The Thoughts of Cory LaViska

You know how you can tell whether or not you’re talking to an idiot? One way to know for sure is if they ask you nonsensical questions over and over again, taking baby steps to clarify what they actually need. Then, once you finally understand the nature of their inquiry, it has absolutely nothing to do with you at all and is probably something they could have easily figured out on their own with minimal effort.

People like this deserve the highest level of demeaning aggression available.  That’s right, they should all be fwapped.  No!  Not that definition, I mean #4:

To smack incessantly with a fish; the highest form of physical insultation;

Yeah, that’s the one. They all deserve to be smacked with a fish over and over again until they have scales and fish guts embedded in their skin, causing rotting, infectious diseases that eats them alive from the inside out.  Aw, who am I kidding?  A good fwap never hurt anyone…but it would be funny as hell.

I recently called “The New AT&T” to merge my BellSouth and Cingular services into one bill in an attempt to save money. When I agreed to let them enable long distance service on my account they told me that after the call they would transfer me to a third party company. This company would, effectively, confirm my long distance changes and life would be great from thereon after.

Well, I ended up staying on the line only to be disconnected moments later. The next day I got a voicemail stating that the confirmation failed and I’d have to call and have them transfer me again. So I called…and waited…and waited…and waited. Finally, the rep picked up the phone and (after another 10 minutes of researching my account) stated she was going to transfer me to the third party service again.

I quickly asked her if she had an extension that I could call her back on in case I got disconnected again, which she said she didn’t. She did tell me, however, that if I got disconnected again I should just call the same number and dial the option for New Customers, and that this would get me to a representative almost immediately (she also mentioned that she wasn’t supposed to tell me this).

I know this isn’t really anything profound, but it’s kind of funny hearing it straight from the horse’s mouth: once you’re a customer, you’re pretty much on the back burner. So now you know the trick and you shouldn’t feel bad using it. I know I don’t.

This is for all the people out there who are against the idea of charter schools (especially the ones who declare that they should all be shut down permanently). I know of countless parents who are grateful that their kids have had the opportunity to excel in these much-needed schools when the public schools didn’t work out. The environment, the teaching styles…it all varies with each charter, and that variety is something that you can’t find in your average public school.

Kids are diverse. They are not standardized machines. Each child should be given the opportunity to learn at his/her own pace at a school that understands that concept. Think about it. Just because your kid didn’t study his multiplication table doesn’t mean my kid should be held back from learning algebra.

When I was in elementary school they always told us to reach for the stars. Now we seem to be teaching our kids to wait for the dumb kids. You know what this creates? Boredom, bad performance, a despise for school, bad behavior…

Keep the kids interested in what they’re doing and encourage learning at their own pace, that’s you how get them to enjoy education. Until the public schools can show me that they give a damn about my childrens’ individual education and not just their stupid test scores, a charter school is the only way to go.

Today, whilst driving home on Knecht Road in Palm Bay (a 35 MPH road), one of two cops standing on the side of the street motioned for me to stop. So I stopped and rolled down the window, but only about halfway. I looked at him with my shades on and a “what the hell do you want” expression. After a brief moment of silence, as if he had to make up something to say, he spoke:

“What’s a safe distance between moving vehicles?” he asked.

“About 2 seconds” I replied (because I’m such a hardcore traffic-safety guru).

“So how far apart were you from the car ahead of you?”

Without hesitation I said about 1 to 1.5 seconds, which is my average distance on 35 MPH roads and a fair estimate of how far I really was from the car in front of me — I was by no means tailgating.

“Try about .5 seconds,” he said, and warned me that not adhering to the two-second safety rule would result in a “big ticket”.

I rolled up the window and drove away chuckling (without my seatbelt fastened, mind you). Seriously, guys…no, I’m not going to use a donut joke…but don’t you have anything better to do?

We didn’t get to go to the show last night because I lost the tickets, presumably in an inaccessible cavity behind my dashboard. It mostly-likely happened en route to the gas station on the way to Orlando. Attempts to excavate them from the vehicle’s ticket-eating vortex failed miserably. So that pretty much sucked.