Merry Christmas! And a Happy New Year! Did you catch one of those sales and get a great deal? I know I did. I bought this pink croquet-ed Arden B. dress (originally a $59.99 value!) for $23.59. For my facebook friends and all of two followers, I realize that I haven't written for three months. There's plenty to catch up on!
My battles with organizational culture are largely over - I tend to just do what I believe is my job and ignore the rest nowadays. I managed to stay with this fourth supervisor - thank goodness! Tasks are being taken care of, despite everyone's misgivings over who does what, how to say so-and-so, and territorial boundaries. I organized the student database, monitor (and troubleshoot, when devil magic happens) the school's one hundred and eighty computers, and fulfill the legal technology requirements for this charter school.
On the first day that I arrived at Phoenix Charter Academy, the internet was down. I hadn't gotten a chance to know every face and the building, much less the school's network yet, but the pressure was on already. "Fix the internet," someone suggested to me. Such a warm welcome.
When the internet was finally okay after three long days, then the next big project was to fix the phones. Having called Comcast and CBE, I suddenly got a crash course on IT phone networking, and the way that it is not on the same network as the internet. Each phone is connected to an ethernet wall jack, which is connected to a large switch box (like a router but for phones) and there were more phones than there were empty switch holes, so I had to change around the wires to fit everything.
While these two projects were going on, there are consistently staff members who use other people's laptops to send emails to me to complain about how sometimes they can't get internet, or the laptops don't start, or the screen is black. This happens especially often when one of the members of the "data team" has me administer online surveys to the students about their feelings while in school.
I am this school's current IT department. I'm making up the rules as I go.
Oh yea, how about that hurricane Sandy? She knocked out five of our servers, so that when the school opened up again, none of the teachers can print anything, and it was four hours of panic, and then a huge meeting about preparedness at the end of the week. I had to find those programs - all virtual operating systems, by the way - and put them back online, because Sandy created a momentary blackout.
Or two weeks ago, right before Christmas, when three teachers spilled drinks on their laptops when they were lesson planning at home. As Britney Spears once sang, "Are you kidding me?" I had to disassemble them to wipe the insides up and then spray them with pressurized hydrogen or something to clean it all up. Not everything was saved, but I did my best. Taking apart computers was my idea, but Phoenix Charter Academy isn't training me. My asking the right questions to three or four IT staff members from other organizations is.
I'm really enjoying this vacation, though. Hanging out with people almost every day, learning about the better eats and places of Boston with a group of people I've recently begun to get closer to. There's a chocolate restaurant, did you know that? There are also two really good art museums. A pretty man showed me that there's such an item as Christmas rap. That's right, not wrap - rap.
Happy holidays, everyone.