January 23, 2015

Today is one of those days where I wish I would have started writing this earlier because I'm definitely going to skip over some stuff just so I can be done with it and go to bed. It's almost midnight and I'm tired.

This morning I watched a few random kids take MAP tests and I had both second grade classes in the lab. Right before lunch I went to return a laptop to one of the fourth grade rooms because a kid brought it down but by the time he made it to me the laptop had died. When I got it back up to the room I plugged it in and when I started it up it said there wasn't a battery. There was a battery, though, and when I took it out and then put it back in, it was finally acknowledged. As for the original problem, it wasn't happening when I was there so the teacher is going to have me come up when it happens again.

On my way back down to the lab I ran into the librarian, who was looking for me, so we walked back to the library to look at a couple laptops she was having issues with. One of them belonged to the gifted teacher, who's laptop had a virus. It had been taken, fixed, and returned, but it came back with a trust relationship problem so we couldn't actually use it. The other laptop only had the option to log on as “Student”. There was no way to switch to a different user and no one knew what the password was. So we put in two trouble tickets.

After lunch the gifted teacher's laptop had been fixed, again, and I was tasked with getting it ready for her. I started by putting a link on her desktop for a site she uses for IEPs. The default shortcut icon was tiny and awful, and would have potentially been erased soon, even though it was on the Public Desktop. I learned the hard way that internet shortcuts don't last long on school computer desktops. My workaround for this is a redirect code written in a text file, saved as an HTML file, and making a shortcut of that file so I can change the icon. I then made the icon by pulling an image from the website and editing it in Gimp. I then pull all of that stuff on the Public Desktop and made everything but the final shortcut with the new icon image, hidden. All a bit of a process but the end result works and that is what I was going for.

Next I added a bunch of printers. The computer lab printers were easy but I ran into a bit of a problem with the printer in the gifted room and the one across the hall in one of the fifth grade rooms. I eventually figured out the one in the gifted room by downloading a driver, then a second driver because the first one wasn't right and I red through the configuration page more closely. Then I told the computer I had the disk and navigated to where I extracted the driver. After all of that, it turns out the printer driver was in the list where you pick the brand and then the model. The tricky part was that even though it was a Ricoh printer, it was actually a Lanier printer. Confusing. And it would have been nice to know much earlier in the process. I ran into the same issue with the fifth grade printer and I went out on a ledge and picked another Lanier driver, despite it being a Ricoh printer. It was also not the exact driver but it worked.

When I delivered the laptop to the gifted teacher I had her log in and then set up her email for her. Then I tweaked the resolution and graphics option to make things bigger for her. I figured out how to make part of her email bigger but not the actual message in Outlook without double-clicking on it and then clicking on 'Zoom'. I was stumped. At the end of the day I was finally realized there was a little zoom slider in the lower right corner, like there is on all Office programs, and when you move the slider it changes the message size. So I went up and showed her and all was good. Until she has more questions.

The last class in the lab today was third grade. There were either working on their poems or doing Type To Learn. At one point I ended up getting really distracted and was playing catch with one of the kids. We were throwing cotton balls at each other. It started with one because he was throwing it at people and then saying “Think fast.” Then we started playing catch. Then a second cotton ball was added into the mix. Then more. Then the teacher politely asked him if there was something he should be doing. Somehow we both go very wrapped up in the cotton ball game. I blame it on being a really long week, even if it was only four days long. I also ended up playing Rock, Paper, Scissors with the same kid. I can't even remember why that started but he was really good. I beat him in the first game but he got me the second time. And it wasn't blind luck on his part. He was using actual strategies based on what I was throwing. So instead of going with the thing that would beat what I just threw, he went with the thing that would beat that. If he went Rock the first time, he would go Scissors next, assuming I would go Paper. This meant I had to go a couple moves in advance to beat him. The second time we played I wasn't really paying attention (not to give excuses) but I'm pretty sure he had figured out I was going one step beyond him so he went one step further. I don't know if any of that makes sense because it's 12:30AM and I'm tired, but it was really impressive. Most kids, and most adults probably, play randomly, but this third grade kid actually knew what he was doing.

Tanner started digging under the fence to get at the tiny neighbor dogs who don't realize he would tear them apart. They have a Napoleon complex and think they're big scary dogs. It was real dumb for the neighbors to put up their fence so it was practically touching ours. It is also annoying that they rarely come out to get their dogs when they all start trying to eat each other through the fence. Two tiny dogs are much easier to handle than Tanner, who turns into the Hulk or Mr. Hyde when he's in attack mode and will go after anything that moves. Because of the digging, my mom had me bring over some of the big rocks we had at the old house to put against the fence. Hopefully that will prevent future digging.

I didn't work at the theater tonight so I came over to the old house to watch YouTube videos and mess with my desktop. It still won't recognize my 3TB hard drive. I feel like I had that problem when I originally got it but I can't remember. I need to look back through old journal entries and see if I can find anything written about it. So far, nothing that I have found online has helped. It doesn't show up in the Disk Management thing or in the Bios. The motherboard came with a program to “unlock” 3TB hard drives but the drive doesn't show up in there either. I tried plugging it into the external dock I have but that didn't work either. I haven't tried using the dock with my laptop though, so I might try that tomorrow. On a slightly more positive note, the desktop has gotten a little faster starting up. When I turned it on for the first time today it was on the initial screen for thirty seconds and then on the “Starting Windows” screen for three minutes before going to the login screen. Thirty seconds for the whole process used to be considered slow before my old motherboard crapped out. I moved the C: Drive SATA cable to the correct port on my motherboard, which did nothing, and I updated a bunch of things. Despite all of that not seeming to have an effect, it randomly started starting faster. Not like it used to be but definitely faster than it was. I have no clue why but I hope it keeps getting faster.

Now I'm going to stop typing because once again I have typed way too much and I want to go to bed so I can get up at a decent time tomorrow. I still need to do the introductory stuff for my classes, which I would like to do tomorrow, and tomorrow night I am going to a play with my friend. It would be nice to not sleep until noon.