"I" is for Internet

I live on the internet.

I really do. I do it all on the internet. I have always been pretty computer savvy, but you don't have to be anymore for the things that are available to basically anyone with a decent internet connection. I have heard some people complain that using their computer is too complicated, but I beg to differ. When I can sit down at my computer and take care of things in an hours that before would have taken me a few days, I don't think their argument is valid.

• Shopping
• Banking
• Travel plans
• Reservations
• Order Pizza
• School
• Information on everything
• Television
• Read

Prophetic movie about the future
difficulty of finding Twinkies.

As far back as 2001, I stopped renting movies at the video store because I could get on Netflix and have them shipped straight to me. Plus, it was much cheaper. It also removes the annoyance of walking up and down the aisles of a store trying to find what you want and then praying that it is in. Plus, the service helps me to not miss the movies I really want to see. As soon as I see a trailer for something I want to see, I put it in my queue to be sent to me as soon as it comes out on video.

If for some reason I hear about a movie LONG before it is to come out, it may not be on the Netflix site to schedule it yet. If that is the case, I go to a site called DVD Later and sign up for the movie there. That site (which is free to use) will put the movie in my Netflix queue as soon as it is available. Now with streaming, I can watch the movie immediately. In fact, there is no need to even have cable because everything is online.

No longer is there a need to actually meet with teachers. My daughter goes to a rather large school and I could never get proper time with them anyway. I can now log onto the school's website and see her current grades, teacher's notes for assignments and even scans of some of her work. An email to a teacher is promptly returned as compared to phone calls that often took days or sometimes not at all.

I am getting my Master's Degree right now and do it all from the convenience of my laptop. I interact with the teacher and the other students almost daily. I read, research, and write papers in front of a computer screen.

This may be my favorite of internet conveniences. I pay ALL my bills online. Every single one of them. Even places that don't have online billing, like my local water company. When a bill comes due, I receive an email. I log onto my bank site and tell them to send a check. I haven't had my own checks for years and never even buy stamps anymore. I just don't need to.

All my banking is done online as well. I have a special account that rewards me for never walking in and disturbing a teller. I get kickbacks on every purchase. I get into museums, amusement parks and zoos for free. I get great discounts at hundreds of locations and all I have to do is keep all my banking online. My checks are directly deposited and I pay everything through my computer. Since the bank is saved on manpower, they reward me.

I am also an avid reader. Once I bought a Kindle, I knew I could keep books on it, but soon learned I could even check out books from the library without leaving my house. Sitting at home I visit the library site, download the book, and it works for two weeks before it deletes itself.

Doing research on any topic has gotten easier as well. The misguided people who think using the internet for research is not as effective, apparently don't know how to use it to its potential. The only reason someone would argue that a person needs to go to the library is because it was the way they were taught. I have nothing against books, I love them. However, what is the advantage to searching for hours in a library to find the books you need when I can find that same book online in a matter of seconds. I can have the information of a hundred books at my fingertips within moments while someone else is still searching through the card catalog. Almost any scholarly work has been uploaded to the internet and can be found easily by anyone who knows how to search.

From the comfort of my home, I also order pizza while searching for the best coupons at the same time. I make reservations for restaurants, book airline tickets, make hotel reservations, grocery shop, buy electronics, find people, research companies, apply for jobs, etc, etc, etc. The list goes on and on. I even met my girlfriend online.

A few months ago, I landed a job I could do from my home. It had officially reached the point that I never needed to step outside my house for anything. I could even buy my clothes online and have them shipped to me. Of course, if I wasn't going outside, then I didn't really need clothes. I don't even need to consult a doctor because I have WebMD.

Some may be concerned that this much dependence on technology will cut back on social interaction, but we have Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest for that. If you think you have to actually be face to face with someone, then buy a webcam and Skype with them.

I know that I am addicted to technology. Many addicts will deny their addiction and scream, "I can quit any time I want." I am not making that claim. I love my internet and artificial connection to the world and don't plan to ever give it up.

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Happily participating in the Blogging from A to Z Challenge. For the entire month of April, 1,897 bloggers are still working their way through the alphabet. One letter every day but Sundays for a total of 26 days.

Click here to visit the website and get more information to see if you might want to join in next year. It's a lot of fun, introduces you to hundreds of new blogs and gives your writing some fantastic exposure.

And I Mean It, Stanley

I've mentioned in earlier posts that I have been spending a lot of time in local schools to meet the requirements for my degree. Illinois standards require teaching majors to spend a certain number of hours observing students and teachers in a classroom setting for every hour of college instruction. Since I am getting my degree in secondary education, I am assigned to junior and senior high schools for my observation credits.

