Halloween

It’s been remarkably calm at Burpie Cow Wow. That makes me nervous.
This was my day.
I had time to chat with the kids and teachers who came in to use the lab.
I helped Mondale with a web page question (and wasn’t I cheerful and unrushed?)
The exceedingly kind and pleasant new head of school stopped by my classroom to see me (like about the fourth time this year and I’ve been here for twenty-five years under four different heads and I can only remember one classroom stop-by from any of the others) Anyway, he was letting me know that there would be a candidate coming next week for the new position (a position created at my request!)
I had a coffee and pastry (both good) left over from the prospective parent tour, and btw the tours have been enormously popular this fall and we are way ahead on applications for next year.
There were no techno-emergencies at all, none. Well, one person, The AD, sent me an email about his acting-out computer, which turned into a whine-fest about how hard his job was and how little time he had to do it and how he needed a reliable computer, oh, and his printer needed ink cartridges, too. But he was very careful to mention, “This is not an angry email, just one of frustration.” So I cheerfully spent my lunchtime setting up a brand new computer for him (which I had ordered for a teacher who was fired during the summer) And he practically cried, he was so happy. I left him some ink cartridges too.
In the afternoon, I played about 4 rounds of widget Sudoku while updating system software on several laptops.
I read and responded to my email. Someone sent me a thank you note for computer tip I bestowed the day before. (Really! A thank you note)
I went home BEFORE 4:00 PM.
This was very unusual. It hasn’t been all that nice this year so far.
We changed Internet service providers at the beginning of September and everything went wrong. And that’s my fault, my responsibility. I signed the contract for these (non) providers. They wouldn’t respond to our complaints about the poor service. They generally made my and my network colleague’s life miserable. People at Burpie were freaking out (with good reason) The email was erratic. Internet service – when you could get on the Internet – was at a speed reminiscent of 1994.
If that wasn’t enough, we needed to orient a record number of new teachers and what new teachers want to know is how to get their email and how to get help with all their hardware and software questions.
We also launched a new interactive website with which everyone at Burpie needed to interact. That was a ton of training and complaining.
There were too many new computers to configure and set up.
I bought a ton of projectors because everyone wanted a digital projector, oh, but they really want them permanently installed in the classrooms, not schleppable.
Nothing seemed good enough, and I couldn’t make a dent in the task list, and there were so many angry incomprehensible meetings and I wanted to run away…
Then it all stopped.
Ten days ago we borrowed a router from a nice Internet company and swapped it for the one provided by the bad Internet company and the network has been humming along smoothly since then. The maintenance staff has agreed to permanently install at least a few of the projectors. All the new computers are in place. Most people are using the web site – using it well enough. The technologies are working. Heaven help us.
I just can’t really relax though. In the movies, when you think you’ve slain the beast it always rises and sneaks up behind you.