I spent the day at one of the area school districts helping the tech troubleshoot several computers. He is in the unfortunate position where he does tech part of the day and teaches the other part of the day. It is the worst possible situation for a district to put a person in. Being a tech is a fulltime position, regardless of the size of the school. Just to give you an idea, he has the first two periods for tech, then a class, then another period for tech and lunch, then classes the rest of the day.
We had several computers (by several, I mean about a dozen) to try and figure out what was wrong and/or to do a full reinstallation. It took me working there all day PLUS him working as he could along side me, and we still didn't get it all done. How any district expects their tech to get these kinds of things done and still teach classes is beyond me.
We had several laptops that we had to reinstall windows XP, and then install the network client software, Office 2007, Antivirus, etc. There were also desktops we had to do the same thing.
In addition to that, there were a bunch of computers that we didn't know what was wrong, so they had to be tested. Turns out most of them had bad motherboards. I haven't seen anything like that since my days at Southern Arkansas University as a tech.
One of the computers had an expired windows XP. Basically, it needed to be registered with Microsoft and too much time had passed. So, we tried to register by phone. A computer comes on and asks you to recite the series of numbers presented on the screen. Of course, there are about fifty numbers. That is no lie. There are about 8 groups of 6 numbers and you have say each number in each group. When all was said and done, the dumb computer I was talking to couldn't make a match. When an actual person came on the line to take over, all I had to do was given him the first group of numbers and he gave the key code to register. Okay, next time I have to do this, I'm screwing up on purpose and just skip ahead to the HUMAN!
By the end of the day, there were three laptops complete, three desktops that were fixed and a slew of machines that were simply irreparable.
I forgot to mention yesterday that my aunt brought gifts for us! I got a "Six-Burgh" shirt, the kids got shirts, and Shan got several tops. We also got a couple Pittsburgh Post-Gazette papers with Steeler Super Bowl special reports! AWESOME!
We've had MAJOR tornadic activity this evening, and according to various folks we've been chatting with on facebook, they have relatives in Mena, AR, and several buildings have been destroyed, including a trailer park, trees, and evidently the courthouse. We're just praying that no one loses their life during all this mess...
Earlier tonight, we all ate at Mom's house. She made chicken, mac-n-cheese, rolls, and cake! It was very good and it was nice to eat at her place. We haven't been able to do that for three months!
Stick a fork in me. I'm done - wiped out!
Eeh, Dave? The Steeler stuff was from your mom.... The tie was from me, the Final Four Shirt for Ty, All the tops for Shan and the Hanna Montana and Cheerleader Camp shirt for Em was from me........
ReplyDelete2 months. It had only been 2 months. She came to Pittsburgh on Feb. 10th.
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