The Few, The Proud, The Strange
Monday's classroom setup started like most, but this time something special happened. As usual, I had to try several dry erase markers before finding one I was certain my students would be able to read. When I did, it was a revelation. The marker was fresh and black. I was filled with joy as I saw it leave thick, bold lines on the board. Not the light happiness of a good joke, but the deep contentment of a warm Sunday morning in bed.
I often find happiness in little things. But come on, who reacts that way to a marker?
I'm proctoring a certification exam tomorrow. After class today, I started preparing by running the following command:
for I in $(seq 20); do ssh station$I 'dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda' & done
Within seconds, the room was filled by the sound of twentry hard drives spinning, scrubbing themselves clean. The sound reminded me of a forest full of cicada. I walked to the middle of the classroom to better enjoy it. When I got there, I laughed suddenly. The scary part? I don't know if the laughter was caused by simple happiness, relief after a long and tiring week, or sudden power mad craziness.
At the moment, I'm leaning toward the latter.
It isn't the first time.
