Return of Service Notice

Dear World,

We, the United States of America, your top-quality supplier of the ideals of liberty and democracy, would like to apologize for our 2001-2008 interruption in service.

The technical fault that led to this eight-year service outage has been located and the software responsible was replaced on November 4, 2008.

Early tests of the newly-installed program indicate we are now operating correctly and are fully-functional as of January 20, 2009.

We apologize for any inconvenience caused by the outage. We look forward to providing full service and hope to improve in years to come. We thank you for your patience and understanding.

Sincerely,

The United States Of America

(A friend sent this to me. I haven't found its origin yet. If you know it, please let me know.)

Movtivators and Demotivators

From the title, you might think this was going to be a post of some substance. WRONG! Instead, I want to quickly highlight a fun web tool you could use with students.

The website is Motivator from Big Huge Labs. It allows you to use a photo from your computer, Flickr, Photobucket or a URL, and turn it into a motivational poster.



I can see using FlickrCC images to allow you to create posters of character traits, themes, decision-making, vocabulary. The list goes on and on. You do need to register to upload images or link to a Flickr account. I think you can enter a photo's URL without registering.

Registration is free but requires an email address. I did not test out linked Gmail addresses to see if they worked.

If you aren't very fond of this type of motivational poster, check out the demotivational posters at Despair.com. If you've ever been part of ISO 2000 or a school accreditation review, you may especially appreciate this poster.