Steven Harper Piziks

 YOU: If 1/5 of a pizza has 28 grams of carbohydrates, how many grams of carbohydrates would be in 1/3 of the pizza?

Thursday morning when I got to work, I learned the Internet was down in the building. No computer network, no web, no phones, no attendance program, no PA system. I couldn't even access my lesson plans--I store them in my network drive and don't print them out.

I remember back when the Internet was a new thing for the school. The district offered "everyone who wants one" an email address. I was one of the few people who took one. We had four computers for teachers to use. I kept my materials on 5 1'2" disks. It was a wonder when we got our first grade book program: GradeQuick. But all that was optional. You didn't have to touch a computer if you didn't want to--and most of the staff didn't want to. Eventually, as the World Wide Web merged with the Internet, the school started requiring computer usage. Everyone had to have an email address, and everyone had to check their email at least once per day. Then we were required to use an electronic grade book (but you could still use a physical book, and many teachers did). 

Eventually, we moved more fully online. Physical grade books vanished. (I don't know of anyone who uses one anymore.) The Internet powers our phone and PA system, and we were able to put phones on teacher desks. (Other professionals have had phones on their desks for over 100 years. I finally got one just after 9/11.)  Everyone has a ton of network space. The video library, once fully stocked with video tapes and DVDs has disappeared, since everyone simply streams everything. Copy machines have been combined with printers, and are networked to the computer system. All teachers have a district-issued computer and smart projector. All teachers have a Google Classroom account.  A lot of changes during my career in Wherever.

But it all means that when the Internet goes down, it's a major disaster. We can't take attendance. Hell, we can't even make copies.  And I'm not the only teacher who stores lesson plans in the network drive.

Fortunately, my first hour was in the middle of something that didn't require the Internet, so while they were working, I worked on my own connection. I have a hotspot on my phone, but the school computers are finicky and don't like connecting to anything but our in-school Internet service. It took quite a lot of finagling, but I finally got my computer to recognize my phone and got online. Yay! I could take attendance and access my network drive!

It still made for a frustrating day. The copiers were down. My desk phone was down. The PA system was down. If I moved my cell more than a few feet from my desk, it would drop the hotspot, so my phone was chained down.

On top of it all, we learned that the outage was caused by a broken cable, and it wouldn't be fixed today. Likely, we'd have no Internet Friday as well.

I was actually fairly lucky. My lessons for the day didn't require Internet access. I didn't need to copy or print anything. Lots of other teachers were stuck. One science teacher, who had an online day planned, ended up playing Mythbusters episodes on DVD for his classes.

Also, the lesson for my seniors went very well. I'd assigned them the article "It's Not Your Opinion. You're Just Wrong," so they could start to see how adding "In my opinion" in front of a statement didn't make the statement correct; you can have a wrong opinion. We discussed this, and then I had them write a set of statements: a fact, an opinion, a mixed statement, and a flat wrong opinion statement. We shared them with the class, and they actually got into it. I think many of them began to understand the point.

So that went well, at least. But it was a relief when the day drew to a close and I could shut off my hotspot.

After the last Great Computer Crash nearly destroyed everything I own, I decided to look into on-line, automatic backup systems.  At the moment I'm trying Carbonite.  It has a free test period and it automatically uploads and clones everything on my computer to a remote backup site that will, in theory, let me reclone my hard drive if I ever have a massive fail.  It automatically backs up anything that changes, as long as I have an Internet connection.  I can also access the backups from anywhere on the Internet and from pads or smart phones.  It costs $60 a year, which seems reasonable.

At the moment, Carbonite is copying everything from my computer to the off-site location, and it's taking forever.  So far, it's been running for 24 hours and we've done 17,000 files with 86,000 to go.  It does seem to be monkeying with my connection, though, and I'm wondering if it's fighting with my anti-virus or just eating up too much bandwidth during the initial backup.  We'll see what happens once it's all over.

If this works out, it'll be a relief to know I can restore my computer as-is with a few keystrokes, even if it implodes.

I'm experimenting with cloud storage now.

I don't actually like the term "cloud storage" or "storing in the cloud" or "cloud computing."  It makes it sound like the data are stored in some heavenly place where angels watch over them for you.  It also sounds . . . well, nebulous.  Like the data can't be grabbed at will, when usually it can.

But anyway, I'm trying it.  It started off as a way to access my network drive at work.  It's possible to access Nameless High School's computer network remotely through the Internet, but the interface is clunky and difficult to handle.  A number of times I've needed to access school materials at home, and it took a long time to deal with it.  Creating a cloud network storage area, however, would let me access materials quickly and easily, and the school allows the use of the Dropbox system on its computers.  So I installed it.

