Blogue de Joseph Deneault, Djeault, DjO’s Blog

Good Bye Michel

§ 1. Nous ne nous croiserons plus : en effet, j’ai appris ce 2008fev28, que mon copain Michel Talbot a délaissé son enveloppe corporelle pour toujours : forever! Un autre copain, magicien et travailleur social, m’a laissé un message sur mon répondeur, de le rappeler d’urgence : encore une autre connaissance lui avait laissé, au travail, une note de me laisser savoir que Michel était, est et sera, bel et bien parti, pour le Grand voyage,,,

§ 2. À mon sens, Michel, que j’ai rencontré il y a plus de 20 ans, fut une personne extrêmement travaillante et créative ; de plus, il était à la fois rude et cordial. Cuisinier diplômé, il a aussi oeuvré dans la rénovation, la menuiserie et l’ébénisterie ; il fabriquait aussi, dans ses temps libres, des lampes en papier de riz et en baguettes de bois : ces lampes étaient multi angulaires et tous les angles y ont passé ! Michel fabriquait également des tambours traditionnels Amérindiens : il était un artisan précis, minutieux et créatif !

§ 3. La photo, ci-haut, nous le présente il y a presque 20 ans, chez lui, à Québec, QC. Michel serait doucement décédé dans son lit, en Gaspésie, seul et dans la nature, laquelle il affectionnait grandement, tout comme sa fille Catherine et son fils Michel, qu’il surnommait affectueusement, Miche : je leur offre mes condoléances à tous deux, mais, surtout à Miche, que j’ai connu, voire vu grandir d’un enfant, par un ado, puis, en un adulte.

§ 4. Michel Talbot était en Gaspésie pour l’hiver ; il y a vécu plusieurs années de sa vie, longue de soixante ans. Il a aussi longuement habité Québec, surtout pour y travailler… Ces 2-3-4 dernières années, revenu à Qc, après quelques années en Gaspésie, il habitait près de chez moi et parfois, nos chemins se croisaient. C’est ainsi qu’à l’été 2007, j’avais pu lui présenter ma mie ; ce jour-là, Michel se promenait sur son inséparable bicyclette, alors que nous, prenions une marche santé… Ce fut une de nos dernières rencontres, sinon, la toute dernière.

§ 5. Cette transperçante transmission transposée d’un trépas me rappelle que les vies de tous mènent au seuil de la Muerte, cette porte invisible et invincible…

My Brand New Laptop

§ 1. On 2008fev25, I HAD ordered from Bell, both the laptop computer and the movable WiFi Internet @ccess, presented here below. However, more than a month later, BéBell never did deliver the merchandise! It is stocked in the labyrinth of a bureaucratic Monster! We just can’t recommend BéBell as trustworthy!

§ 2. The delivery was supposed to be within 10 work days and thus, I had dreamed that I would have received it by the end of the following week. I had watched someone else’s similar HP Pavilion laptop, one evening, and I had been overwhelmed by the depht of the images, while watching a DVD, or else, by what PowerPoint became 10 years later. Moreover, the integrated WebCam was totally astonishing!

§ 3. 2008mar29 ADD-UP

Finally, to get my laptop, I cross my fingers and touch wood, I ordered one from BureauEnGros.com. Right away, I received an em@il, which confirmed my order, plus the date of its delivery. Therefore, I score BéBell with a ‘0′ and Bureau en gros with a 100%, especially if they deliver on April Fools Day, as promised in their em@il… Here’s my new laptop’s description…

¤¤¤ ¤¤¤ ¤¤¤

Corrective Evaluation: it’s ro-o-olling

§ 1. The five weeks or month I just spent with secondary III students stretched from 2008jan22 to 2008fev22; moreover, I still have corrections to finish up during vacations; furthermore, I must compile all those marks for ±150 students, so that the teacheress I replaced have some data for the next report card.

§ 2. After this week-long winter break, I’m switching to Fred’s secondary IV students until Easter; the secondary III’s teacheress may or may not come back: if not, someone else will inherit her task, until Easter; if the teacheress doesn’t come back after Easter, I might get her students back: that could go on until the end of the school year…

§ 3. Considering I’m already scheduled for most of March 2008 and that I’ve been at Jean-De-Brébeuf eversince the beginning of December 2007, those three, four months of teaching were more profitable in many ways than my replacements here and there, in November, and in the slow month of October, my first month, especially that from now on, everyday I work counts towards the 180 needed to be on the list of precarious teachers, rather than just being on the list of occasional substitute teacher…

§ 4.

