Don't wanna be all by myself

[austin_dern]

So recitation sections began today. This has been a peculiar frustration beyond the already bizarre local attitude of picking recitation dates and times after classes begin. For whatever reason there's been more confusion than usual about what rooms and times are available, and when. I already had to alternate between a computer room and an ordinary classroom, and it turns out I can expect to have to alternate the classroom between two available rooms as well. Until yesterday I didn't have an answer as to whether I'd be in the computer room or a classroom, and if a classroom, which.

Yesterday, I got the word to use the alternate classroom. I sent e-mail out and posted an announcement of the exact room number. When I got there today and set up ... no one was present. I gave it some time, since the busses are a bit out of synch with class hours this side of campus and I'll often get a wave of students. No dice. I started outlining my next lecture, and fuming that after the effort of finding a time nearly everyone could meet, nobody bothered to show up. After maybe ten minutes, one of my students wandered in ... they had gathered in the other classroom.

I'm slightly irrationally upset by this. This mixup means (1) my students did not read e-mails from me stating the class number, name, and meeting place in the subject as well as the body of the message, nor the posted announcement on the class web site; (2) all the fuss about classrooms was useless since all three sites were available; (3) I lost a class hour I could have used explaining the numerical mathematics tools; and (4) I had to start out this part of class looking foolish. I run things informally and humorously, but at my discretion. Dashing into class late with my notes and book clutched sloppily in my arms sets me in a sour mood all day.

Trivia: The International Telegraph Union directed in 1885 that all commercial telegraph messages must be genuine words in German, English, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, Portugese, or Latin, and the sending office could demand proof of a word's legitimacy. Source: The Victorian Internet, Tom Standage.

Currently Reading: Remaking the World: Adventures in Engineering, Henry Petroski.

Comments

[xolo.livejournal.com]

The International Telegraph Union directed in 1885 that all commercial telegraph messages must be genuine words in German, English, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, Portugese, or Latin, and the sending office could demand proof of a word's legitimacy.

*grimblegrimblegrimble* No prunkling over the telegraph, eh? Does it say why they instituted such a rule?

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

You could probably get Prunkle across by insisting it to be a person's name, but the context might belie that.

The point of restricting messages to known words was, the unit by which charges for a message were built up was the length of the message. The most common senders, though, were businesses, which would have a relatively fixed set of messages to send -- buy (this much) of (that), sell (this much) of (that), deliver (this much) of (that) to (there), and so on. Rather than the expense of, say, SHIP 45000 BOXES 2B CRAYON PENCILS UTICA they'd abbreviate it as far as possible, eg, S45T2BCPUCNY.

They do lose revenue from sending the shorter message, but also, the 12-letter message above is harder to send and receive, taking more time to send accurately, than the longer one might. Ordinary language has a lot of redundancy and error-protection in it allowing for better speed and accuracy -- make one mistake or miss two letters in `CRAYON PENCILS' and your message is still obvious; make one in `CP' and you might be selling anything, and if you miss two you've got nothing. And if they do make a mistake, the sender might sue them for the defective transmission!

So by trying to limit things to a known language, the hope was that they could enjoy higher rates and simpler messages. But then uses began digging out obscure words and laying meaning on them, so that, say, `XEROTIC 45' might mean the whole thing above, losing the semantic double-check.

Telegraph companies tried a little while longer to keep things to common words, or to Standard Codebooks, but eventually gave up on trying to keep messages understandable.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

One day doesn't seem like a reasonable amount of time to expect everyone to have checked their e-mail. I'd have thought *some* of them would have, though. What the hell?

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

You underestimate the Internet-connectedness of these students. These are people who've never not had e-mail on their cell phones. More, I'd warned them in class on Monday that I'd send them an e-mail with the class assignment, so they should have checked Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning at least.