August 20, 2014

Today was a productive day. I managed to get all the kids divided up into classes in the new Odyssey. It went a little faster than expected because I was able to add several kids at a time. It was slower having to go through and manually change the password for each kid but I got there eventually.

I finally updated the shortcuts page I made last year, adding the new Odyssey link, removing some things, and rearranging other things. Then I went about the task of putting the shortcut page link and the new Odyssey link on all the computers in the lab. This year the process went a little bit faster because the Public profile and desktop weren't hidden so I didn't have the extra steps of showing hidden files. It also didn't take me too long to remember that I needed to make a shortcut of my shortcut file in order to change the icon to a yellow star so it stands out on the desktop. Excluding having to replace the old Odyssey link, the process included dragging my shortcut file onto the desktop from my network drive, creating a shortcut of the file, changing the icon of the shortcut to a yellow star, navigating to the Public desktop, dragging all of the files (the original file, the folder accompanying the file, and the shortcut) to the Public desktop, and finally hiding the folder and original file so only the shortcut with the star icon remains. And I only had to do all of that twenty-six times.

I got a very brief start on making my MAP spreadsheets. The first round starts next month and I've got a bit of prep work to do. I'm not looking forward to watching kids test again. That is easily my least favorite part of the job.

Right after the bell rang I went up to the third floor because the gifted teacher said she had a question for me. She got a new Surface Pro tablet and needed help getting it connected to the internet. She lucked out because I just learned how to do that yesterday when I was trying to figure out the guest network. Even though the main network shows up in the wi-fi list you can't connect to it without first manually adding it and making sure all the settings in various windows are correct. But I got it figured out, and on Windows 8, which I have never played with before. I'm not a fan. I can see the idea of it working alright with a tablet but not for a computer. It took way too many steps to get to the basic things I needed when I was figuring out the wireless. While I was at it I also added printers to the tablet and did my best to make the text and icons and windows and all that bigger on the screen so she could actually see them on the screen. The text was hard enough for me to read with my new lenses and she is working with tri-focals. The wireless and printers were a success, and making some of the text larger was a success. It doesn't seem like making the taskbar icons bigger is a thing but you can't win them all.

Helping the teacher with her tablet ended up keeping me at work until 5:30PM. That worked out alright because I was able to go get Chipotle and didn't have to worry about waiting to eat when I got home. Reheated Chipotle isn't quite as good as the real thing. My sister ended up not coming over because she had a headache. Her loss.

After dinner I spent a couple hours reading a textbook and then wrote my bio for my second class. I still need to figure out how I am going to get more organized with my classes.

I was going to write more but it is nearly midnight and I find myself tired and distracted and unable to form a coherent thought.