Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

Some things carried over from yesterday: the special class astronomy student is joining the other groups in my 920 A.M. class for their assignments. She followed me to the department at 1020 A.M. and I asked her if I could deal with her problem after 1130 A.M. because I was already late but she said she had no more classes and her dad was waiting for her in the car outside.

What else could I say to that? I put her in the group with only three members.

I also saw my programming special class student in the plaza yesterday. He saw me, and I just greeted him and went on. I know that he has an assignment that was due yesterday, but it’s up to him to tell me about it, not the other way around. I have already heard so many excuses from students when I ask them that showing some backbone and initiative on their part would really be a plus on my image of them.

Contrary to what I assumed in one of my earlier entries, the freshman elections are only having their campaign period this week. I have already been visited in class once, and it’s the independent candidate at that.

After he left the room, the students were talking about how this guy’s family owned a chain of supermarkets, which is how he could afford not to be affiliated with any of the established political parties and their school-granted budgets (and restrictions on where to spend it).

I also forgot to mention last week that during one of our overnight sessions, where we could turn the PC’s speaker volumes up to the level where we didn’t have to worry about it disturbing any of our co-faculty, as well as the choice of listening material, I typed in the address of the amusement park where we are going to have the field trip with the students next week.

Now, the thing is, the past few terms that we have been trying to access their site, it has been forbidden, most likely by the office in charge of the proxy and the firewall. We have always wondered why, although we never bothered to ask them, even though the error screen says talk to the network administrator if there is a question about banning such a link.

Last week though, I found out that they have either seen the error of their ways or the amusement park finally fixed their website. At 11 in the evening the relative soft tones of our easy listening internet radio were washed over by the amusement park’s theme blasting through the amplifiers.

It’s a testament to most local web site designers’ ignorance of common netiquette that there was no button for turning off the sounds. I had to rely on the computer’s volume control icon in the system tray for that.

At least I can now give the students the means to verify that with the less than P350 tickets they’re buying (with the prices printed on the tickets, of course) they are still getting a bargain considering that the park now has a standard entrance fee of P500 for ride-all-you-can privileges. This is opposed to the P250 discounted rate from the P400 regular price we have been given the last few years.

Still a lot of things planned for the upcoming weeks of classes.