Life Update, Students who will be missed, Love, Class, Dell unhappiness
I really need to do several gargantuan updates in this journal.
Let's see. theonlyasd and I have been going out for almost 20 months at this point. And things are still going quite well.
I've been doing a massive amount of stuff at work. We got in 104 computers (98 desktops, 6 laptops) to replace 3 labs worth of computers, the desktops for faculty and staff, and the laptops for the faculty. The laptops didn't show up until break. And all this switching of old and new machines was going to take place over break, at the same time as the usual break craziness. And with the help of some students, (one in particular kicked a lot of ass for me), I managed to get it all set up.
Of course, on the first day of doing all the unpacking of the 85 lab machines, I found out early afternoon that one of the students who works for me as a mentor in our mentoring lab, Mike DiRoma, had been killed early that morning(/late the previous night). Another one of the students who works for me was in the car, and was hospitalized, but was expected to be okay (in fact, he's back now and looks great). Apparently, Mike took the brunt of the tractor trailer that hit them, and saved Rob (the other student). There was a third student I don't know in the car, who will be fine, but he was more messed up than Rob.
What did I do? I kept working. I didn't know what else to do, and all this work still needed to be done. And I got it done.
And that worked until the first week of classes. Work was okay, but the loss of a student hit me that first week. I had panic attacks the first couple of nights. And I've been depressed since then. It's been getting better, but life at home has been on the suck side for a bit. Just at home? Mostly. I manage to put stuff aside at work, but at home it seems to catch up to me. It is getting better though. But last week (and this week to a lesser degree) was a rough week.
On top of it, starting last Friday (the end of week 1), I started having problems with the new Dells. Heck, one of the new machines had a bad hard drive during break that had to be replaced. Then a couple had non-working "DVI Option Cards", which provide a digital out for the sexy new LCDs. And then Friday I had a hard drive in the main office and a hard drive in one of the labs die. Two in one day. On machines in use for not even 2 weeks. Not happy-making.
That weekend was decent. I was still depressed, and theonlyasd went down to see her folks (her Dad was laid off recently, in pretty much a standard case of age descrimination). venlar had a couple friends up that he knew from WoW, and they were fun. It helped miss theonlyasd less and made the bleakness less so.
The good part of that Monday was that I got my first Quiz from my class back, and I got an A. Funny part is I was upset I didn't get a perfect :) So the class is going well. The quizzes are literally taken from the suggested homework. So doing the homework means the quizzes should be very easy. And it was, although from her comments upon passing the quizzes back, I suspect I may be the only one who got an A (or even close to it).
The rest of Monday was pretty much a giant wall of suck. Two faculty machines had rebooted over the weekend and said they couldn't find their hard drives. And two of the main office PCs had blue screened. That's the start of my feeling that the new Dells we got just suck. I spent pretty much the whole day trying to diagnose the machines. Reboots seem to get the machines back to normal, but I ran diagnostics because I was suspicious. The diagnostics didn't complete until after I left for the night. That should've been a clue. I had left messages for our Dell rep, and he didn't call back.
So, Tuesday, I talk to RIT purchasing, and they suggest that I email our rep, our rep's boss and cc RIT purchasing. That got a response within 10-15minutes via phone. And I was told how it would be taken care of, and I'd have a call from someone that afternoon. That afternoon, nothing. So I sent a snippy note asking if I only got a response since I had cc'd purchasing. I got a response saying that wasn't the case, but not from the folks who could *do* something about our problems.
Fast forward to today, no contact this morning. Not until almost lunchtime when I got an email saying it could be a 72-96 hours before someone got back to me. *sigh*. When I got done with meetings, I talked to this woman, and when I mentioned how my boss no longer wants to buy from Dell, things seemed to move quicker. I got some guys direct number and told he would be urged to call me today.
So, while I was down in the main office doing something else, my boss reminded me that he felt our advisor's PC was running very slowly. And I have to agree, it was. I ran some basic diagnostics that passed. Then I ran a verify test that takes a long time. I noticed it seemed to run way slower than it should. So I sanity checked on the student machine whose hard drive had been replaced. I discovered that the suspicious hard drive was running about 100 times slower than the other drive. And when I looked into it, every faculty/staff machine I've tested so far (which all have 160G drives, instead of the 80G I put in this other machine to get it running) has the same problem.
So I've called the guy who was supposed to be "urged" to contact me today, got his voicemail. Talked to our rep's boss (who is actually local here, I guess). And told them to call my cell. So, most of my faculty have crippled machines. And I'm suspicious of the rest of my new lab machines. Dell is really going to need to pull a rabbit out of the hat on this one to be able to convince me and my boss that we should ever buy anything from them again....
I think that's the high (low?) points. Maybe now I'll start making more frequent, smaller entries.
