IT Summit 12
I had a lot of fun at this year’s IT Summit put up by Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation. I’m told most years the summit can be geared more toward the educational resource side of things, but this year, I got lucky and they decided to make it all about IT. It was all about incorporating IT into classrooms (and keeping it out when appropriate lol), supporting school networks, network security in an educational institution, and planned expansion and upgrades to the Saskatchewan school networks, both mainstream and non (the non being the Christian school system and on-reserve school system).
I got to hang with other techs who support schools, see some great presentations, pick up some sweet swag, and I came to a very important conclusion about my own personal career goals.
2012 Saskatchewan First Nation Winter Games
Yes, yes, yes. I am aware of how woefully behind I am in posting this.
We had a good time. I was there to be a gopher for the Director of Education at BATC Ed who was the hockey guy at the Jemini Arenas for the Games. What ended up happening instead was that I ended up being food delivery for everyone. It was sort of awesome.
My daughter also got to play on the actual badminton mats used in the Olympic Games or something like that. It was pretty cool for her. She almost made it to the playoffs, but got distracted in the last game. Ah well … she made me so proud. XD
My boy did awesome as an aide to my sister who was a chaperon for Thunderchild. He even got a security badge with his name and picture that listed him as a chaperon. It was so cute. (more…)
Failure is not fatal …
Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
Winston Churchill
I’ve had to remind myself of this fact a lot this week: that failure is not fatal, that it is the courage to continue that counts. You see, on Monday the server at work suffered a catastrophic failure. While my boss, the systems administrator, was on vacation in Cuba. And was completely cut off from office communications.
I’m told I did the right thing, I handled it well, but even upon his return and that we ended up losing everything on the server (thank goodness for daily backups!), I still feel like I came up short somehow.
We are still in the process of rebuilding the Active Directory, adding everyone back to the domain, recovering local data lost in the conversions, etc. I had one employee break down in tears that she may have lost everything personal on her work laptop. *headdesk* I also had, on average, one person ask me if I could have them back up by noon every ten minutes or so, every single morning since it went down on Monday.
Even with my boss putting in nightly overtime, my going in one night to help him, we’re not quite done yet.
On top of all of this madness, I still had to go out to one of the schools and do an Open Admin in-service and install Deep Freeze on their lab computers. Which I screwed up by giving my intern incorrect instructions. Since I was splitting my time between the lab and the in-service (I was instructing), I didn’t catch on right away and he managed to get through ten computers before I caught on. Oi. We spent the rest of the day fixing the mistake instead of moving forward on the remaining eight computers in the lab.
Perhaps splitting my time between the two projects was a bad idea. :P And perhaps my mind just isn’t altogether … here this week. *sigh*
To say I’ve had a stressful week is putting it lightly.
My house is beginning to show this stress. It is scary at the moment. Today I’ve begun the cleaning process. Dishes are getting done, the laundry pile is slightly smaller, the living room is toy and litter free … oh and speaking of litter, that will get done today, I swear! And if I can get my boy out of his room after throwing a mini-fit, the recycling may get done as well!
If we get enough done before it gets too dark, I may take pictures today to refresh my creative side, or just take the kids sliding since we’ve had a crazy amount of snow this week. :)
Ubuntu
I finally got sick of my laptop taking 8-10 minutes to start up, and then taking another 5 minutes to start any program, and THEN crashing. Too many programs installed, the operating system was too old, and just had too much stuff.
So, rather than attempting to uninstall tons of crap (which I doubt I could manage, since it took so long to even boot), or re-install XP I decided to upgrade my operating system (OS) to something new. Unfortunately, I am broke and could not afford Windows 7, not to mention I doubt this old beast of a laptop had the hardware that could run it anymore. I mean, originally it could, but I don’t know anymore. lol The kids have taken it to hell and back.
Since Windows was out of the question, and obviously an Apple OS wasn’t an option (hahahaha), I decided to check out some Linux distributions. After doing a wee bit of research (not a lot mind you), I decided to go with Ubuntu. Mostly because it’s fairly well known as an OS that’s easiest to use for non-programming users, or users who aren’t really tech-savvy. And while my kids are pretty well-versed in computers, they’re still kids. Same goes for my sister. She’s becoming more comfortable with computers, but to be honest, she’s still not the most able of users. :) At least she’s using the Playbook we got for Christmas. Haha
Anyhoot. So I installed Ubuntu. I used a USB stick to boot from and Pendrivelinux to create the bootable USB. Once the bootable USB was created and the Ubuntu ISO was loaded on, I stuck it in a USB port and booted up my laptop. The great thing about this was that I got to try out Ubuntu before installing it.
That’s right, I was able to run the entire OS from the USB stick without changing a single thing on my actual harddrive or affecting my current OS, which at the time was XP.
Which was cool, but as it turns out, unnecessary since I fell in love. lol I ended up installing Ubuntu for realzies!
And yes, I am typing this blog post from my laptop that actually works now, and it takes less than 30 seconds to boot now. Whee! Loves it! There a few glitches here and there, but nothing compared to the horror that this laptop was before. So … no real complaints.
I’d still rather have Win 7, but I’m cheap, and in the end, I’m still happy. :D
Stupid A+
So, I’m thinking of challenging the CompTIA A+ Exams again.
You see, I challenged them a few years ago and came up just a weeeeeeeee bit short. Like 50 points short or something ridiculous like that. Ugh. I was going through some pretty crappy stuff at the time, and I just wasn’t in the head space. Ah well.
But now … well, I’m pretty certain I could do it. Fairly certain. Maybe. I don’t know. *sigh*
I just took a practice exam and only did marginally better than my interns. Hahaha. *sobs* I really need to do some brushing up. Oi. Time to crack open some study guides and text books, peeps. Who’s with me?!
*chirping sounds*
Yeah, that’s what I thought. lol
I’m hoping to challenge by the end of the summer. Earlier if I think I can manage it. :) Wish me luck?
CREEHAWK 