Network Drops, Databases, Snowstorms, OHMY!
This has been a very busy week for me. I spent the weekend in Onion Lake visiting with my brother since it was his birthday on Friday.
Well, it’s busy in general, but that’s life these days.
This week though … IT SNOWED. Crazy lots! The weather sites say it snowed about 15-20cm (3-4″ for those of you south of the border). And it’s still snowing. It will probably snow a bit more throughout the day, with it tapering off a bit by tonight. Oi.
But before the snow, I got to do a network drop on Monday which was awesome. I haven’t the opportunity to do that in a long time. We ran cable from the server cabinet to the room, installed a wall jack, punched down the line, and made cable ends. Pretty sweet. I even got to use the power drill for a bit. The worst part, though, was running the cable through the ceiling. Those tiles drop all sorts of crap on your face and hair. Ugh. We have safety goggles, but still. Ew.
And then the storm hit, so we have been office bound since then. I have gotten a lot of paper work done since then. I am in the middle of training people on inputting DRA data and attendance on Open Office, using SMART Notebook for the SMART Board, and using the new email system. Then on top of all that, there’s the regular hardware repair and software maintenance I do.
I love my job. :D
Which I should probably get back to. Haha I mostly just wanted to share the fun snow times. (Already, I’m certain we’ve had more snow in the past 2 days than we did all of last winter! Not even an exaggeration which I am prone to do.)
ETA: I just spent my morning and part of the afternoon climbing around IN the ceiling running cable for our new enterprise level access point! Aside from the insane amount of dust, it was aaaaaaaawesome. I even got to use the headlamp and walkie talkie. lol Best week EVER! XD
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. :)
Happy 2012!
This is the time of year most people traditionally make resolutions to better themselves in one way or another. I usually do my best to refrain from making them, but seeing as I did last year, I may as well again this year.
My resolution? Blog more. At least once a week. There you have it.
The reason I’m making this my resolution is that there have been a LOT of changes in my life in the past year, and I feel as though a lot of it wasn’t recorded well. I have a terrible memory, and this blog sort of helps me sort through dates and time. A lot of what I went through this year has been absent in my blog and I’m afraid I won’t remember it all.
For instance: I lost two uncles this year. My mother’s brother and my father’s first cousin. I miss them both, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t post about either loss here. I’ve already forgotten the dates and I hate that about myself. That I can’t seem to sort through events in even my recent past without mixing it up or remembering it incorrectly.
I also lost my own first cousin in February just shy of her 40th birthday. That was really difficult. We weren’t very close, but like all older cousins, she was that mysterious cool cousin that always had a smile on her face.
I don’t want to forget them.
I know intellectually, that I will never forget my family, but emotionally, I already feel like I’m losing something of them. Which sucks.
But it wasn’t just having my relatives pass away that has me thinking about blogging more, it’s that there was so much change in my life. It feels it’s been completely turned upside down. And I missed documenting that change.
I was laid off the job I’d been doing for the past 4 years, and in turn got a new job in the “city”. I had to relocate my entire family as a result; this meant moving from the home we’ve all known for the past 10 years: the reserve. I finally found myself dating, and then not (as I dumped the guy twice). I got a new car in April. My late cousin’s daughter had a son which in Cree reckoning, makes me a grandmother! Again (I have two other older cousin whose daughters had babies.)
So much change all in one year. And that year has seemed to pass by so quickly, I feel as though I missed most of it.
Which is why I resolve to blog more; so I’ll have a better record of everything. I don’t mean to hold on to any sadness, but hopefully to hold on to the good memories better.
So, in closing, this is me wishing all of you a wonderful and happy new year.
CREEHAWK 