Wasted Years

The first day of school is a bad time to have your student management system still eating shit after crashing over the weekend. Once it comes back up, the first day of school is a bad time to have the transportation module be completely fucked up.

I was in one of my buildings today, which was a huge mistake, and witnessed the secretaries writing busing changes on 3x5 notecards.

Welcome to the 21st century!

I kissed another man today to celebrate some excellent news I received at work. And to get a free lunch next week. Free food makes me do some really off things.

And then I went to the high school to play with my new servers:

This was my workday.

Sometimes I think it should be criminal to have as much fun at work as I've been having lately and still get paid for it. But then I think about all the shit I've had to deal with and still deal with and realize that I deserve to enjoy my job.

And I do.

After last week's failed attempt at setting up our weather station, we got it set up Monday. Brad took the receiver and was getting ready to call about it when it started working again. Apparently all it needed was the threat of a phone call.

With the receiver working fine and picking up data from the weather station, we crawled back up to the roof and got everything mounted. Now almost every morning I run into the room where the receiver is so I can check the weather.

Apparently the older I get, the geekier I get.

Looking to end our work week on a fun note, me and Brad climbed up to the roof of The Seventh Level Of Hell towards the end of the day. Our objective was to setup a weather station that will be used to keep tabs on the weather and alert people when conditions outside are less than kid-friendly. It's a pretty cool setup - an integrated sensor suite with an attachable anemometer. If I had money to spend on frivolous gadgetry I'd buy one and stick it on my roof.

Oh what the hell, let's be honest - it's going to be used since not one administrator in our school district has enough sense to watch the weather forecast or stick their head outside to see how things are going to stay on top of their leadership role. Last winter was something of a debacle and they're looking for ways to avoid the pr nightmare they suffered through for several weeks.

Which is fine by me, because I get to play with cool stuff and climb on the roof.

The unit we have is wireless. It takes readings and sends them to a receiver that will be connected to a computer which eventually will run a script every time the temperature goes low enough to warrant action from our administrators and send out email alerts (Yeah... I'm wondering who's going to be the one scripting that... ).

Me and Brad haul all the stuff to the roof and start setting the unit up. We get to a part where we have to test the rain collector so I call down to The Fearless Leader to keep an eye on the receiver because he should be receiving some bogus rainfall data any second. He calls back with a big fat nada. We go back and forth a couple of times and I decide to run back downstairs and get the receiver and test it on the roof (actually, we probably should've tested it before leaving for the roof, but whatever). I get downstairs and TFL is looking at the receiver console with a 'WTF?!" look on his face. He shows it to me and the display is garbled with illegible gibberish. We cycle the power a couple of times with no luck.

I called up to Brad to let him know we were screwed for now and we packed it in. I think he's going to call the weather station's support line on Monday which means by Wednesday we'll probably have a replacement receiver, 3 spare receivers for our trouble, and two more weather sensor packages for the hassle of the phone call and it will all be free. Because that's what Brad does.

Outside of the chilling wind that picked up while we were topside and the failed attempt at getting the weather station set up it was actually a good end to the week.

Towards the end of the day today our new tech director came into The Fearless Leader's office and asked if we wanted to drop RAM upgrades into our new servers. I'm working my way into über-geekdom so of course I wanted to play with the nice new shiny Xserves he bought. We've got a total of five new servers - one to run LDAP, one to run an intranet, one to replace our webserver, one which is going to be attached to an Xserve RAID (with about 5.25TB of storage!) and become our new mail suite, and one... ya know... I can't remember what the last one is doing. But that's not important right now.

On to the RAM. We dropped 8GB of RAM into the LDAP server and brought the intranet server up to a total of 10GB. That's a helluva lot of RAM and the servers themselves are beefed up but I'm not surprised. I've noticed one thing about our new tech director - he doesn't screw around when it comes to hardware, he gets the most bang for his buck. Unlike our previous person in charge who damn near killed us with her doctrine of 'Quantity Over Quality', which we're still suffering from in the form of crappy eMacs.

So I got to see the inside of an Xserve for the first time today and I gotta tell ya, it is impressive to say the least. I'll admit it - I drooled a little. We're probably going to start getting these things configured and deployed in a couple of weeks. My school year is off to a damn good start.

