Here it is, the last week of the semester... I'm the computer tutor at the local college and the printers are not on speaking terms with the computers in my lab. Students somehow have forgotten that they have to have their own floppy disks to work in here. Several of the computers have broken floppy drives and no one seems to remember how to create a database and query it. Finals are tomorrow and Friday! Papers are due today.

So, someone should write a song all about the "end of semester blues" and dedicate it to all of us hard-working college computer tutors everywhere. How about it Arlo? Oh, and a dedication to all the students who make this last week of the semester something to write home about, too

"End of Semester Blues"

(To be sung to the tune of the traditional blues song recorded by many, "Sittin' on Top of the World".)

Down at the college
I teach computers
Students are tired
So are the tutors
Yeah, I'm gettin' tired
C'mon summer
I got the End of Semester Blues

Weather gets hot
Students get sloppy
How can they forget
To bring a floppy?
Church shows in July
And I'm ready
I got the End of Semester Blues

This lab's computers
Don't speak to printers
Gettin' mad, gonna
Bust my desk to splinters
I'm gettin' tired
C'mon summer
I got the End of Semester Blues

Yeah, these computers
Just ain't up to speed
Floppy disks
They will not read
If the students would bring 'em....
C'mon summer
I got the End of Semester Blues

They can't build no data base
Forgot how to query
Kids got their minds on
Beaches in Erie
Let 'em daydream
I don't care
I got the End of Semester Blues

Files aren't backed up
Hard drives crashin'
I just can't go on
In this fashion
I'm gettin' tired
C'mon summer
I got the End of Semester Blues

Joe, that was terrie-rific, it brought tears to my eyes. Thanks! Now, Arlo... will you, Gordon and Abe be ready to sing it at The Church in 4 weeks??

Joe, are you coming up to MA for the July shows? Maybe we'll get a preview of the new song!

Glad you like it, Terrie, but I'm sure that Arlo would never commit career suicide---which is what he'd be doing if he ever sang any of my lyrics!

No, I can't make it to the Church shows in July. Maybe one of these years.

LOL this reminds of a displaced Cailfornian dead head friend of mine years ago.She found her self living in the cold north for a while and at Christmas was busking in downtown Ottawa,Between us we wrote a potential hit"My toes is froze,my nose is froze,I got the busking on Rideau Blues"
Gina,hope you are well wherever you are

That last post surprises me, considering we haven't had anything to say to each other in over a year, but I'd like to see the entire lyrics to that potential hit if you still have 'em.

Meanwhile, who are you & what have you done with Sparky???

What's a floppy disk?

ummm... i don't think they're actually USING 'floppies' anymore... if I'm not mistaken, that was what we used to call the 5-1/4" disks, that were encased in a flexible casing... They were in common use up to about the mid-nineties. By default, some people still call the 3-1/2" diskettes 'floppies'... but they are in hard casing, they don't flop, and in my warped mind, shouldn't be called 'floppies' ... but that's just me talking... the computer whizzes around here can probably give a better reply.

That was a neat song. All part of the folk process as Pete would call it. Arlo oughta record it.

I still use floppies. I hope they never get rid of them. My cd in my big Win 98 puter doesn't work right anymore & it & the cd I got for my 486 laptop don't record on cd's. They only play them. So I need floppies to be around awhile.

So its like a flash card, only softer???

They're the old floppy disks you use to store stuff on your puter with. (The smaller square ones)...

Who are you calling a square?

actually, they're even older than the ones you're talking about Cheryl... and they're about the same size as CDs, and the disks are actually round, but in a square "envelope" ... you know... like round pegs in a square hole?

But be that as it may, my brain has become floppy.....

Actually, I was pulling your tongue, er, I had my leg in my cheek, uhh, was being sarcastic???