However, I spend even more time in the schools as a substitute teacher. As a substitute, I have worked with all age groups. I have written about some of those experiences here. I quickly learned why I am specializing in secondary education. I really do not relate well to younger children. I have since taken my name off the list for grades kindergarten through fifth grade. I didn't have much of a choice. On one day (if school had lasted another hour), I might have been jailed for choking half a dozen second graders. It was a horrible day.

No! You can't take your pants off.

I'll stick to what I know. I work very well with junior and senior high age kids. I have even discovered that I can work with preschoolers as long as there are helpers in the classroom that know what to do. I would never attempt that age by myself. I have been bitten, stabbed with a pencil, cussed at and spat on. Without another adult in the room to keep me in check, I might act out my fantasies of chucking a 4 year old through the nearest window. They are pretty small. It wouldn't be that difficult. However, their outbursts are typically short lived and I even enjoy it for the most part. Just don't leave me alone with them.

Last month, I was cursed had the privilege of returning to the same preschool class every day for three weeks. This actually makes things much easier than going to a different class every day. I had the opportunity to learn the names and strange idiosyncrasies of each ankle-biter. It makes all the difference in the world when you get to know the kids. It is so much better.

Each day involved lots of crafts, lessons and activities, but my favorite part was the beginning and end of each day. I would start each day reading a couple of books to the kids. This helps them to calm down and gain a little focus before starting the day. We ended the day with the same activity right before their parents came to pick them up.

I enjoyed this for several reasons. One of the biggest was the fact that I got to sit during this time. Another reason was that I actually had the attention of the whole class. That rarely happened. I would do the voices of the characters and add my personal commentary to each page. It was great to hear the kids laugh and say the words with me. As much as they liked to hear the same stories again and again, I tried to introduce them to a new book each day.

I remembered reading this as a child.

I would get to the school early so I could dig through the library and find a book to read during story time. On one of those days I came across a book that I vaguely remembered from my childhood, And I Mean It, Stanley. I thumbed through it quickly to see if it was the story I remembered.

Throughout the book, the child is yelling at someone not visible in the pictures. She is building things with the junk in her back yard and yelling that Stanley better come out to play now. The whole book is rather one sided. This little girl is yelling and getting more and more irate as the book progresses.

It finally reaches the climax when . . . well, I don't want to give away the ending in case it ever gets made into a movie. I don't want to spoil the ending.

Being a book from my childhood, I was excited to share it with the children. As they started coming into the classroom and taking their spots on the rug in front of me, they started making their demands requests for the book they wanted to hear. I told them I had already selected a book for the day.

Once they all got seated and quiet, I pulled out the book. I explained that I had read this story when I was a kid. As I was showing them the book, I saw something on the cover in the top right corner I had not noticed before.

That is my brother's name!  KYLE MINOR
This is the same copy that used to be in our house.

When I said I had this book as a kid, I didn't know I had actually owned THIS specific copy. It threw me for a moment. We grew up 30 miles away from this school. It had been at least three decades since we physically had the book in our possession. Somehow it had made some travels, passed through countless owners and ended up in this school in my hands.

Once I regained composure and snapped back to the present I told the kids what I had found. They didn't seem to be nearly as impressed as I was. I read the book to them with more enthusiasm than I would have otherwise. We all celebrated when we got to the ending and began our day.

At the end of the day, they requested to read the book again and I was more than happy to oblige. Soon, the parents began to show up and one by one the kids got their hugs and left for the day. Once the room was empty, I pulled the book out to marvel at it again.

After a couple of minutes, I realized that my amazement was silly. The book was still in the same county as last time I saw it. It had probably been donated to a library by my mother or sold in a yard sale. At some point it was given to this school. It really wasn't that big of a deal. I set the book down and turned off the lights for the day.

Before I closed the classroom door, I returned to the book and quickly placed it in my coat. After all, it had my family name on it.

RELAX!!!
I brought it back the next day.

The Problem with Russian Literature

I love to read.  I am reading something everyday.  Books, magazines, newspapers, comics, Internet anything: I have read it.  I even read the video game booklet before playing the game.  It drives my kids nuts.  I just love to read.  I am usually reading about 3 books at one time.  I keep one to read at work, I have one by my bed, and I have one in the car.  So, needless to say, I consider myself a fairly well-read person.

That opinion came to an end a few months ago.  I was perusing the library again for my newest literary conquest and found an interesting book, "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die"  by Peter Boxall.