I finally scheduled my tests for my Apple Desktop Technician certification. As Yoda put it, "So you're going to become an Apple Ho like me?"

Yup.

I dunno what exactly it'll do for me job-wise. But I'll get a pretty certificate that I can frame and gaze upon lovingly.

Or with extreme disgust.

Amidst the gloom and doom of The Seventh Level Of Hell, there is an office that's a place of light. A place of beauty. A place of laughter. I like to think of it as A Little Corner Of Heaven.

If I have a free moment, I like to stop in and talk to the three lovely secretaries that work in there. They are intelligent, attractive young ladies who are always pleasant to chat with. One in particular, in my opinion, has very beautiful eyes and sometimes I get lost in them while talking with her. But I digress...

I figured I should point out that as much as work sucks, there's still a bright spot that can make my day better. So it's not all bad.

At the Seventh Level, we have a procedure for handling support and repair issues.

It's called a request form. Here's how it works:

1. Person with problem fills out form, explaining their problem in as much detail as possible (which usually means the requests say "Broken, please fix"), or if they need help with something, explaining what it is they need help with.

2. End user faxes or mails form to the Dungeon where everyone either laughs hysterically or groans in annoyance at the idiocy that has been scribbled on the form.

3. If the request is legit, it gets handed off to someone to take care of the problem or address the end user's needs. If it isn't legit (i.e. "I want a new computer") we all laugh harder, take the request outside, burn it, and piss on its still smoldering ashes while chanting to our dark gods. Then we have a raging sweaty naked orgy to consummate our dark union with the aforementioned dark gods.*

4. One of us closes out the request by repairing the problem or addressing the issue.

This is how it has been since I started working there 5 years ago.

In the middle of the can incident, one woman started asking me about setting up email in Outlook or some shit. Now, she's not a new employee that isn't used to our 'system', she's been here awhile. She ends the conversation by asking,

"Should I fill out the form for this?"

Well, yeah.

How else are we supposed to get our laughs?

* All of the above is more or less true, except for the burning, pissing, chanting, and fucking.

At The Seventh Level Of Hell, the closest soda machine to mine and Yoda's offices is a Coke machine on the second floor. We wandered down to the machine to get a couple of sodas. The only nice thing about this Coke machine (I hate Coke) is that it's usually stocked with orange Fanta.

I can deal with that.

Yoda got a coke, I dropped my sixty cents in the machine and realized it was out of Fanta. Disappointed but not deterred, I settled on a Barq's root beer instead. I pushed the button, the machine made noise, the sold out light came on, and no can emerged from the machine's mechanical intestines. I tried for a Coke - nothing. I tried to get my money back - nothing.

I guess on the upside of things, I've got a job doing some freelance web design. With a promise of a percentage of sales made from this website.

I think I can dig that.

Back in the realm of idiocy... I have to go image fifteen iBooks tomorrow in a school that already has thirty-two iBooks.

Not quite sure what they're supposed to do with them, considering class size is thirty.

And then after that's done I have to go do the same thing in another building. Thirty iBooks that aren't really needed. For those of you who aren't math whizzes, that's about thirty thousand dollars. Probably a little less with discounts and what have you, but I doubt that it'd be very much below twenty-five.

I love being a taxpayer. Don't you?

Now that I've had a night's sleep, I've calmed down slightly. The chances of me fire-bombing my employer have dropped drastically, though my fury is a seething mass just beyond my calm exterior.

With the calm has come an understanding of what pisses me off the most about the whole thing.

I was told my two years of experience is worthless. Sure it's only two years, but in that two years I went from having a vague understanding of how a computer works to building computers and successfully troubleshooting common and not so common errors. But all that means nothing and is as worthless as tits on a boar, according to the fine upstanding HR dimwitted asshats.

And that translates into me being considered worthless.

I've often heard how I was hired because of 'family' connections. But I was interviewed by a team of people. They all had a say in which candidate was hired. Sure, I knew or knew of the people on the team, but it wasn't like we were all drinking buddies or some shit. They made the final decision and I refuse to believe it was based on 'family' ties. Hell I made a few interview no-no's, and still got hired for the job.

As far as prior experience goes, and this one is great, I've heard the tale of the daughter of a secretary who was hired for a position. Her previous experience was bar tending. Tending bar and performing secretarial duties are two different things, but her pay got bumped up for 'previous experience'. That reeks of 'family' ties.

