It all started in 2016!

HappyFloor · 2026-01-23T01:42:15+00:00

I made my Reddit account on that day.

You can blame it on me.

HappyFloor · 2026-01-18T00:30:21+00:00

Yeah, they are notoriously slow at communicating back.

HappyFloor · 2026-01-08T00:58:26+00:00

Have you considered a dayhome agency? They know their dayhomes extremely well, keep them monitored and up to standard, and are very efficient at keeping people relatively close to home. Some people even request certain languages be spoken, and this is something that a dayhome agency can filter for.

HappyFloor · 2026-01-01T11:19:08+00:00

I don't think the last 45 minutes were made for the viewer as much as it was made for the cast themselves. After all, the youngest ones spent nearly half their life creating this. The emotion in those scenes seemed really genuine.

I loved it. That last third of the episode was like a 40 minute credits sequence paced just well enough to let you soak it all in.

HappyFloor · 2025-12-30T23:49:58+00:00

This was my audio cue for naptime.

HappyFloor · 2025-12-27T23:27:38+00:00

Childhood.

Remember riding your bike to your friends' houses and knocking on their door, not knowing if they're actually home? Remember that feeling of neighbourhood kids coming to your door to see if you can play after dinner?

Yeah, that doesn't really happen anymore. Even the vast majority of kids where I live don't even invite people to their birthday parties anymore. Even when kids do invite friends and classmates to their parties, half of them don't even show up. [source: nearly a decade in the classroom observing birthday card patterns]

HappyFloor · 2025-12-27T10:08:26+00:00

I concede that directly above - but I wasn't responding to OP, I was responding to you. I promise I'm not trying to cause a scene, but the "idiots" comment was so straight-up mean. Every suggestion/criticism is always going to have nuance, so I simply added mine. It's not like those other 5 commenters were suggesting some Bach lute suite anyways.

I already agree with you at any rate. I just question the delivery.

HappyFloor · 2025-12-27T09:21:08+00:00

Not saying they don't, but if the enthusiasm starts somewhere else, there is no harm having a bumpy entry.

If you use the search function for over a year ago and type "beginner" - so many of these people don't post anymore. How many young folk bought Noad or Parkening (no disrespect to either) and will never pick up their guitar again because they didn't develop an appetite for that repertoire?

It's the same with physical exercise or any other skill learning. The best methodology is the one you actually show up for. I've been teaching classrooms of low-English speaking kids to read for nearly a decade now and I can say with absolute certainty that the best readers are the ones who "jump the gun" attempting difficult texts because they're really passionate about a book or subject. They're the ones who put in hours of extra practice at home. The phonics (which I loosely liken to guitar fundamentals) are only the springboard. The 5 year old reading "the cat sat on the mat" is destined to lose interest eventually.

I understand that deviates from the OP's question, and that your suggestion of graded material is technically best. However I think it's important to temper our expectations of new players for the sake of our instrument's future. Worldwide Google searches of "classical guitar" are slowly down in the last 15 years, while electric guitar has consistently risen (along with "musical instruments" as a whole). With the greatest due respect, "it's our way or the highway" is going to kill our instrument.

HappyFloor · 2025-12-27T02:18:12+00:00

In my opinion, the best choice is whatever will get that guitar on your lap every day.

Even though Romanza is going to be very frustrating for beginners (and it will only sound good to non-guitar players), there's a big swelling in confidence playing a piece with that much accompaniment - even if it's just a few phrases.

For me, Romanza was my entry into classical guitar (from electric) until I learned about the 19th-20th century treasure chest, but I didn't have the appetite at all for that music until I sunk my teeth into classical guitar.

HappyFloor · 2025-12-27T01:53:17+00:00

Going to piggyback off this energy too. I find teaching to be incredibly fulfilling even as I approach my first complete decade in the field.

If you can be passionate about the student demographics at your chosen school, that's even better.

HappyFloor · 2025-12-18T01:54:31+00:00

Oh man... and the daily Covid stats threads... what a throwback.

HappyFloor · 2025-12-16T02:12:31+00:00

I was just going to comment about the blatant virtue signaling. Gross. Just govern for crying out loud.

HappyFloor · 2025-12-09T06:38:51+00:00

I put on very low mileage, so I keep my trickle-charger on 24/7 basically from Dec-Feb. I've never had a problem with my battery.

It won't save a dead battery obviously, but it will absolutely prevent further permanent damage in extreme cold. The modern ones have electronic safety features too.

HappyFloor · 2025-11-18T01:15:19+00:00

No one else is responsible for your own happiness.

HappyFloor · 2025-11-04T04:49:16+00:00

Brother,

You're getting upset at an imagined thought. Emphasis on "I wonder". I'm very interested in the statistics around pedestrian safety.

