I haven’t had one of these in awhile, so I thought I should make a new icon. I need one for Autumn, of course!

The quote, BTW, is from John Donne. I found it rather fitting, myself.

(I have the perfect picture for Halloween already – now to come up with a suitable quote. It’s the same picture I use as my Halloween wallpaper. You might be able to guess the subject matter…)

After yesterday’s frustrating computer debacle, I managed to turn that around and have a very productive and fun day today. I played around with the school website and think I FINALLY have “the look” that works for me. Now to get some stuff to stick on it.

It was nearly noon when I finished working (and watching the ‘Lympics) so I got dressed and headed out to the Post Office and then the School. I deleted all of the accounts I created yesterday, removed the shares, and deleted all of the folders. Then I removed the students from my records who aren’t actually going to Newton this year. (Went from 314 accounts to 286 accounts – though there are some new people whose names I don’t have yet.) Once they were deleted, I could recreate acounts (this time with the right home directory), folders, and shares. Yay! I even tested an account out to make sure I finally got it right.

Other things I did at the school was redo the desktop wallpaper for the HS students (I did most of it at the laptop this morning in between web writing), write my lesson plans, get labs printed for the week, cleaned up the side shelf in the lab, and set up Monday’s experiment. And all of this was done in 3 hours. Woo!

I returned home to watch a little more Olympics and have a snack, then headed off to Piqua to look for elsaf‘s birthday present and eventually get to the mall. I went to the 4:40pm showing of The Princess Diaries 2. As a big Julie Andrews fan, I just had to see it. It was entertaining, and Julie’s in quite a bit. But I think I liked the first movie better. Still, it’ll be a DVD purchase eventaully. 🙂

I looked around the Mall a little before heading off to supper at the Piqua Chinese buffet. Then onto Kohl’s in Troy (managing successfully to avoid the Presidential Hoo Hah going on in downtown Troy today when George W came to town), and finally to Meijer.

BTW, for those curious, yes, I was successful in the purchasing of Elsa’s present. The guy at the pet store said he’s never seen one of that color before! 😉

1. Have 300+ student accounts that need created.
   
2. Write a text file to set all of the properties for each user (thanks be to Microsoft Excel).
   
3. Create all 300+ folders and set shares and permissions using a batch file (Excel again a godsend).
   
4. Print out account info for 300+ students – cut into thirds.
   
5. Look up classroom students are in for 7th and 8th period (remember, 300+ students).
   
6. Get stack of signed Acceptable Use Policies from office.
   
7. Go through Excel file to mark which students have turned in signed Acceptable Use Policies.
   
8. Pass out student accounts to 100+ students who have turned in paperwork.
   
9. Wait for complaints that accounts aren’t working.
   
10. Realize after complaints come in that you typed “//fileserver” instead of “\\fileserver” in text file back in step 1, thus making none of the home directories available to all student users.
    
11. Swear with suitable 4-letter words.
    

Bleh – I can’t find any easy way to change the home directory for all of the students. I may have to delete all of the accounts and recreate them. Of course, then I’ll have to redo all of the permissions, too.

(If anyone knows WinNT4 server and how to change the home directory for multiple users, please let me know – I’d greatly appreciate it!)

School has begun and things are going well, class-wise. I’m still way behind when it comes to computers and the lab is in a state (though kids can get to their stations). Not much I can do about the computers – I’ll have 2 extra periods tomorrow, but most of it will be spent working on student accounts. Folks are being patient, and that’s appreciated. They know it’s just lil ol’ me.

Might have a lead on the Clean Slate issue – am in e-mail contact with their tech support again (‘cuz I’ve gotten more frustrated with the lockups). Will have to see what they say to my tests of today. (Computers don’t lock up when they don’t check on their network settings and stick with local settings.)

Stayed until 6:30 pm today working on getting the student accounts ready. Will be able to pass out quite a few of them tomorrow. (Students are not allowed on the machines until they and their parents sign an acceptable use of technology agreement, which is part of the handbook now.) All of my 1st period students got their AUPs signed – yay! Dunno yet about the others, though I saw many familiar names. (My students get extra credit if they get them in by tomorrow.)

When I got home tonight, mom was sitting on my front porch holding Leo. He was loving every minute of it – the breeze was wonderful. They’d been calling since just before 5 to invite me around for supper (pork, kraut, and mashed taters – yum!) They were done, but there was still stuff for me if interested. I certainly was! And it was wonderful.

For the rest of the evening, I intend to watch Olympics and goof off. Tomorrow, I hope to get home before 4pm. Ha!

Tomorrow is the first day of school for the kiddies. I worked until 5:30pm today getting my paperwork in order and the rooms ready. Gah! The things I wanted to do in the lab this summer I just never got to (including cleaning the mess from the last lab – whoops!) But things are cleared off enough for the kids, at least.

I tell folks that I don’t work on computers the day before school starts. It’s my one and only time to get my paperwork in order and room ready. So of course, there’s some computer problems. Thankfully, most of ’em were quickie fixes that I could manage between papers.

The poor physics students get 4 double-sided papers from me tomorrow. And one of ’em is a math worksheet. It’s real simple algebra and geometry, but they usually balk at it. If they can do the math on the worksheet, they can handle the math in the course. Oh, and one of the two classes has their first lab tomorrow too.

Chemistry fairs almost as badly – 3 double-sided papers. And a quiz on Thursday. (Over the lab safety rules.) But it’s a good indicator of what’s to come.