And I'll need to go pick up theonlyasd from the airport soon, although it seems her flight has been delayed...
Let's see. theonlyasd and I have been going out for almost 20 months at this point. And things are still going quite well.
I've been doing a massive amount of stuff at work. We got in 104 computers (98 desktops, 6 laptops) to replace 3 labs worth of computers, the desktops for faculty and staff, and the laptops for the faculty. The laptops didn't show up until break. And all this switching of old and new machines was going to take place over break, at the same time as the usual break craziness. And with the help of some students, (one in particular kicked a lot of ass for me), I managed to get it all set up.
Of course, on the first day of doing all the unpacking of the 85 lab machines, I found out early afternoon that one of the students who works for me as a mentor in our mentoring lab, Mike DiRoma, had been killed early that morning(/late the previous night). Another one of the students who works for me was in the car, and was hospitalized, but was expected to be okay (in fact, he's back now and looks great). Apparently, Mike took the brunt of the tractor trailer that hit them, and saved Rob (the other student). There was a third student I don't know in the car, who will be fine, but he was more messed up than Rob.
What did I do? I kept working. I didn't know what else to do, and all this work still needed to be done. And I got it done.
And that worked until the first week of classes. Work was okay, but the loss of a student hit me that first week. I had panic attacks the first couple of nights. And I've been depressed since then. It's been getting better, but life at home has been on the suck side for a bit. Just at home? Mostly. I manage to put stuff aside at work, but at home it seems to catch up to me. It is getting better though. But last week (and this week to a lesser degree) was a rough week.
On top of it, starting last Friday (the end of week 1), I started having problems with the new Dells. Heck, one of the new machines had a bad hard drive during break that had to be replaced. Then a couple had non-working "DVI Option Cards", which provide a digital out for the sexy new LCDs. And then Friday I had a hard drive in the main office and a hard drive in one of the labs die. Two in one day. On machines in use for not even 2 weeks. Not happy-making.
That weekend was decent. I was still depressed, and theonlyasd went down to see her folks (her Dad was laid off recently, in pretty much a standard case of age descrimination). venlar had a couple friends up that he knew from WoW, and they were fun. It helped miss theonlyasd less and made the bleakness less so.
The good part of that Monday was that I got my first Quiz from my class back, and I got an A. Funny part is I was upset I didn't get a perfect :) So the class is going well. The quizzes are literally taken from the suggested homework. So doing the homework means the quizzes should be very easy. And it was, although from her comments upon passing the quizzes back, I suspect I may be the only one who got an A (or even close to it).
The rest of Monday was pretty much a giant wall of suck. Two faculty machines had rebooted over the weekend and said they couldn't find their hard drives. And two of the main office PCs had blue screened. That's the start of my feeling that the new Dells we got just suck. I spent pretty much the whole day trying to diagnose the machines. Reboots seem to get the machines back to normal, but I ran diagnostics because I was suspicious. The diagnostics didn't complete until after I left for the night. That should've been a clue. I had left messages for our Dell rep, and he didn't call back.
So, Tuesday, I talk to RIT purchasing, and they suggest that I email our rep, our rep's boss and cc RIT purchasing. That got a response within 10-15minutes via phone. And I was told how it would be taken care of, and I'd have a call from someone that afternoon. That afternoon, nothing. So I sent a snippy note asking if I only got a response since I had cc'd purchasing. I got a response saying that wasn't the case, but not from the folks who could *do* something about our problems.
Fast forward to today, no contact this morning. Not until almost lunchtime when I got an email saying it could be a 72-96 hours before someone got back to me. *sigh*. When I got done with meetings, I talked to this woman, and when I mentioned how my boss no longer wants to buy from Dell, things seemed to move quicker. I got some guys direct number and told he would be urged to call me today.
So, while I was down in the main office doing something else, my boss reminded me that he felt our advisor's PC was running very slowly. And I have to agree, it was. I ran some basic diagnostics that passed. Then I ran a verify test that takes a long time. I noticed it seemed to run way slower than it should. So I sanity checked on the student machine whose hard drive had been replaced. I discovered that the suspicious hard drive was running about 100 times slower than the other drive. And when I looked into it, every faculty/staff machine I've tested so far (which all have 160G drives, instead of the 80G I put in this other machine to get it running) has the same problem.
So I've called the guy who was supposed to be "urged" to contact me today, got his voicemail. Talked to our rep's boss (who is actually local here, I guess). And told them to call my cell. So, most of my faculty have crippled machines. And I'm suspicious of the rest of my new lab machines. Dell is really going to need to pull a rabbit out of the hat on this one to be able to convince me and my boss that we should ever buy anything from them again....
I think that's the high (low?) points. Maybe now I'll start making more frequent, smaller entries.
And I'll need to go pick up theonlyasd from the airport soon, although it seems her flight has been delayed...