HuckleBerry JIM

§ 1. Winter Break starts later, on this Friday, 2008fev22.

§ 2. Wednesday, 2008fev20, Jean-De-Brébeuf High School held its Snow Fest; amongst the activities, horse riding was shared by a dozen of students and three teachers. We were shown how to pass behind a horse: if the horse knows you’re there, you may go right behind the horse, or else, you walk 10 feet behind the horse, who will only kick, if it’s surprised: horses are nervous animals; they like routine. Getting nearly 20 horses out one morning implies getting them out everyday, for 2-3-4 days, before the actual visit of the group.

§ 3. My horse, please, pronounce horsY, is called JIM. Jim is a 6-year old, Belgian draught gelding; tall and powerfiul, he also was saved from the Slaughterhouse’s buyers: the Ranch des pionniers got some of their horses there; others were born on the Ranch. Some of us had 30 years old horsies, whereas I was granted JIM. In Mark Twain’s historical novel Adventures of HuckleBerry Finn, first published in 1884, the protagonist’s companion is a tall, strong, young, black slave, who escaped from abusive masters, just like JIM, the 6-year old, adolescent horse with a creamy coffee, skin color and a whitish golden mane.

§ 4. I got to ride JIM, because he’s energic and nervous; at 6, he’s still a playful adolescent. JIM and I were second in our file. Twice, he let me know he’d love to take the lead and have a playful run, but I held him back, for the sake of the group: indeed if one horse runs, the others too will likely want to run… Horses sure can run and make you bounce through the air. However, the path we took was on top of 4-5-6 feet deep snow; thus, a running horse’s leg could easily sink into the snow, make the horse slip or fall and send its rider flying, hopefully into the snow. I do remember two of those fligths: one, off a running Shetland mare, on my way to work, and the other, off a running donkey, in Mexico, at the end of a long work day: we were running back the donkeys to their pasture. Horses, donkeys, poneys or mules can abruptly stop while running: that can send you flying, legs up and head down; if so, you must roll in the air and land on your feet: it’s a risky, though kinesthesic business!

§ 5. Some other horses were smaller, gentle, safe, mature and older, some being 30 years old: a teacher said horses live 40 years; I thus suggest that a horse’s age x 2 = ± human age: thus, Jim was like a 12-14 years old, but nearly a fully grown force of nature. After the ride, back in its paddock, I thanked him again; throughout the whole ride, I gently spoke to him, Jim, and congratulated him for behaving so nicely, sometimes scratching it.

Thank God It’s Friday

§ 1. Can we tell a student ‘to shut up’? Pouvons-nous dire à un étudiant : « ferme-la » ? Some people pretend that telling someone to shut up is the equivalent of the Joual expression « Farme ta yeule » ou en bon français : « Ferme ta gueule » ! For those who wouldn’t know, a « gueule » is an animal’s mouth: thus, telling someone to shut up just isn’t équivalent to the French « Farme ta yeule »; my Collins Cobuild English dictionary further supports me ..

§ 2. Indeed, here what CC says; shut up: …you CAN say ‘SHUT UP’ to someone to tell them to stop talking… There is NO mention that ’shut up’ would be rude, familiar or informal, whereas the English expressions ’shut your mouth’ or ’shut your face’ ARE supreme English insults, both equivalents to the French « Farme ta yeule »; here, CC says that those two informal English expressions are rude ways to tell someone to stop talking.

§ 3. On top of that, you could even say ‘please, shut up’ to smoothen the impact of that expression, which some people believe rude: they’re wrong; even Collins Cobuild say so. That being said, the most turbulent group, three weeks ago showed for the last two periods that they can listen, take notes, work and stay silent when it’s time to. Indeed, my class plans with the students’ photos, first names and first letters of their family names, made a huge difference, I’m convinced!

§ 4. As for my Working statistics, here they are: at the end of this week # 19, I have worked 49 days on the last 64, thus better than 3 days / 4. Since hired, I thus have worked 51 days on 88. Furthermore, my actual four weeks replacement started the counting of the 180 days needed to reach a precarious status, which precedes a permanent one, one of those days…

Neither one, nor two, nor three, nor four, bur rather FIVE!

From Wounded Knee to Wounded Web

§ 1. It started with a severed transoceanic Internet cable, about a week ago, then a second incident was mumbled about: that or rather those incidents greatly affected India’s Internet connectivity, amongst other countries’. Nevertheless, the Web being a web, information packets were rerouted through other cables or satellites; however, Internet communications were slowed down allover Asia. 90-95% of Internet’S data tr@vel through optical fiber c@bles. All five cable breaks occured in the Middle-East.