It works very quickly, and I can drag and drop and cut and paste and open and close and save exactly as if I were using my hard drive, but this hard drive I can access from any computer that has Internet access.  This is enormously convenient; I can put most of my teaching materials and lesson plans into Dropbox and get to them anywhere.  Also, I can designate any folder or file as "shared," meaning I can allow any individual I name to access it.  I have a co-teacher in my English 9 class, and I've been emailing her lesson plans and other materials.  Now I just give her permission to access the English 9 folder in my Dropbox account and save the materials there.  Much easier!

Once I started playing with that, I decided to move my current writing into the cloud.

See, I don't have a good network set up in my house.  My computers are all connected to the Internet, but not each other. This means that if I want to write on my laptop, I have to transfer the files from my desktop to a flash drive and bring that to the desk top.  The trouble with that is sometimes I lose track of which file is the latest, and more than once I've copied the wrong version over and lost work.

Now I put THE DRAGON MEN into Dropbox.  Any computer I want to use automatically has the latest version.  So far it's working very nicely.

However . . .

There are a few issues.  I'm limited to computers that have Internet access.  When Aran's at his piano lesson, for example, I like to write, but I don't have wifi there.  No wifi, no Internet.  No Internet, no cloud.

Dropbox also isn't totally free.  They don't charge for the first two gigabytes.  (Apple and Amazon give 5 gig for free--I use Dropbox because the school sanctions it.)  Then it's $10 a month (that's $120 a year).  Two gig is a LOT if you're only storing word processing files, but it's not very much if you want to store pictures or video or music.  And I refuse to pay for yet another utility.  It seems to me that my ISP (AT&T) should offer a certain amount of cloud storage space as part of my Internet access, but they don't seem to be interested.

At the moment, my relationship with Dropbox is a good one, and THE DRAGON MEN will be my first novel written entirely on the cloud.  Perhaps I'll even be able to submit it to my editor and get rewrites and copyedits through the cloud.  But I'm wary.  Nothing's free, and I'm waiting to see if Apple, Amazon, and Dropbox are just biding their time to get our society hooked on cloud storage before colluding to raise prices and force everyone to pay another monthly bill.

Today I stopped by the electronics store to get a replacement part for a household gadget and I came across the Smartpen.  Catherine Shaffer has one, as I recall.  It's a combination pen, recording device, and computer.  You write notes on special paper, and later you can tap the notes with the pen and the pen plays back what was being said when those words were written.  The notes can also be transcribed and uploaded and emailed and so on.

The techno-geekie in me really, really wanted one.  Really, horribly, seriously wanted one.  But I reigned myself in.  I don't do enough note-taking and interviewing to justify it.  I truly don't.

But I still whimpered and drooled over it.

As I recall, Amazon loaded up the first Kindle with a bunch of free books and newspapers and magazines.  They don't do that with the second one.  It came empty, and there were no offers of free books.

I played with it for a while.  It took a bit to figure out how the bookmarks work, but it have it now.  I haven't gone into playing with the text (making notes, selecting text, etc.).  That'll come later, I'm sure.

I downloaded two books.  One thing I like about the Kindle is that it lies flat.  I can use it while I'm eating.  Paperback books (and a great number of hardbacks) don't lie flat and are hard to use at the table, but the Kindle doesn't have that problem.

I'm liking it so far.

Okay, here's how it happened.

I bought my iPhone yesterday.  I felt I was ready to step into the world of hand-held Internet, and my old phone was eligible for upgrading.

Buying it meant first signing a contract (which I hate, but we're not planning on switching cell carriers anytime soon anyway) and then getting the phone switched on for me.  The very nice clerk transferred many files and much information, shook my hand, and said, "Welcome to the world of time wasting."

I got it home and did what you have to do in order to learn a new techno-gadget--I played with it.  I did have to struggle a bit to get it to connect to our WiFi (finally figured out I was giving it the wrong password, of which there are three to choose from) and download my e-mail (the iPhone automatically generated POP server information that was incorrect and I had to correct it manually), but once that was all straighted out, we were off to the world of tapping.

The screen is way fast and responsive.  It springs instantly to life and does what you tell it to without hesitation.  When you push a button or flick to the next menu, there is no load time.  I like that a lot.  And the special effects are cool.  Aran loves the way you page through photos by tossing them around with your thumbs.

I'm in love with the GPS and Google Map function.  No more getting lost, no more paper directions.

I also downloaded several apps to it--NPR, Pandora, Tic Tac Toe (Mackie's favorite restaurant game), New York Times, Facebook.

I'm getting better and better at using a touchpad typewriter.  Give me a couple of days and I'll be able to write stories on it.  :)

Me have iPhone 3G now.  Me spend entire day playing wif it.  Me have no brain.  Me thumbs wore down to nubs.

This site is kind of fun:

http://www.r2d2translator.com/

You can type things into the translator and it'll translate it into R2-D2 sounds.  You can download them as MP3s as well.  I created a couple for download.  Now when a message arrives, R2 says, "You have mail."  And when my phone rings, R2 chirps, "Answer the damn phone!"