But that's what it comes down to, that's what pisses me off the most... my experience counts for nothing and is worthless, which through the odd meanderings of my thought processes, means I'm worthless.

I'm generally a very patient person. Seriously! I can put up with a lot of bullshit, but this is the shit that breaks my patience and eventually my will.

Fuck 'em, I say, just fuck 'em.

I haven't posted about the Seventh Level OF Hell in a while... mostly because of an incident between me and the Fearless Leader. It's hard to post about work when a lot of things involve him... not necessarily in a bad way, but I did say I wouldn't post about things concerning him.

Right now I don't know if I'll be able to keep that promise. Not that I have bad things to say about him, mind you. He might just work his way into a story or two.

You see, it's like this...

Most of the computer techs at the Seventh Level Of Hell are in unions. You know, those organizations that piss administrative assholes off. Well anyway, Brad and I found out that when another tech was hired he was placed on step two of our class pay scale. When we were hired we were only placed on step one. As far as Brad and I know, we came to the job with experience while Tech A had NO EXPERIENCE WHATSOEVER. We both provided proof of experience.

As of right now, Brad's request for a pay scale adjustment has been approved and he's already received a fat check for monies owed to him for being underpaid for a year and a half.

Now when we get to me, I'm looking at a little over four years of back-pay. That's a hefty amount.

But it doesn't matter, because my request was denied.

D-E-N-I-E-D.

See, Brad was in an A+ certification program before he was hired. Apparently so was Tech A. Funny thing though...

- I was hired in August of 2000.
- Tech A was hired about eight months before me.
- I earned (more like waltzed through) my A+ certification in December of 2000
- Tech A earned his in (I may be wrong) 2002.

If Tech A was in a program, how come it took him so long to get his certification. A certification he failed the test on once or twice before finally passing. What kind of program was he in?

And most important of all... by 2000, I had two solid years of experience in repair... field experience. Basically, I was up to my elbows in fucking PC parts, fixing and building computers while (no offense Brad... seriously no offense) Brad and Tech A were reading books or in a classroom. Granted, in a class setting you get down and dirty with machines.

But I had field experience. And evidently that just wasn't good enough to count for anything.

So to my glorious employers - GO FUCK YOURSELVES, EVERY LAST ONE OF YOU WASTEFUL GOOD FOR NOTHING SHITS. NONE OF YOU HAS A FUCKING CLUE AS TO HOW TO RUN A FUCKING EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION.

As for me... my birthday present to myself for Christmas In September (which is the 23rd) is to hand in my two weeks notice. Whether or not I have another job, I WILL be handing it in. Because there's only so much shit a person can take before they decide to get the fuck out. Of course that date only applies if I haven't left by then.

I don't care if the only job I can find is mucking stalls on a farm... I'm gone. If I even find another job that is. Either way it doesn't matter.

September 23rd can't fucking get here fast enough. It just can't.

The thing I hate the most about my job is not knowing who I can trust. I spend a lot of time at work wondering who's going to plunge a dagger in my back hilt deep.

It's a real unhealthy environment.

And it's a school district... which makes me wonder what the real (corporate) world is like.

Sixteen of our new PowerMac G5 servers came in this past week. They're Apple machines, but by God they are suweeeeeet!

Jesus, I get dorkified over some mundane shit.

I spent Tuesday through yesterday in Chicago for a training seminar on supporting OS X. All in all it was pretty cool... the first day was kind of pointless, but the second day we got into using the command line. Our instructor was pretty good and managed to keep my attention by pointing out a lot of cool stuff that was 'outside the scope of our class'.

Aside from getting kicked off a train on Tuesday, everything went well. I get to go to another training on OS X Server either this month or next month and I can't wait to see what kind of shit I'll learn next.

I'll probably burst into flames for posting this blasphemy, but I think I want to buy a mac.

Could it be???

We're supposed to be getting new file servers for all the buildings over the summer. Knowing that The Fearless Leader is going to be tearing his hair out with the network upgrade and everything else he'll have going on, I offered to set the new servers up.

And right now, it looks like that's what I'll be doing.

As dorky as it may sound, I can't wait. I need to do something besides turn screwdrivers and reinstall operating systems all day.

I might actually start looking forward to going to work. This is unprecedented.

