Job
I have a job for the summer.
The job is teaching kids age 14-15, who are in some sort of poverty situation, how to take apart a computer, put it back together, and run a few common programs. (Word and Powerpoint are the main targets; others include HTML, Excel, and maybe playing around with a Java compiler.) If they pass the course, they get to take home the computer they've spent the summer tinkering with.
Day 1 was today, and it went reasonably well. Took off a computer case, did some show and tell, but the kids were mostly in smile-and-nod mode. Tomorrow's activity is going to be "trade a hard drive with your neighbor and see who can get the computer working again first".
The software side of things has been rather complicated by the tech department of the school at which the class is being held. Over the weekend, they took the liberty of installing their standard HD image on our lab. Which would have been all well and good if (1) they actually gave us login credentials after the fact; or (2) they chose an operating system didn't suck as much as Vista. Especially given that these computers were donated for a reason: they're 1 ghz machines with 512 megs of RAM that have absolutely no business touching Vista with a ten foot pole.
In other news, some WoW bureaucracy gave me an excuse to start raiding again, roughly six weeks after I first asked the guild to have me start raiding again. Roughly three days later, first kill of Yogg25. Huzzah. Then summer vacation hits, a few people leave, and suddenly we can't fill the raid anymore. *facepalm*. I suppose it might be argued that this is "fourth of july vacation", which means we might catch up to normal pace faster than expected.
The job is teaching kids age 14-15, who are in some sort of poverty situation, how to take apart a computer, put it back together, and run a few common programs. (Word and Powerpoint are the main targets; others include HTML, Excel, and maybe playing around with a Java compiler.) If they pass the course, they get to take home the computer they've spent the summer tinkering with.
Day 1 was today, and it went reasonably well. Took off a computer case, did some show and tell, but the kids were mostly in smile-and-nod mode. Tomorrow's activity is going to be "trade a hard drive with your neighbor and see who can get the computer working again first".
The software side of things has been rather complicated by the tech department of the school at which the class is being held. Over the weekend, they took the liberty of installing their standard HD image on our lab. Which would have been all well and good if (1) they actually gave us login credentials after the fact; or (2) they chose an operating system didn't suck as much as Vista. Especially given that these computers were donated for a reason: they're 1 ghz machines with 512 megs of RAM that have absolutely no business touching Vista with a ten foot pole.
In other news, some WoW bureaucracy gave me an excuse to start raiding again, roughly six weeks after I first asked the guild to have me start raiding again. Roughly three days later, first kill of Yogg25. Huzzah. Then summer vacation hits, a few people leave, and suddenly we can't fill the raid anymore. *facepalm*. I suppose it might be argued that this is "fourth of july vacation", which means we might catch up to normal pace faster than expected.