A fairly productive day (for a change)
Yesterday's aborted attempt at training on the new media platform, combined with today's actual (although certainly not problem-free) training, led to a very light work load. The media platform basically slowed to a crawl with a dozen or so users, as did the company's own web site version of the product, so that's not a very good start, but if the product is actually capable of functioning with more than two users, it does look to be both an extremely cool and useful tool. It allows you to sync powerpoint, video, and transcripts in an easy manner, along with a host of other embedded objects (user surveys, etc).
Kyle finished the installation of the latest version of the software that I have been killing myself on for the past year (yes, I started out with version 1.1. Now, thankfully, we're at 2.5, although I have yet to see how stable this one will prove to be in comparison to its predecessors (and stable they were not)). We initially had a problem with the web content management component (in this version, it is built in, rather than a separate stand-alone. excitement!), but thankfully Kyle was able to reinstall it. It seems to be functioning properly at the moment, although I have learned never to take anything for granted when dealing with these software releases. And we are on a fairly definite deadline (the start of the school year, since these portals are for high school students), so it had better be stable. But I will believe it when I see it, so to speak.
During periods of the training when the demo guy and our tech guys were trying in vain to get the software up-and-running, Joanna (who works down the hall, and is more involved in this new software than I am) and I spent the time gazing dreamily at the Mac computers we would own, if only we had the money. She is smitten with the iMac G5, and I still long for the beautiful iBook (ok, PowerBook, if we are going for fantasy). Alas, airfare to Europe has fairly near eaten my budget for a frivolous second computer. And there are also no decent rebates at this time (last year, the web abounded with offers of free RAM, printers, etc), although Apple does have the slightly intriguing offer of a free iPod mini with the purchase of almost any computer (only for students, I think).
It is interesting to see how much and yet how little Gmail invites have permeated the world. Everyone I know online is swimming in them, yet Joanna was thrilled to be able to get one from me.
I'll be in Massachusetts this weekend (will I ever be able to sleep in again?), so naturally I will fall further behind on keeping up with everyone's lives. . .
*waves to everyone*
Kyle finished the installation of the latest version of the software that I have been killing myself on for the past year (yes, I started out with version 1.1. Now, thankfully, we're at 2.5, although I have yet to see how stable this one will prove to be in comparison to its predecessors (and stable they were not)). We initially had a problem with the web content management component (in this version, it is built in, rather than a separate stand-alone. excitement!), but thankfully Kyle was able to reinstall it. It seems to be functioning properly at the moment, although I have learned never to take anything for granted when dealing with these software releases. And we are on a fairly definite deadline (the start of the school year, since these portals are for high school students), so it had better be stable. But I will believe it when I see it, so to speak.
During periods of the training when the demo guy and our tech guys were trying in vain to get the software up-and-running, Joanna (who works down the hall, and is more involved in this new software than I am) and I spent the time gazing dreamily at the Mac computers we would own, if only we had the money. She is smitten with the iMac G5, and I still long for the beautiful iBook (ok, PowerBook, if we are going for fantasy). Alas, airfare to Europe has fairly near eaten my budget for a frivolous second computer. And there are also no decent rebates at this time (last year, the web abounded with offers of free RAM, printers, etc), although Apple does have the slightly intriguing offer of a free iPod mini with the purchase of almost any computer (only for students, I think).
It is interesting to see how much and yet how little Gmail invites have permeated the world. Everyone I know online is swimming in them, yet Joanna was thrilled to be able to get one from me.
I'll be in Massachusetts this weekend (will I ever be able to sleep in again?), so naturally I will fall further behind on keeping up with everyone's lives. . .
*waves to everyone*