At work, The Dark One ordered four Dell Mobile labs for the middle schools. The laptops are Latitude D600 machines and are pretty nice. It's got to be the first time that she ordered something that wasn't complete shit.

One of my middle schools has had two of their machines freak out and require service. I had to reinstall the OS on one of them and the other needed the motherboard replaced. The Fearless Leader called Dell and they sent someone out on Friday. He told me about this on Friday and I asked him to call me when the Dell tech showed up so I could maybe pick his brain about Dell's servicing program.

See, Dell has a program similar to Apple where you can order parts and provide self-service on the machines you own. Seeing as how I don't really have anything special going for me at work, I voiced my opinion that Dell's program would be something I'd be interested in doing. It would be handy to be able to handle Dell repairs in-house, especially since so many people are ordering Dells for their offices.

The Dell tech showed up on Friday and fixed the machine. I was pleased with myself that I guessed correctly about it being a problem with the motherboard. Of course, I didn't find out until Monday, because The Fearless Leader didn't call me.

Honestly, it isn't a big deal. But it would have been nice of The Fearless Leader to call me like he said he would. It's shit like this that makes me hate my job. I wouldn't if this had been the only time something like this had happened, but it's not the first time and it certainly won't be the last. When this shit goes on constantly, it makes me feel like The Fearless Leader doesn't care that I'm willing to assume more responsibilities and do more than 'the bare minimum'. It makes me feel unimportant.

A couple of months back, I started developing a web-based service request system for district-wide use. I was hoping to get overtime for working on it, but the overtime, like so many other things I have asked for, never appeared. So I started working on it during my downtime, when I didn't have any open service requests. And then I realized that if I finished it, the district would own it, since I had been working on it at work. I brought it home to work on in my spare time, thinking that, if I was successful, it would be something I could take with me to another employer. Well, with the baby on the way, I haven't had that much spare time to work on it.

Today I got an email from The Fearless Leader, asking me how the service request system was coming. You see, he'd like to have it in place by the end of the school year so we can switch over to using it for next school year.

I read that email three times while laughing my ass off.

Yup... I should get right back to working on something I'm not being paid to do just because he wants it in place by the end of the school year.

Kind of like I wanted that phone call when the Dell tech showed up on Friday.

At work, we have a file server that can be accessed from any building in the district. Because of how our network is setup, all IP addresses in our main office start with 10.6. Being the sick man he is, Big L made the file server's IP address 10.6.6.6.

If you know anything about the bible, you get why it amuses us. In order to set it up for easy Mac access, we enabled AppleTalk on the file server and made it's AppleTalk name Lucifer. And we were amused. It brought some small piece of joy to us when we would talk about 'connecting to Lucifer' and other such references.

Today, our amusement came to an end. Supposedly, 'someone' complained to the Superintendent who passed the buck to Palpagrene who emailed The Fearless Leader and told him that we needed to give it a more 'professional' name.

What the fuck is that? That file server has been named 'Lucifer' for over a year! Why didn't 'someone' complain before? Me and Big L think it's Palpagrene who's behind it... we think she's trying to throw things at The Fearless Leader that she believes he won't address in a timely manner and then use that against him in her plot to get him demoted. And from there we all wind up working for her again.

Beyond that, I fail to see how it can be so offensive. After all, it's only a name. If the server was called 'Jesus' would there have been a bitch fest? And what kind of professional name are we supposed to give it? Robert? Edward? Give me a break.

It's new name (for now) is 10-6-6-6.

We're waiting for another complaint.

I wasn't going to gripe about this, thinking it was a misunderstanding of sorts, but then I heard about it from more than one person and it's credibility level rose.

Last Thursday (the 29th) my boss was at one of my buildings to set up a server for some new testing program that's being piloted right now. Evidently, he knocked a power cord loose on a hub and killed the internet to a teacher's room. This teacher brought up her loss of internet the same day it happened and, as I understand it, my boss was told about it the next day when he went back to the building. I guess he said he would take care of it but never got a chance to.

Last Monday, I was at the building and I was told about the internet problem. I looked into it and discovered the problem (albeit, a little slower than I should have). I took care of it, problem solved, everybody's happy.

Guess not.

