class and slacking. We wrote the book.
Lemme tell ya a little story about my Computer Science class in high school. Our school was (at the time) the largest high school in Georgia, so it got quite alot of money to try new things, and test new class formats. Well, a CS class worked its way down the pipe that included some hardware work, network engineering, a little basic programming, and web design. It was designed as a 3 semester program, which is fairly impressive for a high school course. The professor admitted only people he personally knew or those who could get a written recommendation from another teacher. He wanted to make sure he didn't get a bunch of screw ups.
Well he got us, so that whole recommendation thing failed. We got to know the teacher quite well, and it turned out he was a really cool guy. Our little cadre always managed to not be the ones in trouble when he'd do his monthly shouting session over us wasting time (kinda like the shop teacher on South Park... "quit horsin aroind!"). Despite that, we pretty much instigated any um, wrongful behavior, that the class picked up on. We just didnt get caught =P
First came the netsurfing during class. Harmless enough, we were on the net already for classwork. But over time it became more slack time, less work time. So the school bought these teaching CDs we were supposed to watch, that theoretically taught us basic network design. Alt-Tab, more internet. And so it began...
Any time we had a substitute, it became Quake Tournament Day. Every single computer in the room had Quake hidden on it somewhere, and we'd always end up with an inept sub who just sat and assumed we were working. Half the time we'd get the sub involved, since the constant outbursts of "oh you *&@# son of a *(@#&, you killed me!" tended to give things away. We were ordered to stop every week or two, but it never happened. The professor even stood behind us all to watch us delete Quake, but we all grabbed it back off the server where we'd first hidden it =P
The Quake games got so busy at times, we actually had the sys admin come down to see what was causing all the bandwidth use. The servers all ran a constant monitor, and it would spike about 30x higher than normal on those days.
Near the beginning of the second semester, one guy in the class got a job at a local sandwich deli, one of those places that costs about 9 bucks a plate but they swear its fast food. He started taking orders for us, and would make sandwiches before he left at the end of his shift, then sell em in class. All of the ingredients were to be thrown out at the end of the day anyhow, so his managers didnt mind. He'd charge us about 2 dollars, and we'd get a good lunch =) The professor noticed what he was doing, but didnt have him stop. He just made the guy bring him a sandwich whenever he brought others. It turned into a Monday ritual, and by the time I graduated, we literally did no work at all for the full 90 minute period on Mondays. We just sat and ate, and chatted with the teacher. It was great. Through the use of food, we'd managed to earn ourselves a professor sanction day of slacking off =)
Just before we graduated, my friends and I ended up being hammered on by the administration for a web site we'd created during class. Some genius thought it would be a great idea of the students of our class ran the school website, and it fell to us to design it. We did, and the admins loved it. After it was done, we took the same graphics, altered the colors, and turned it into a spoof of Austin Powers, which was new at the time. It ended up being the "evil" high school page. It was a complete and utter joke, no one could ever possibly take it seriously, so one guy posted it on his private web space.
Apparently someone must have turned us in for it just for kicks, because the admins somehow got ahold of the address. They claimed the janitor had found it written on a note in the trash, but we never actually used paper for anything in there =P So they called us up, started threatening us with all sorts of suspensions over the site, and ordered us to take it down. They gave us a laundry list of "illicit references" none of us ever even realized were there. They found a dozen plus drug references we didnt intentionally put in (you know school admins and their mastery of the lingo those crazy kids use), claimed a joke made about a teacher had made her consider legal action, etc etc. They knew they couldn't *make* us take the site down, it wasn't on their web space, but we dropped it anyway. No disciplinary action was taken, since we did what they asked. Looking back I almost wish we'd fought it, there's no way in hell they had a way of making that site go down. Oh well.
So anyway, we all graduated after that semester, and went our separate ways. I still keep up with a couple folks who remember that class, but most of em have drifted off. Man it was great. Sometimes I actually miss high school, even though it was hell. There sure was alot less to worry over than there is in college.
Heylel