 

Being the bibliophile that I am, I was immediately interested.  I thumbed through it in the library to see what classics I may have missed.  To my surprise, there were quite a few books I had never read.  So, I checked out the book for further investigation.  For the next four days, anytime I was in front of the television, I was typing the books into my laptop (not knowing the list is already on the Internet here and dozens of other places).  I had decided that if these were the best books ever written, according to the critics that contributed to the book, then I wanted to read them all.  Once I got them all typed in, I soaked my fingers for a few hours, then I began to eliminate the ones I had already read, so I could make the list smaller.  When I was done the list was down to 952.

952? 

How could that be? I have read approximately two books per week since I learned how to read. This is impossible. I began to go through a mental checklist of the books I have been reading, and I realized that for the last several years, I have not been reading books that would ever be considered classics of literature. I have read hundreds of political commentaries, books on law and psychology, Christian social commentaries, and the works of Stephen King. I realized that although I had read a huge number of books, I typically just read whatever sounded good to me at the time. I am not saying that was a bad thing. That is probably how most people choose their next book to read. Well, no more. I decided to expand my reading repertoire.

I changed my attitude. Instead of being disgusted at how few of the classics I had read, I became excited about the huge list of books I now had in my future. So I dove in. One of the first ones I read was "The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath. I read it one day at work and finished it that night. I wasn't sure what to think of it. It is an autobiographical piece from Plath. She has what many would call a wonderful life and isn't even twenty yet. She is an aspiring writer, has been given a scholarship to intern at a magazine in New York, is going to all the fancy places paid for by the magazine and just isn't happy. She is disconnected from life, tries to kill herself and ends up in an institution. Apparently, Plath is heralded as being one of the great American woman writers and is inspiring to many young women. I don't get it. She did write well, but where was the inspiring part. She constantly talked about suicide and eventually did it in real life. Not my sort of book, but I got to mark it off the list.

I read "The Count of Monte Cristo" by Alexandré Dumas. Excellent book. I was already familiar with the story, but had never read it. I look forward to "The Three Musketeers" by him also. Next was "Slaughterhouse Five" by Kurt Vonnegut which is basically about a WWII soldier who survives being a POW, starts a successful business after the war, and starts a family. Then, the aliens come and abduct him to the planet Tralfamadore, where he is thrown in a zoo-type structure to be gawked at by the residents there. He is forced to breed with another Earthling, who happens to be a big movie star in Hollywood. After that, it gets kind of strange.

So, I was getting books marked off of my list, but I was not looking forward to all of them. I noticed there were several books by Fyodor Dostoevsky, an 19th century Russian author who wrote most of his books while imprisoned in Siberia. A few years ago I read his book "Crime and Punishment." It was not an enjoyable experience. In a nutshell, the main character, Raskolnikov, decides to rob and murder an old woman. He does so, also killing her half-sister. Then spends the next 800 pages feeling guilty. I hated that book and even had trouble keeping track of the different characters. In Russia, your name changes depending on who is speaking to you. To give you an idea how complicated this can get, I found a webpage (click here) that explains it. Here, my name is Brett to everyone. Occasionally, I am called Mr. Minor. That's about as complicated as it gets. Not in Russia. Check the link for a moment to get an idea of what I am talking about.

When reading a book with several characters, it is important for the reader to keep the different characters straight in order to avoid confusion.  Being raised in the U.S., I am accustomed to names like William, Robert and Susan.  Dostoevsky has characters named Parfen Rogozhin, Dmitri Prokofitch Razumihin, Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, and Pavel Fyodorovitch Smerdyakov. When not being accustomed to these types of names and there are three dozen characters with such names, it gets difficult to keep track of who did what. Add to that the fact that everyone's name changes according to who is speaking to them, it gets even worse. A man is not addressed by an acquaintance with the same name his mother would use for him. It is even a different name for a business associate. Even the middle and last names change determined by whether the name is being used for a legal purpose or casually.

Therefore, I suffered though the book, not know what was going on half of the time. Add to that the fact that every character is so long-winded with everything they have to say. A character could go on for four pages just asking for a cup of tea. But now, I have to read five more Dostoevsky novels to complete my list. So, I decided to get them out of the way.

I have now read "Notes from the Underground", "The Brothers Karamazov", and am half-way through "The Idiot."  I have to admit, they have gotten better.  I had to get used to his writing, but I am coming to appreciate it.  Most of the characters seem to be insane, much like the author, but they are fun to watch.

I still have over 900 books left on my list and I have discovered there are groups of people who have decided to try to read all these books as well.  They have even started book discussion groups online.  So, I know I am not crazy for trying this.  Party at my house when I have finished the last one.