On Wednesday there was a training or something concerning this testing, and the teacher who's internet was broken went up to my boss, bitching at him about unplugging her internet and about how I fixed after he said he would. From two sources I've heard that his defense was, and I quote, "That's just Dave, trying to make me look bad."

That's a great thing to say in a room full of people.

Yeah, that's me... I'm always out to make people look bad. Or could it be that I'm the one always cleaning shit up?

At least people stuck up for me. Including the building principal. It's always nice to have a principal on your side.

Here's hoping I don't try to make anyone else look bad.

There's a person at my place of employment who orders all the hardware and software for classroom use in the district. This person shall remain nameless for many reasons, but will be referred to as the "Technologically inept With Access To money"™ or TWAT™ person.

The TWAT™ knows about as much about computers, software, and the purchasing of said items as I know about being an Aborigine in Australia. Which, to sum it up means, she doesn't know S-H-I-T about the subject.

For example, about three or four months ago, she bought one hundred Apple eMac computers without a solid plan of where they were to be distributed. Not only that, she didn't bother making any building principals aware of this purchase and a couple of them outright refused to allow them to be set up and disrupt whatever student testing information may have been on the older machines already in place. Of these one hundred computers, approximately thirty are still sitting in boxes in a middle school lab waiting to be set up. At the end of the school year. Another thirty or so are hidden away at The Seventh Level Of Hell in Big L's office (We are eagerly awaiting the warranty to expire on those so we can cause a ruckus!).

If by now you haven't gotten a picture of the TWAT's™ ineptitude, read on. It gets better and has caused me to suffer one or two sleepless nights worrying about the situation.

The TWAT™ is big on buying stuff. Especially when she can buy lots of stuff. So she want to buy six hundred more eMacs over the summer. She can't figure out what to do with thirty of the fuckers and she wants to buy six hundred more. I love it! We're busy trying to convince her to buy flat panel iMacs, which are actually somewhat decent. Especially when compared to eMacs. eMacs have an ass-load of repair bulletins where the iMacs have none. Even the Apple Sales Rep told the TWAT™ not to buy eMacs, but she did anyway. The TWAT™ was using an eMac in her office and hated it, but still decided to buy more.

Why?

Because she can get six hundred of them, whereas by getting the flat panel iMacs she could probably only get about three hundred. That's why. She doesn't give a flaming formation flying fuck about quality. She only cares about quantity and how by replacing a lot of computers it looks like she's doing her job and people will be happy with her.

Here comes the part I lost sleep over. The TWAT™ bought this reading software that assesses a student's reading level and can then tell the teacher what level to have them start at in another part of the software.

(Geek-Speak Warning!)

The software runs in a server/client environment with the students using the client workstations and the teacher using the server for administration purposes and to generate reports. The latest version server requirements are very specific and are laid out in an easy to find location in the documentation. If running the server on Mac OS 9, it requires AppleShare IP 6.3 (It provides file sharing, web, and mail services). If running the server on Mac OS X, it requires that the install of OS X be a server version and not the regular run of the mill OS X version.

(/Geek-Speak Warning)

GEE GUYS GUESS WHAT?!?!? We don't have any open licenses for AppleShare IP 6.3!!!! GUESS WHAT ELSE?!?!? We don't have any open licenses for OS X Server!!!!

And guess who was told to go make it work?

That's right, me!!!! Me who doesn't know shit about the software!! The fucking Aborigine from Australia had a better chance of fixing it than me!!

And I couldn't make it work. And I talked to a tech support lady who sounded like she thought I had a cock growing outta my forehead. She decided that her best course of action to get the now-insane babbling fucker off the phone was to tell me she was going to send me a software update.

A software update that requires AppleShare IP 6.3 or OS X Server.

So Friday, Brad hands me the documentation he found on the software that points out all the above information (in the Geek-Speak section) and I dwelt on it over the weekend to the point of laying awake last night trying to figure out how to make it work, because the last thing I need is the TWAT™ breathing down my fucking neck about it.

By the time I got to work this morning, I didn't give two shits about it. Brad went over to the school, installed an older version and made everyone happy. And I still didn't give two shits, because I realized that this wasn't the first time the TWAT™ had indirectly fucked me in the ass. This wasn't even the twentieth time the TWAT™ had indirectly fucked me in the ass. The number is very high and it's only going to get higher, as long as she has access to money.

Especially with those six hundred eMacs on the horizon.