Should be a good year – the physics kids are bright and eager and the chemistry kids sound like a fun bunch. I know a few of the upcoming chemistry kids (one of ’em I’ve known since she was a little girl). Perhaps I might even get some names learned this week! (Well, let’s not get silly…)

And no matter how the day goes, I have one thing to look forward to. My traditional Frische’s Supper. The folks and I will go out to eat tomorrow night in celebration of surviving yet another first day of school. Woohoo!

(Oh, gonna use my Summer icon one last time… Guess I need to make an autumn one now…)

Happy Birthday, elsaf! Alas that you had to work on your birthday, but not everyone can be as lucky as I am. 😉 (New Years Baby, me.)

My day’s been nice and lazy – some laundry (sheets dried on the line – woohoo!), some vegging at the Lake, and kebabs on the grill for lunch. The rest of the evening is finishing laundry and watching Olympics.

Tomorrow, alas, it’s back to work. Meetings all day (*snore*), including an hour where dad and I present info re: the tech department. The teachers are just gonna be THRILLED when they learn about CleanSlate and that it logs off after half an hour of non-use. (Guess folks will have to learn how to save before they go away from their desk.) Still, with students getting onto teacher accounts cuz the teacher didn’t log out, this is a good security feature.

Every year before school starts, I buy my “fall wardrobe.” But let’s be honest, it’s my year wardrobe. I shop for clothes once a year. Every so often I’ll pick up something (jeans, t-shirt, etc) as a one-off, but I only ever deliberately shop for clothes once a year. I don’t like shopping for clothes, as you might guess.

So today was the day. JC Penney’s was having a sale and I always get my wardrobe from Penney’s. Why them? Well, cuz their bras fit. (Yeah, TMI, sorry!) But I often find enough outfits on sale and this year was no exception.

I started off with the undies. Got 2 week’s worth of underpants, bras, and knee-high hose. That was a massive $185, but hey, that’s after saving over $50. Then mom and I picked out some shirts and slacks. And I ended up with 7 shirts and 4 slacks for $250. And that’s after saving $133. Cool. 🙂

So that should work for me until Christmas when folks get me my “winter wardrobe.” Funnily enough, my “spring wardrobe” looks a lot like my “fall wardrobe.” And summer? Whatever t-shirts and shorts I can find.

Guess I’m ready for school! 😉

We upgrade the 4 big labs in the building every three years. But the machines after 3 years are still somewhat usable and thus get placed in other classrooms. And then the much older machines from those classrooms will have to be moved out and eventually disposed of. (For the time being, they sit in my chemistry lab under the chemistry tables.)

Last year, my lab and the elementary lab were upgraded. But we ended up with a batch of bad Seagate harddrives. And over the year we replaced every hard drive at least once and some more than once. So the elementary wasn’t terribly pleased and when we got a grant to get more new computers, we decided to replace those computers. Which means more juggling for Trina.

School starts for kids this Wednesday. Tomorrow is a teacher day at a golf club (another grant helps pay for this, I believe). Monday is staff meetings day. Tuesday is teacher work day. So today I had to get all of the new computers for the elementary lab out of my classroom. Which meant I had to clear out old computers from 5 classrooms. Which meant I had to move elementary lab machines into those 5 classrooms and then move the new computers to the lab.

Gah! That’s a lot of computer hauling! My poor little wimpy arms are tired. I’m lazy and not accustomed to exercise (Curves notwithstanding.) But thanks to dad helping out (he was only going to work the morning, but worked until 5 along with me) we got it done. They aren’t hooked up – something fun to do once school starts – but they are out of my way and out of the teachers’ ways.

Tomorrow after the day of meetings and motivational speaker, I’m heading to the Lake to watch Olympics and veg. This weekend is all about the Olympics. Maybe a movie and maybe clothes shopping. We’ll see. 🙂

Every summer, our technology partner would tell us “Ghost 4.0 is out now” or “Ghost 5.0 is out now” etc. And every summer, dad and I would ponder the ease which Norton Ghost could help our computer set-up in the summer. And every summer, we end up using xcopy32 (a Windows standard copy utility) to clone all of our machines.

Well, finally this summer, Ghost has gotten so appealing that we can’t resist it anymore. Today I set up the Agricultural Science computer lab (18 computers) with the new computers (incl. LCD monitors – woo!) And then used Ghost 8,0 Corporate Edition and GhostCast. I cloned 10 computers at once in under 20 minutes!!!! That’s amazing, BTW. And this was over the network. The last 8 computers also took less than 20 minutes. So even though getting the hardware all in took a good part of the day, the actual cloning took under an hour. Wow!

Will we get everything done before the teachers arrive? Um, no. Before the students arrive? Um, no. But we got a LOT done this summer. (Wish I could be satisfied with that – I’ve done pritnear all I could do except for what I do tomorrow – but I’m an inveterate worrier.) Ended up working over 9 hours at the school, so my brain has gone into OFF mode again. No matter, I have lots of lovely Olympics to watch. Oooh – and volleyball tonight, if I feel like sleeping on the sofa!

I wish we Olympics Junkies could get time off of work to watch the Olympics… It’s only every two years!

My brain is off, so I’m going to wait til the weekend to do a proper wedding post & website. As a sampler, however, I have uploaded 3 teaser photos.

From left to right: Amy, Lynn, Rachel, Doug, Mom, Dad.

Amy and Rachel “jump the pole,” a ceremony like the “jumping the broom” ceremony used by slaves in the US. People have all tied blessings and well-wishes onto the pole (held by Michelle and Becky), which the girls then jumped.

The blushing brides, Rachel and Amy, now newlyweds. Awwwww!

There are many, many more photos to come, but I thought these three were a good start.