§ 2. Then, last Friday, 2008fev08, I was free in the afternoon and thus went home and eventually onto the Web; my entr@nce p@ge, our dom@in http://djo.ca, wasn’t @ccessible; then, it c@me in but rather slowly: since the Web servers hosting our dom@ins are in Switzerland, I suspected a cable might have been ruptured on the Atlantic Ocean, and I phoned to my Internet Service provider, whose telephonist hadn’t heard about new breaks of submarine cables; he analysed my system as fully speedy Gonzales… I tried Internet Explorer 6, rather than Netscape Navigator 7.2, but even so, @ccess to some sites was often sluggish or impossible, for a couple of hours. Could all those cable breaks and massive rerouting of information packets have saturated the Internet?

§ 3. Our Web Hosts’ M@in, also in Switzerland, did slowly @ppear, but some of its ‘@djacent p@ges’ didn’t; even Google NeWs from Swizterland didn’t enter at my first try; our Wikis were also slow or un@ccessible. Even though Googles NeWs US, which was @ccessible, though sluggishly, doesn’t or didn’t offer that crucial information, Google NeWs Suisse does so: we thus find out that this last Friday, 2008fev08, not one, nor two, but rather FIVE deep undersea cable breaks have occurred within only a week.

§ 4. Some NeWs, this Sunday 2008fev10, mention that Iran would actually be completely cut off from its cable based Internet, but that even so, Iran’s president’s blog would still be online, which suggests that he might have outgoing satellite connectivity. Other News and bloggers conclude that FIVE incidents on four cables imply the use of high tech submarines, even though one incident was explained by an abandoned nearby giant anchor. As for the first two cable breaks, it is s@id that the highly specialised boats and crews will likely have repaired them by today.

§ 5. As for Egypt, their Internet connectivity would be at 50% of its usual capacity, and as for Egypt and Iran, some NeWs say both countries have been quite friendly with each other these last months, which could be unpleasant to others, who thus might have decided to further isolate Iran, where, some say, there would be, on that Web, a profusion of pictures or photos of the despicable actions led by American troops against Iraqui civilians, since the 2003 invasion, justified by nearly one thousand public lies, by BuTsh and his War Pigs.

A plot to cut off Iran from the Web could only be led by RICH experts or countries, who would need sophisticated underwater equipment, so as to damage, FIVE times, Internet cables, which are lying on the deep Ocean floor. Here, you may see the World map of transoceanic Internet cables. Indeed, damaging four cables in the same region, could and did affect other regions, who had to reroute their Internet communications, but there really are countries who really hate and fear Iran enough to try cuttting them off the Internet. Of course, bloggers are said to suppose that those cable breaks are only the prelude to something BIG, just about to happen, in the Middle-East…

Will we ever find out the truth?

I gr@bbed this im@ge on the Web.
I can’t find its true source.

HAVING FAITH IN MY FATE

§ 1. I haven’t written here for two weeks, thus I just had to, this early Sunday morning, before I jump into a day of correction of irregular verb tests and of questionnaires on Lost episodes.

§ 2. Tommorow, I start my third week at Jean-De-Brébeuf High School, this time replacing a teacheress, Sabrina, at the secondary III level, whereas, before and after Christmas, I replaced for three weeks another teacher, Fred, at the same school, but with secondary IV students; I likely will replace teacher Fred again the first three weeks of March and then, in April, I’ll likely take care of ESL Head Teacher Guy’s secondary V students.

§ 3. The difference, between secondary III or IV students, is quite noticeable: Ouf! Sec. IVs can be silenced within 5 min, even one; however, with most groups of sec. IIIs, 5 min seems minimal. Fortunately, I had prepared five efficient class plans for Sabrina’s five groups: 6 x 6 text zones, in an 8½” by 14″ sheet: each text zone contains the color photo and the first name of the student. Each Plan is coupled with an alphabetical list of the students Family names and nine cases for each student, on top of which, diagonal lines allow handwriting the nine columns’ titles. That way, you may easily address yourself to each student by her or his first name: that makes all the difference to silence students when needed and also to take note of their good deeds; yes, I’ll keep noting bad deeds, but I must not forget to positively evaluate each student’s forces…

§ 4. Since the plans are 6 x 6 text zones, each of these can be easily interchanged or reorganized: strategic creation of helping pairs, taking into consideration the students’ marks and affinities, thus can be pedago-logically created…