My Best Teaching Is One-on-One

一対一が僕のベスト

Of course, I team teach and do special lessons, etc.

当然、先生方と共同レッスンも、特別レッスンの指導もします。

But my best work in the classroom is after the lesson is over --
going one-on-one,
helping individual students with their assignments.

しかし、僕の一番意味あると思っている仕事は、講義が終わってから、
一対一と
個人的にその課題の勉強を応援することです。

It's kind of like with computer programs, walking the client through hands-on.
The job isn't really done until the customer is using the program.

まあ、コンピュータプログラムにすると、得意先の方に出来上がった製品を体験させるようなことと思います。
役に立たない製品はまだ製品になっていないと同様です。

Sunday, June 20, 2021

So How Did You Celebrate Juneteenth?

By the time someone I follow on Twitter mentioned Juneteenth fourteen hours ago, it was already June 20th here in Japan. 

I hadn't gotten the news about the day becoming an official national holiday by act of Congress and signature of President Joe Biden, so, if I had remembered it, I would still be operating under the impression that it was an unofficial holiday.

Oh, well. 

The purpose of celebrating a holiday is not something sacred about the exact date, it's to help us recall the ideas, events, concept, goals, etc., that the holiday memorializes -- that the holiday is intended to bring out attention back to. So, the holiday has served its purpose for me this year, even if belatedly.

Here is the document memorialized:

 

Juneteenth --
Jubilee Day
Emancipation Day

 

Head Quarters District of Texas   
Galveston Texas June 19th 1865.


General Orders
   No. 3.

              The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor.

                   The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.

              By order of Major General Granger

                        F.W. Emery

                        Major A.A. Genl.

 

This is a memorial of the day that emancipation was officially announced in Texas.

A war had been fought. Texas had joined on the side of states retaining the right to choose for themselves about the form of indentured servitude known as chattel slavery. Slave owners who didn't understand how to transition to a new world where indentured servitude would be by terminable contract moved to Texas in large numbers, looking for refuge from the new world order.

This order should have eliminated slavery, and it gave hope to a lot of former slaves. It is that hope which is celebrated and remembered. 

And it's a hope we still all need, since indentured servitude by unconscionable contract is still with us.

If we want to break down the walls between the classes, and those in every class, including the so-called upper classes of so-called privilege that is mostly illusion, we should all want the walls broken down. If we want those walls broken down, we should all celebrate Juneteenth, to the extent that those whose natural right it is to celebrate it will allow us.


Friday, June 11, 2021

Evaluating My ISP -- YMobile

About two years ago, I decided I'd had enough of NTT Docomo's arrogance and excessively competitive attitude. And Rakuten had bought out our old wired ISP (Sannet) and was arbitrarily changing things like email addresses and raising the connection rates.

Seriously, we are letting important infrastructure become dependent on companies who can't tell the difference between healthy competition and cutthroat competition. We've been letting the cutthroats win in the market for something like thirty or forty years. Do we have a right to complain that the service has just been going downhill?

Whether we have the "right to complain" or not, how else will the cutthroats understand that we don't want cutthroat competition?

We want competition that gives us options to fit our own needs. That's a good kind of competition. It is right to complain.

Back to YMobile. YMobile was claiming that they could give us cheaper internet and phone if we brought it all under their umbrella. So I listened to the sales spiel and did it. Basic phone, house internet connection, and all our cell phones and my tablet.

YMobile had been pretty good about my tablet, so I thought I could trust them.

And that was a small mistake. 

It didn't end up any cheaper. Might have ended up about a thousand yen more expensive. I haven't really compared YMobile's rates to the other options.

It also left us dependent on YMobile if something should go wrong.

Like now.

Not going to get into specifics, and you can say I should know better, but the real world .... There is one phone being paid out of my account that is not my phone. And the owner of that phone would not log in to check her bill each month, so she could warn me. She warned my once a couple of months back, when she realized that she had accidentally spent about an hour and a half talking on the phone line instead of the Line voice chat line. 

I covered that charge with extra money in the account the next month.

But then this last month's bill comes in, and again it is about JPY 2500 above the base line. And I didn't have any warning, so automatic withdrawal on one of the bills from YMobile bounced.

So I tried to contact them to find out what was going on.

Nope. The local YMobile shops can't tell me. I have to call.

But, nope. Calling just tells me to get on the web and ask them to call me at a specific time.

Well, the specific time has to be chosen from the range of time when I am at work -- 9:00 AM to 7:00 PM. And if you try to use the web form outside that time to reserve a time, it automatically picks a time in that range for you.

So I'm either driving or putting mail in slots for most of that range. If I'm lucky and there's no overtime, I knock off by 6:00 PM.

So I ended up with a reservation to receive a call between 11:00 AM and noon.

So an operator calls me, and she refuses to understand that I cannot talk, that I really shouldn't even be taking the time for asking for a slot after 6:00 PM. After a couple of minutes of trying to get her to give me a slot after six and her telling me she'd need to interrupt my driving later that morning to do so, I had to hang up. 

Mail waits better than drivers on the road, but only a little when you have customers that have requested delivery before noon.

No way to ask why the bill is too big without (I am told) talking to a live operator on the phone. 

Now I get a dunning notice. If I don't pay it by the third week after the original date automatic withdrawal date, they'll take the nuclear option -- shut down my house line and send out a bad credit report.

No grace period. (Docomo has a grace period.) Not clear if they'll check whether there's enough balance for a second try at the automatic withdrawal. (Docomo clearly states the date they'll try again on.) 

No time to ask questions, no time to discuss anything.

And, this is explicit in the dunning notice:

「過払い金が発生した場合は、翌月以降の請求分にて相殺いたします。」
"If an over-payment occurs, we'll balance it out on later bills."

They'll balance it out. On later bills. At their convenience. If they notice.

Okay, so I have to pay without finding out why. And then waste time on my days off to hound them until they tell me why. Or tell they won't tell me why, is my guess.

I could pay them another JPY 220 a month per phone to get an (internet-only, disappears after six months) detail listing of calls, but that would definitely make it more expensive than keeping my land phone with NTT, letting my wired internet get taken over by Rakuten, and supporting NTT Docomo with our cellphone payments. And that only works if I can get the person who owns the phone to check.

I can understand not letting me check her detailed phone record, but, although they are happy to let me set her up to auto-withdraw from my bank account, they refuse to tell me how much in advance. She has to tell me, or I just blindly put extra money in that account.

Just imagine what would happen if my mother-in-law or father-in-law were to try to deal with this.

I know, I know, I'm at fault here. Except, not. 

Not if I have to blindly keep extra money in that account, just in case.

Not if there's no way for me to find out what's going on. 

If you're considering jumping to YMobile, think twice or three times about it.

(I'll wait to tweet this and post it in my FB feed until after I waste half my next day off trying one more time to find out what's going on. I suppose I'm going to add that detailed report of calls to all the accounts, even though it will cost more.)