• Archives

  • Categories:

I hate mondays, To Kill A Mocking Bird, and my laptop

Today has been a stupid day. Not entirely surprising, since it’s a monday, but still frustrating. I spent most of the morning cleaning the apartment, all day doing laundry, and what else? Not much. I can’t seem to focus on one thing for more than a few minutes.

Maybe it’s this abnormal weather that’s making me restless. It got up to 81 today. Happy November PA!

I watched To Kill A Mockingbird on TCM the other night. I had seen parts of it before, in english class my freshman year of high school we watched some of it after reading the book. I remember absolutely hating that book. I think it was because I really struggled with how it was written, possibly the written accents (hm, I believe there is a word for this) made it difficult for me to understand. I also know that I was rushed in reading it. “Read three chapters tonight and be ready for a quiz!” was the quickest way for me to learn to despite a book. Myk suggests that since it was a book that would have seemed so foreign to me (I hadn’t been exposed to deathly racism, I didn’t understand southern mentality) I might have just not understood. This is true. I felt so wronged when I read that book, it was so unfair. I couldn’t believe it.

I’ve decided that I will get ahold of a copy of To Kill A Mockingbird and give it another chance.

Now this got me to thinking, if a school can make someone like me despise a book, what would it be doing to a child like my sister Annette? Is there a better way to teach kids and make sure they learn? Maybe the only way to get through to each child is to give them complete attention and tailor all lessons to fit their precise needs. I wish this was remotely possible.

I should look into getting more ram for my laptop. It tops out at 160 mb (32 built in, and can hold up to a 128 mb chip). It should cost less than $30 for that 128 mb chip if I can get my hands on some decent Compaq Presario compatible dimms (I hear these compaq presarios are crankie). This 32 mb it has now just isn’t cutting it. 333 mhz is plenty for a system doing what it’s doing, but I’m consistantly using nearly all my ram and a great deal of swap. I think this system would be much happier with more ram. And maybe then it would take under 20 seconds for opera to launch!

I’m actually not complaining. Despite it’s querks, having this laptop has been so indescribably cool. Yesterday I swept the porch and brought my comfy computer chair out there and spent the afternoon writing (wrote about 11 pages of a sorts of autobiography made of up memories, hey I’m getting old and I don’t want to forget! *grin*). It was wonderful. And it’s nice having another system around that I have full control over, so I can test things between it and my workstation. *hugs her laptop*

Well I should probably attempt to make the most of the rest of my day. *wanders off*

This entry was posted on Monday, November 3rd, 2003 at 5:18 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.