The Bees, Which Remain In My Eyes
So, next week we shall have a visitation of the Middle States Commission, or some portion thereof. They will go everywhere and peek in everything and write up a report at the end to prove that we are Serious College and this is Serious Education. Therefore, of course, the entire school is busily employed in cleaning, painting, tidying, shoving things under beds, and in general preparing for the Admiral's inspection--or, to put it another way, building a Potemkin village. For the most part, this was not going to affect my life much other than "clean desk" and "make sure the minions toe the line", but then...
So, these terminals around campus, which we call PACs, and which the PFY is responsible for. Their current design (which predates both of us) is old, ill-considered, and running on well-past-EOL'd hardware; maintenance ranges from "difficult" to "impossible", and so we are just keeping them stumbling along while Version 2.0 is being worked out (should be deployed over the summer, in a much saner fashion). This was fine, and all knew of it, including $OVERBOSS, who has even made sure we had teh munneyz to implement 2.0, and without scrimping at that.
Until, in the wake of a late Middle States meeting at the beginning of the week, the decision was passed to me that All PACs Must Work before the commission arrives at 7am Monday. IF IT WAS THAT EASY THEY'D ALL BE WORKING
The problems are these:
* Some of the monitors are out. There are no monitors of that kind left on campus anywhere; there are some that fit in the secure boxes, but their power supplies aren't compatible, and the power cords are fed through very narrow tubes in the walls behind and so far have proved impossible to extricate, i.e., swap out.
* Some units, which are thin-client HP/Compaq wossnames, are out. We have some spares, but not enough; and some of the spares are considerably larger and may not fit in some of the boxes.
* Also, we don't have power supplies for most of the spare units.
* We have more spares, of the earlier model (Evo T20s), but the reason they aren't in service already is because you cannot reflash them without antique hardware we don't have any more.
* And then the biggest problem of all, the little darlings have pried or cracked open the faceplates of the metal boxes (none too handsome themselves, I may add) that the units live in. These boxes were specially made by the Facilities department, and no, they aren't going to make new faceplates in three days.
For the monitors, I'm going to spend some delightful hours this morning seeing if just maybe I can exchange the power cables. For the power supplies, spride has found uncheap unbranded "universal" power supplies on Canal St. that will suffice. For the units, the PFY is re-flashing those spares what can be flashed and, bless his hackerly little heart, may have found a way to flash the T20s as well; and if he can't, we will steal from concealed locations.
And for the secure (hah) boxes? Facilities won't move the empty ones up from Brookdale, and we can't do it ourselves because there are power conduits with mains outlets going from the wall into them and we will fry trying it; so we are going to go down to Brookdale, take the faceplates off the empty ones (which are actually a deal bigger than the ones up here), bring them back, and glue them to the front of the boxes up here.
So, in a nutshell, the PFY and I are almost certainly working Saturday. I had to come in anyways, for another damn freshman orientation, but I thought not such a big deal, stagger over at 11am, give short speech, stagger home; but it will be A Full Day, I am sure. (And then Sunday is another interstate moving adventure.)
So, these terminals around campus, which we call PACs, and which the PFY is responsible for. Their current design (which predates both of us) is old, ill-considered, and running on well-past-EOL'd hardware; maintenance ranges from "difficult" to "impossible", and so we are just keeping them stumbling along while Version 2.0 is being worked out (should be deployed over the summer, in a much saner fashion). This was fine, and all knew of it, including $OVERBOSS, who has even made sure we had teh munneyz to implement 2.0, and without scrimping at that.
Until, in the wake of a late Middle States meeting at the beginning of the week, the decision was passed to me that All PACs Must Work before the commission arrives at 7am Monday. IF IT WAS THAT EASY THEY'D ALL BE WORKING
The problems are these:
* Some of the monitors are out. There are no monitors of that kind left on campus anywhere; there are some that fit in the secure boxes, but their power supplies aren't compatible, and the power cords are fed through very narrow tubes in the walls behind and so far have proved impossible to extricate, i.e., swap out.
* Some units, which are thin-client HP/Compaq wossnames, are out. We have some spares, but not enough; and some of the spares are considerably larger and may not fit in some of the boxes.
* Also, we don't have power supplies for most of the spare units.
* We have more spares, of the earlier model (Evo T20s), but the reason they aren't in service already is because you cannot reflash them without antique hardware we don't have any more.
* And then the biggest problem of all, the little darlings have pried or cracked open the faceplates of the metal boxes (none too handsome themselves, I may add) that the units live in. These boxes were specially made by the Facilities department, and no, they aren't going to make new faceplates in three days.
For the monitors, I'm going to spend some delightful hours this morning seeing if just maybe I can exchange the power cables. For the power supplies, spride has found uncheap unbranded "universal" power supplies on Canal St. that will suffice. For the units, the PFY is re-flashing those spares what can be flashed and, bless his hackerly little heart, may have found a way to flash the T20s as well; and if he can't, we will steal from concealed locations.
And for the secure (hah) boxes? Facilities won't move the empty ones up from Brookdale, and we can't do it ourselves because there are power conduits with mains outlets going from the wall into them and we will fry trying it; so we are going to go down to Brookdale, take the faceplates off the empty ones (which are actually a deal bigger than the ones up here), bring them back, and glue them to the front of the boxes up here.
So, in a nutshell, the PFY and I are almost certainly working Saturday. I had to come in anyways, for another damn freshman orientation, but I thought not such a big deal, stagger over at 11am, give short speech, stagger home; but it will be A Full Day, I am sure. (And then Sunday is another interstate moving adventure.)