Lost That Rhythm

Just when I was getting into a blogging rhythm, along came the end of the marking period grades, the beginning of the new semester where I am taking a course again, and now getting up early to go in and mark 8th grade science performance exams before school everyday for the next 2 weeks. Not surprisingly, with all the stress, I've caught a cold to slow me down when I need to speed up.

On the positive side, I just bought a laptop last week and I'm already wondering how I ever got along without it:

Dell Inspiron 600M

Pentium M 725 - 1.6 GHz, 14.1" screen

512M Ram

Intel PRO/Wireless 2915 Internal Wireless (802.11a/b/g54Mbps)

2 yrs tech support

etc....

$1,070.68 including tax & shipping

Nice, reasonably lightweight, reasonably fast - at least as fast as my (admittedly old) desktop at home. The internal wireless card is really nice, reception at home is much better than what I am getting from the older USB based stuff on my desktops. I have wireless access at my school and can hook the laptop to a projector and show animations and other useful web resources to the whole class.

I had been fishing around since early December, watching the prices go up & down, thinking a few times that I let the lowest price pass me by, but this price with 2 yrs tech support was the lowest I had seen for a while, so I took the bait. I checked everyday with gotapex - they post coupons and deals that are hard to find or non-existent on the Dell site itself. This particular deal was $500 off a $1499 or more Inspiron. I think the deal is still on.

I also purchased grading software (ThinkWave), after realizing this marking period that I can't possibly give grades based on weighted assignments by plugging numbers into a calculator - just too labor intensive. So I'm essentially tossing out the old paper & pencil binder with lesson plans, grades, attendance, and going high tech from now on. It may take a while to get the efficiency thing down, but what I was doing before just wasn't working for me.