prewcious gets pawpaw to do her homework

[depechemodefan]

Either the girl asked her grandfather to do the homework or grandpa found out about the homework and decided to do it for her. There are people who want to make sure the kid gets an A+, and kind of miss the idea of kids learning things.

But I'm sure prewcious figured she can get grandpa (some people call their grandfathers around here "pawpaw") to do it.

me:
gp: grandpa

me: thank you for calling the Blah Public Library, how may I help you?
gp: Hello, my name is (name of actor in Jaws and The Deep), and I'm helping my daughter, I mean my granddaughter. She is 9 years old.
me: ok (you mean do her homework) are you looking for books? Which library do you want to go to to pick up the books?
gp: uh, no, she needs some help with her homework, and I want you to answer me by phone. I have several questions. I need to know what is a terarium.
me: ok
gp: that is my question.
me: oh, I thought you have several questions. Go ahead and give me the other questions.
gp: That is the only question.
me: ok *googles* A terrarium is a miniature landscape
gp: wait amoment, I'm deaf. it's a minature landscape?
me:with living plants (pause) and even sometimes (pause) small animals (pause) like lizards or turtles. link
gp: *repeats me* now I need to know where to get materials for a terrarium.
me: oh, I thought you only had one question. You can get material from a pet shop or Wal*Mart.
gp: a pet shop or Wal*Mart. Thank you.

Ugh, I hate doing kids' homework.

[An Haddock]

I'm a little surprised someone in his 60's or 70's never heard of a terrarium... they actually seem to be rather popular with older folks. (not so much the ones with animals in them)


The ones with animals can be fun... I built one with a little waterfall and had a frog in it some time ago... I think I'm about due for another.


I guess it didn't occur to the guy to try a dictionary. When I was a kid, that was my parents answer to everything. "But I don't know how to spell it!" "Figure it out". And that's before the internet and web pages that corrected your spelling, too!

In my day... *rants, sputters, waves fist at passing cloud*

[Andara Bledin]

I'd be a lot more blunt, and make them actually think.

"A terrarium? That's like an aquarium, only for land animals instead of water animals. You know, like you would keep a lizard or turtle in. Terra means earth or land, you know."

^-.-^

[NateTheChops]

Could I make a fortune by doing kids' homework for them?

[Andara Bledin]

I used to make a pretty penny hanging about the college computer lab and type up other people's assignments.

I wouldn't change what they'd written beyond fixing spelling errors. Grammar was their own lookout, though.

^-.-^

[MoonCat]

Reminds me of the kids who used to call us and ask how much an ad costs. After answering questions on this too damn many times, I started telling them the rate per line or per inch - "you pick the size of the ad and do the math yourself." The stunned silence on the other end of the line was always entertaining.

Come to think, it's almost time for that crap to start again. Darn teachers around here can't think of anything else to assign their students.

[EricKei]

"But I don't know how to spell it!" "Figure it out". And that's before the internet and web pages that corrected your spelling, too!

AGH! I always hated to be told to look up spellings when I didn't know how to spell them in the first place -- mainly because, if I knew how to spell it, I would not have asked; if I don't know how to spell it, it could be difficult to find. >_< Such a lovely contradiction in terms...Case in point:

Somewhere around 2nd~4th grade, I asked a teacher how to spell the word "entree". I had heard the word before at that point, but I had never seen it. She adamantly refused to tell me and insisted I look it up in the dictionary. The thing is, she never bothered to mention that it did not begin with the letter "O" (think about it for a sec...). She seemed exasperated and still refused to help me find it when I had the dictionary open in front of me and had been looking for a good ten minutes (that's a long time for a kid that age!), and didn't bother to even point me to the correct section of the text

[MidoriDelSol]

Wouldn't the 9 year old have a family computer? He actually called you to tell him what a word was? DON'T OLD PEOPLE HAVE DICTIONARIES?

Wow, I never had my homework done for me and I would never do it for my kids.

[LillFilly]

I really, really REALLY hated losing at fairs and such to projects that had obviously been done by the parents. But, I learned how to do stuff myself, that's the important thing I guess. I can't believe the teachers can't see the obvious, but I suppose calling the parents on it would raise a stink.

Reminds me that I once wrote a poem, a good one that just came to me in the middle of the night, I wrote it down and by next morning had forgotten even writing it. It was GOOD. Used it for an assignment and the teacher swore I'd plagerized it because "it's too good."

[zenhashi]

I'm more a fan of "making kids figure out things for themselves". Or people in general, for that matter.

I may give out answers to a question or two, but all the while I'm pointing out good resources to further study up on the subject (like in this case, terrariums).

...which is why I like responding to inquiries made through e-mail. It lets me research the subject if I don't know it by heart (very few people really ask about things I'm interested in. ).

Reminds me that I once wrote a poem, a good one that just came to me in the middle of the night, I wrote it down and by next morning had forgotten even writing it. It was GOOD. Used it for an assignment and the teacher swore I'd plagerized it because "it's too good."

You built sych a hype around it now, we want that poem.

[cinema guy]

It would be my guess that the kid had to make a terrarium. Hopefully grandpa was only going to get the stuff and precious would make it herself. Or am I being naive?

[LillFilly]

You built sych a hype around it now, we want that poem.

You won't believe it...Well, maybe you will, but it was lost a great computer crash, along with just about everything else I'd ever written; before learning the importance of back up. I might have a hard copy floating around, or maybe on one of my defunct hard disks. Trying to figure how I can recover data from those.

[PepperElf]

is that a life-sized on on the site? that's cool

[XCashier]

It would be my guess that the kid had to make a terrarium. Hopefully grandpa was only going to get the stuff and precious would make it herself. Or am I being naive?

I'm afraid you are being naive. Far too many kids bully, badger or plead their parents to do their work for them, leaving them completely unprepared for the real world when they grow up.

It would indeed be a nice surprise if grandpa was merely buying the items and letting Precious put it together herself, but experience shows that it's most likely he's building it himself.

[EricKei]

Trying to figure how I can recover data from those.

Cheap-ish ($150 and up) programs exist out there that may be able to help, and professional services run the gambit from about $250 for bare-bones recovery service to upwards of $5K for "we can recover 90% of the data from a drive that's been sitting in the bottom of an aquarium full of water, fish, and algae for 2 years".

The main issues that would prevent recovery are usually:

- Condition of the hard drive and its internal platters/disks: were they scratched/damaged?

- Has any attempt has been made to use the drive AT ALL since the crash?

- Has any new data been written to the disk since then, including formatting the disk?

- Has any attempt at recovery taken place since then?

The more "NO" answers, the better. Look into recovery services that you can reasonably afford unless you want to DIY. Nothing is guaranteed, it just matters how important the data is to you.