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.
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. :)
End of Year
So, last week was the end of year for my students. To say this was probably one of my easiest years is an overstatement. I’ve never had a more co-operative bunch of interns ever. It was a real pleasure. :)
They weren’t a perfect bunch, but they made the year go by quickly, and we had a few good laughs. I hope they learned and enjoyed the year as much as I did. I also wish them luck and employment! :D I know a few of them left mid-year to take jobs offered, so they missed the networking course.
I’m always sad when they leave mid-year because networking is my favourite class, but I suppose a job is a job. Especially these days. Still, I’m happy for them when they find work.
This year, everyone passed at the end. Well, those who stuck around to the very end. We didn’t lose very many once the second semester started. Those that stuck around really seemed to be into the coursework. I was so excited to have these students. A few of them really got the content. It made teaching really fun. I loved those moments when they’d go “Ohhhhhhhh!” It made all the struggle worth it!
I almost can’t wait for next fall!
Almost. lol At the moment, I’m going to enjoy the break. And I should really get back to my other work … ;)
CREEHAWK 