Thank you. Of course it decided to break down and now it's getting repaired -headdesk-

Oh shit. Mine broke down last night (twice!) and is currently being repaired so fingers crossed we have no more major issues there. I'm really sorry yours crapped out and I hope you were able to get that other car hugs

: Nooooooooooooo, not you too!

Yeah...my brakes went kerplat. But first they pretended to just be an easy fix and drained my battery. Then they went kerplat when I was driving (decelerated my car and just...a mess). It's being fixed.

Thanks. How is the school year going so far? I know the first few days must be rough.

Man! I am so sorry you are dealing with car issues too! Of COURSE it would be right after you paid it off! hugs you right back!

- We've had 8 days of actual classes, and I am already sick. I really should find another job where I don't interact with sick children all the time 😂 I'm trying to really be a hard-ass with behavior problems at the beginning of the year, so I'm not miserable down the road, though it's rough. How are you doing other than the car issues?

- Not you too! Ugh, the worst!

Sorry you are sick! Maybe you are just getting it out of the way for the rest of the year. Let's think positive!

I assume you are back to classes as well? New faces and brilliant minds?

I was wondering if it would be possible to get a search on the subeautique pages? Just for those pages, the outfit preview pages....

Itf it would be a miserable PITA then forget it!

: Let me make sure I'm understanding correctly: You want a search bar on this page.

Do you want it to just search for the name of the Subeautique line (like, find all the "Rainyday" lines), or do you want people to be able to type in an item and then see the line it came from with the preview?

look at you just making things simple by linking to the page

yes, that is the page. I was thinking just the line, like mimi moe or rainyday but however you can work it would be great

: Not exactly a search bar, but I think this'll do the trick. Check it out.

Oh hey, that is perfect! Good thinking! Thanks for doing it. (:

You never answered about your new students etc. I was really interested, not just priming you for an ask.

: It's hard to tell. I'm teaching a class I've never taught before, and my students seem ... if not excited to be in a math class, at least politely receptive to the experience. We'll see if that lasts past the first midterm, though. ;)

For what it's worth, I hit my official 20-year anniversary with the school last month (I've been here longer, but the years I worked here part-time don't count towards my anniversary date) So sometime in the next few weeks, I'll be getting ... a tie-tack. woo.

A TIE TACK? Wow. Can they afford that much?

Congrats on your official anniversary, though. Do you ever hear from anyone you have previously taught about how much you changed their life and gooey stuff like that? I always wonder if that kind of thing actually happens.

: As in, do kids routinely stand on their desk proclaiming "O Captain, My Captain", like they did in Dead Poets Society? Or put on a surprise performance of my only symphony, like in Mr. Holland's Opus?

Yeah, that almost never happens. I did get a really nice card from a parent one time, though.

They may never make a movie about you but I have no doubt that in more than 29 years you have affected many students in ways you will never know.

Who knows? So of those may be in good ways even ;)

I don't have any delusions here -- we're a large public university that attracts students for its football and parties. My courses are a necessary hoop they have to jump through in order to earn that tissue paper they call a degree.

But every now and then, I get a little peek at things like this. It's basically "vtspeaks.tumblr.com" -- a bunch of anonymous chatter about the school, but a couple of folks like me. (link)

hope you know I was just teasing

It was nice. I hope the folks who sign my paychecks saw it, too. :)

I got this comment today:

I checked them out. I don't know that the merryday one is an issue, I suspect it might have been entered that way due to space issues. But the Witchy one does NOT link to the items, so that needs to be changed. I'm not sure where/how to do that with the subeautique items.

you teach linear algebra! OMG I had the worst prof ever for that course way back when. I couldn't make heads or tails of what he was trying to teach. He would give us these examples of 6x6 matrices - write out the solution over 4, count them 4 huge chalk boards. Get near the end, get a fraction, and then stare at it for about 20 minutes. He set up his examples so there should not have been any fractions, so of course there was an error somewhere and he was looking for it. Finally, he'd wave his chalk in the air and say "well you get the idea!" and then just go on. Needless to say I got a horrible grade.

When I retook the course with a different prof - the very first day of class he explained that it was algebra put in a grid, showed us a 2x2 matrix and it all fell into place. Never went to another class and aced it. I was so annoyed at that first prof who took something so easy (I had a passionate love for algebra) and complicated it all out of recognition.

: I've taken care of the Subeautique lines. The ... um ... Subeta Wiki has the same names that we do, which means either they were renamed at some point, or LiCobra/Shoda flat-out plagiarized from us. Either way, no big deal.

Linear Algebra: Using a 6x6 matrix as a teaching example is malpractice. There is an "idea" to "get", but if you bury it in that much computation, no one will find it.

It is so frustrating. Thankfully it's fixed and I don't have to worry about how I'm getting to work tomorrow.