TV Star

Driving Amalie to school on Friday morning, she mentioned that she was going to be on television. This was news to me, and on rather short notice.

No, nothing on the networks. Her school does a live cast on Friday mornings, from the library to all classrooms, selected students reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, the Texas Pledge (which is almost the same text), and the school's crocodile theme song. I walked her to her room and checked with the teacher -- yes, Amie had been selected for this week's telecast, by being such a good and well-behaved student. I escorted her back to the library.

We filed in with a bunch of other students and two librarians or teachers, who were in charge of production. I decided to stay and watch. It took a minute or two to organize all the kids -- arrange by height, get the stragglers in position, separate the younger ones who were not concentrating. There were two or three other parents beside me, and as I glanced over I noted they had their cell phones out, ready to take pictures.

Foo. Well, I can do that, too -- I just never think of using the cellcam. Pulled it out, flipped it open, and took a few shots.

Friday's school ensemble, ready to recite.

Our young star-in-progress.

Later, I tried downloading it through the USB port, and either by design (intended to be proprietary) or incompetence, this effort became insane and perhaps impossible. I don't know whether to blame manufacturer Motorola (through which direct experience I can readily credit the "incompetence" theory) or service supplier Verizon, but trying to get the right software and drivers and sorting out the right configuration ended up wasting 3-4 hours and getting nowhere. I finally, simply emailed the pic off the phone to my netmail. Feh. Feh, braindead tech companies. You can do better, and have no excuses not to do so.