Computers

Do you know how many nights Brian and I sit next to each other on the couch on our respective computers? Is this normal? He's doing his thing and I'm doing mine. I guess this is just as bad as sitting in front of the TV all night while sitting next to each other as well.

I hate my computer at work. It is always making me read email that pisses me off. Can't we just make the email go away for a little bit? Sometimes I'm feeling really good about how things are going and then I read a flamer email. What ever happened to calling someone on the phone? Granted, in some situations, I'd rather communicate by email, but others require a conversation where inflections can be heard and facial expressions can be seen. A perfect example of this is what happened at school yesterday. A father of one of my students sent off a flaming email to all his kid's teachers and administrators with out having all the facts. Everyone in school was running around, sick to their stomachs because we thought the worst was going to happen. Needless to say, the parents had a miscommunication and things weren't as severe as we thought. Would that have all been avoided if he would have simply called the school instead? Now he looks like a jackass and has to eat his words that he sent to the whole world.

Having said all that, I don't know what I would do without email. It gives me time to think about what I say before sending it (so I don't look like a jackass)and it allows me to have questions answered quickly rather than having to start a telephone conversation with all the time consuming niceties that are expected. Sometimes I don't want to talk on the phone, but it would be nice to go through a school day without 75 to 100 emails to read and respond to!