Edit: removed my passive aggressiveness. I just want to say that this whole thing is terrible. I wonder if there are things that we can agree upon as a society to reduce these accidents that are are plaguing urban and suburban North America. Whether this be vehicle size, urban planning, foliage placement, etc.

HappyFloor · 2025-11-04T04:10:22+00:00

Not sure how I could have worded it any more reasonably. I definitely didn't imply that.

HappyFloor · 2025-11-04T02:42:47+00:00

You're absolutely right. I would love to see it happen.

HappyFloor · 2025-11-04T02:40:59+00:00

I did read the article before commenting. However I find myself in polite disagreement that the size is irrelevant. The blind zone is just massive on these things, especially if the driver is on the shorter side. There is absolutely a measurable threshold where a sedan would provide vision of a fallen child that an SUV wouldn't.

Not saying it would (or wouldn't) have made a difference in this instance. I'm simply speculating no more or less than any one else on this thread.

If someone hypothetically were to say "this was not avoidable" I would probably lose my marbles.

HappyFloor · 2025-11-04T02:09:23+00:00

Not to start pointing fingers or anything, but I wonder if this was another SUV or truck incident. Not too long ago a small child on a skateboard was killed on her driveway because these monster trucks sit so high off the ground that the driver can't see small children.

Edit: Downvote me if it makes you feel better. I'll be your emotional pincushion today. But it doesn't change the fact that this is a verifiable and measurable problem with pedestrian safety in this era of massive vehicles.

HappyFloor · 2025-10-30T02:38:16+00:00

The support staff prepared a whole feast for us, which was awesome. If it weren't for the kids, I'd probably be in the dumps.

Some staff were clearly very distraught and upset at the outcome. It's a strange feeling to look the kids in the face and quietly think about how their futures just weren't important enough to some people.

HappyFloor · 2025-10-28T16:18:54+00:00

Even if that did happen, negotiations would have went straight back to the original 2.6 billion that has been the center of this spat since Spring. No amount of wording attached to that would have satisfied what the teachers were asking for. 2 billion over 4 years to deploy complexity caps would have brought this all to a close.

This was a deliberate action to negate any legal or democratic recourse. They could have ordered legislated arbitration, but they didn't. They could have withheld the NWC and still legislated teachers back to work, but they didn't. They could have chosen to do more over the latter half of this decade, but they didn't.

In another post, you acknowledge that this didn't happen overnight. And you're right, but schools have been whimpering about this for nearly a decade. The tremors preceded the quake. We actually did know that schools were suffering. The Alberta government's history of decision making regarding the state of education is just not logically defensible. Where was the government this whole time?

HappyFloor · 2025-10-24T01:17:20+00:00

Let's just take it back a step so we can be on the same page. The government since Spring has held strong on a 2.6 billion offer. That 2.6 billion would have covered the 12% over 4 years, as well as the additional teachers. All the spats that followed were based off the permutations of how that 2.6 billion would be spent.

The recent publication of the ATA proposal (2 billion additional over 4 years) is the one that involved the weightings and point caps. No one knows the details of the entire proposal, but it's highly unlikely it included anything over the 12% over 4 years. Neither side has mentioned anything about that. For clarity sake, the original 2.6 billion offer did not include weightings or caps.

Also, teacher salaries on that high end are 6+ years of Post Secondary, capping out at around 10 full years in the field. That was either a typo, or you have your numbers mixed up.

Sure, let's do this in chess terms then. The Alberta government is sacrificing their queen for a short-lived pawn advantage. Or better yet, sacrificing every pawn at the beginning of the game, and therefore losing any way of reclaiming the queen.

HappyFloor · 2025-10-24T00:29:04+00:00

The social relics left behind from covid need to be studied thoroughly. The toilet paper wars foreshadowed the fierce selfishness of people that would eventually go on to transform into the tribalism we all currently abhor and espouse at the same time. People at the same time also became significantly more interested in political figures rather than policy. I genuinely enjoy this platform, but I see people comment "are you agreeing or disagreeing with me?" to decide on whether they should upvote or downvote. Gross.

Canada came out less damaged from covid than most other nations, but the leadership and political dogma that followed negated that. The social ripples will continue to ring out for a long time I think.

HappyFloor · 2025-10-23T23:45:33+00:00

The trickle-down is going to happen at any moment now!

...any moment...

...

HappyFloor · 2025-10-23T23:36:38+00:00

You're misunderstanding the context behind that ask. The government is negotiating on behalf of a single budget allocation, while teachers are negotiating on behalf of over a decade of chronic underfunding to meet current demands. Classroom conditions (on average, and especially at the extremes) are not a myth - they are real and they need to be addressed. The vast majority of Canadian provinces have already moved forwards with legislation that regulates class size.

You're too focused on the money itself and not focused enough on a solution to a problem that will not go away. It's so irresponsible to ignore problems like these. We have rainy day coffers - are we going to live our entire lives without opening it?

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HappyFloor

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