Monday, August 25, 2008

Frustration Venting

I don't know which is worse; the normal "We can't set up student accounts until we have all the students enrolled at the correct school" or the "We turn off the air conditioning when school is not in session" problem. While both of these are problems to me in my computer lab they make logical sense in the big picture, however they create a lot of pain for me in the computer lab.

The first problem means that students can log on one day and can't the next because their accounts are disabled while records are transferred. It also means that server based programs that require a log-in don't have the student names yet. Since the most commonly used program is server based and it is to be used on a daily basis, that creates a problem.

The second problem wouldn't normally be a problem except when I have to do maintaince on all the machines, which I don't have time to do except on the weekends. Since the air conditioning is off and my machines give off a lot of heat it gets very hot in my room. This causes the circuit breakers for my power to flip off. Also it only does this at a critical point like in the middle of defragging my drives. Thus I now have more maintaince to reformat hard drives or replace parts that were damaged by the surge from the circuit breaker. (Two machines from last weekend)

Between these two problems my class planning gets shot to pieces unless I double plan with alternate activities. A true pain. Hopefully sometime this week (it being Monday) the first problem will disappear as we get farther into the school year parents get done "moving" their child to the correct school and the student lists get loaded in the server (The people downtown really work their tails off to get this done as early as possible. I know this, I just yearn for a perfect world where all things get fixed before they are needed and supposed to be used.)The second problem will disappear with the advent of autumn and the seasonal drop in temperature, where turning off the AC/heater results in a cold room and the heat from the computers is a plus not a problem. (The joy)

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Been gone a long time.

Its nice to be back. No, really its great to be back. After having two major operations last spring followed by the summer off I am much happier to be back at work getting ready for the new school year.

I plan on making a stronger effort on this blog and have added a fourth blog for my video class. The 2nd blog was my robotics class and the third was my eighth grade Applied Technology class. The plan is to increase the postings on those blogs also.
So you can see I hope to greatly increase my use of this great resource.