ear fetish torture (or what I think that would be like if it I knew about it. or if it existed. ahem.). Anyway, after trying every possible combination and permutation of add-on devices, I still was not able to make the ear piece fit in, sit on top of, or otherwise come anywhere close to remaining near my ear. So much for free shipping - it can't compensate for the sins of the product.