I have been using computers since 1973 when we used to type our commands on punchcard to submit for processing. We'd get our results hours later. Early pc's in the late 70's used cassette tapes to store and load data. I remember using 8-inch floppies on a compuset optical typesetting machine in 1983, and it was old then! the 5 1/4 inch floppies that IBM PCs used were a big improvement and originally held 128kb and later up to 256kb. With the advent of the Mac in 1985, the hard floppies (3 1/2 inch) held 512kb and were later upgraded to 1.2mb and 1.44mb.

My first Mac in 1986 had a 10 mb hard drive, but most computers didn't have hard drives at all until a couple of years later. Of course I now have two 30gb hard drives in Mac and a 40gb drive in my PC laptop and those are way obsolete. I've quit using my 100mb zip drives because it's so much easier to move my data around on my network or the internet. I think nothing of burning 640mb to CD and throwing it away when I'm done. In the lab at the school I used to teach at we used DVD-ROMs that held several gigs, and Martha has a keyring that will hold a few gigs.

So what the (blleeepping) kind of school lab would use freaking floppy drives that don't even function???? I can't even think of any student project that would even fit on a floppy. Is this for real?

I'm puzzled, people...

Love and peace,
Petie

Hi, Petie. Notice I didn't answer any of your floppin' questions? I had a slight, albeit slightly-not-sure feeling about your questions.

Our computers have zip drives but most of our students can't afford them (those zips are not only obsolete as you mentioned, but very expensive on a $/mb basis. And I do find them in the lost-and-found box, so I'm glad not too many use them.

The reason for the floppies is a throwback to when they were "cheap" and portable. And re-usable. It's hard enough trying to get them to remember to bring them, insert them in the drive, save a file by changing the location in the "save as..." drop down box... but I cannot imagine having to also constantly remind them how to write to a CD, keep the session "open" or how to use a re-writable CD (I've never used re-writables).

ALL the student projects fit on floppies. As long as they remember NOT to have more than two Access databases per floppy, they're ok. The college is very big on having students save to floppies and also back-up by emailing their assignments to either the prof or to themselves for later retrieval.

The lab where I work is really for the students who are taking computer classes and know what's expected. They almost always have some knowledge and are taking computer apps courses, or web/graphic design. I'm supposed to be tutoring those students. However, we do get those who want to use a computer for the FIRST time in their lives, to write a 10-page term paper (the last week of the term) and have NEVER, and I do mean NEVER, touched a computer!

I've begged the counseling center (the division my job actually comes under) to add a computer proficiency placement test to those for English and Math already being used. Those in power refuse year after year, claiming it's not needed. But they don't work in these labs and see what we're dealing with. There are only 3 computer tutors for the college, and we're all part-time allowed by the union to work no more than 15 hours a week. The counseling center cannot afford to hire more tutors and the union gets involved in threatening any time any of us want more hours (I've even offered to volunteer, no pay)... but it's not permitted. The union sticks its nose in where it doesn't belong and thwarts us trying to do a good job for the students. Part-timers are non-union, at least for now.

We have many "older" displaced workers (Berks County is a former working-class county; former meaning many of the industrial businesses have ceased to exist as of around 5 years ago) trying to learn computers either for a new job or to write their research papers for other classes. We also have a lot of inner-city kids and young adults who are not computer-literate. We cannot assume that ALL teenagers are computer-wizards. Mine certainly are not. And they each have had their own computers (Michael included) for several years on our network. So I don't think it's even a matter of socio-economics.

In order for the college to move away from floppies, the students as a whole would have to be more computer-literate than they are. And yet the college thwarts our attempts to reach such literacy. I, for one, do not want to spend my days repeating the directions for burning and re-writing CDs. Especially since we instill in the students the importance of saving their work frequently (never know when a storm will knock out the power or the network will crash). Many are "hunt-and-peck" typists and can take a half hour to type just one page of a paper.

So, we use floppies as a cheap, easy way of having them save their work. Some are savvy enought o bring those little jump drives with them, but I worry about finding a gazillion of them in the lost-and-found one of these days. I have one but I know I'd never remember to take it out of the computer. Afterall, I left my cellphone recharger plugged into the lab's outlet and had to have my daughter retrieve it the other day!