December 15, 2014

It wasn't all-consuming, but it felt like my entire day was spent updating laptops. By taking them down to the lab in groups of four to ten at a time to hard wire them I was able to finish the third grade and second grade laptop carts. I thought I was going to get out of the second grade cart because the teacher put in a trouble ticket a month ago because several of the laptop power cords were frayed an no longer working. But the teacher and I both discovered today that the cords had been replaced. A tech guy came in a few days after we put the ticket in and realized it wasn't something he could fix and left. He would have known that before he showed up but I'm convinced these guys don't actually read the explanation that we write on the ticket. And then they get annoyed. Anyway, the teacher never heard anything else about it and just assumed nothing had been done. Normally you get at least two emails after a problem is fixed telling you what actions were taken and that the ticket is closed. The teacher got none of those but the problem was obviously solved. Who the hell knows when. That meant I got to update the cart. There were still a couple charging issues but I messed with stuff and I think everything is good now. At least for the time being.

As I was working on the last laptop in the second grade room the teacher got a district-wide email from one of the tech guys telling everyone to suspend the updating process because there were some issues with it that they wanted to resolve. That would have been nice to know thirty desktops and over thirty laptops ago. I just hope that what I have done so far is good and I don't have to go back to redo everything. That would be a pain in the butt.

I had second grade reading groups this morning and we read a story about an old man named Mr. Putter who wanted to write a mystery novel. He would get all set to write and then he's need to make lunch or breakfast or take a nap or whatever else. Instead of the novel he ended up just writing a list about things he liked. That story pretty much explains my process when it comes to homework or any other project I need to do. I become very easily distracted.

Last week sometime that second grade teacher asked what was on my Christmas list, in a sort of offhanded way. I mentioned the calendar so I could write down my homework assignments and stuff like that. Well, today she had a present for me and it was a nice sized wall calendar. Very cool. I am fairly certain I am going to get a big desk one for Christmas so I don't know if I want to keep the wall one at work, because I spent a lot of time this semester working on school stuff at work, or if I want to keep it in my room and leave the desk one in the other room, on my desk, when I finally get it finished.

At the end of the day I went down to the library to show the librarian how to add printers on laptops so every user of the laptop can access them. We put printers on all the first grade laptops a few months ago but apparently they were only accessible to us. I think it was my first year working there that I spent weeks figuring out how to add printers using a hundred-step process (roughly) so that everyone could access them. I wanted to avoid that this time so my first effort was to add the printer using the regular device manager approach but add it using the IP address rather than searching for it in the list. Thankfully, this appears to have worked. It saved both of us a lot of time and grief.

After work I found my book cross stitch, along with all my other finished projects. I wasn't in the mood to wash my latest cross stitch tonight, and I'm mildly worried one of the colors will bleed, so I'm putting it off until tomorrow. And I'll probably test some of the string first to see if it will bleed.

Instead of cross stitch stuff, I put up a small Christmas tree in the basement, decorating it with all the ornaments I got from my grandma's house (most of the homemade by my grandma and grandpa) and I put the five light up ceramic house I also got from my grandma's house. It looks really cool. I'm pretty sure I'm going to be spending a lot of time just sitting across from it in the recliner and staring at it in the dark.

I also played more Tomb Raider tonight. I don't know how long the game is but I feel like I'm getting close to the end. It is still a fun game. Tonight I was able to upgrade my bow to a competition bow and I got a thing so I can use it to pull heavier objects as well as climb ropes faster. It is a badass bow. I also found enough pieces to upgrade my shotgun and handgun. I'm deadly.

And now, it is almost midnight so I'm going to bed. I had plans to start working on the fourth grade laptop cart tomorrow but if the updating suspension is still in effect I don't think I'm going to go to the effort. Who knows what I will be doing instead.