I know. I didn't run into any serious challenges until college. Hell, I never took notes, never did homework, never used a calculator, and still scored A-'s in all my classes, a 750 math on my SATs and a 35 math, 32 composite on my ACTs.

And I too was in the 'advanced' or 'honors' classes.. yet they still wanted me to operate by the old standard procedures.

I ran into only one professor that basically worked well with my modus operandi. Ironically for a numbers nerd, it was in a series of history classes. Prof said that our grades were based entirely on three papers to be submitted on three specific dates on three topics specified in the syllabus. Either you went to the class and took notes, and submitted papers which were related to the topic, or you didn't. He never took attendance, never made assumptions, liked when you would submit a cogent paper which disagreed with his premises, and really liked it when you did the research. As in, went to nearly a dozen libraries, searched for first degree sources, properly cited, etc.

That was a great class. And he was the first prof outside of comp sci cool with me using my laptop for notes. (And I did it with an emacs terminal.

Generally, though, without adequate access of resources by the parents (read: money or mobility), a kid's stuck in the schools local to him or her. In Illinois, my pied a terre for example, if you're in a poor district and want to send your kid to a richer district, you either have to move there or pay the equivalent tuition. (The latter option is rarely engaged.)

And if you're in that situtation, you may as well send the kid to a parochial or private school.

Personally, I would suggest a solution similar to one proposed by Dan Savage for other kids that want to opt-out of high school: get a GED, get into at the least a community college, and be done with HS if there's no option for a good high school. Hell of a lot cheaper, and yeah, it means not dealing with the wankers in high school but it also means that there's more challenge that the kid can handle. And at a younger age, when he will feel like he can hack it. .. Or move to another country that gives an active damn about education. Canada, let's say.

Now, if it had a couple thousand more pounds, we'd have a bona fide 16 ton weight.

Too bad he Pythons never thought of it exploding, though...

A shame that we can't choose Dr. Thaddeus Venture...

(Or, better, Dr Orpheus!)

In my case, the speed is nice, but it's the specific application that defined where it went.

I have a laptop being used as a desktop replacement. In previous attempts to do so, the HD eventually overheated and burned out. Sometimes the laptop fell down, jammed the drive. (What can I say - I'm a klutz.)

Not going to happen with an SSD.