October 31, 2011

Monday: Happy Halloween! I will bring some candy in this week--as soon as I know we have satisfied the kids coming to the door tonight.

I hope to deliver a few more computers this week and for me to get some core data done. You will hear that over and over again. It is a slow process and I procrastinate on it too much!

October 28, 2011

Friday: TGIF--how many of you stayed up to watch the Cardinals game? I went to bed but got up again when I heard my husband hooting and hollering in the other room. That was amazing!

I want to try to get a few more computers delivered today so we can walk behind the counter again soon. I need to start sitting at my computer to work on core data but I really hate it so I am thinking of other things to do. :) No blogging for yesterday but please blog today.

Also, I am sharing a document with everyone today on the Podcast assignment. I will be posting more about it as I get time. Try logging into Google Docs to be sure you can get it. Use your e-mail and password you use to blog and then go to documents. Start thinking of a topic. And watch the blog and Google Docs for information.

October 26, 2011

Wednesday: I got one huge thing accomplished after school yesterday. Dave Luebbering and I went to Ms. Dixon's room to mess with her sound again. I bought new speakers but when Dave hooked them up, it still sounded like the sound was coming out of a barrel. We messed and messed with stuff and I finally looked at the computer and there was a Realtek sound card in the machine and the program had opened up when we unplugged the cords and replugged them into the computer. On the Realtek screen was a program where you could pick if the sound was for a concrete hallway, planitarium, auditorium, or stadium. Guess what? the Stadium was selected and when I went back to normal, the sound was fixed. It took weeks and several trips to the store as well as tying up the maintenance staff time and mine (and some of yours) and all along it was on the pc. I was frustrated (mad) but glad the trouble was over. We all learn something new every day.

What have you learned new lately? Tell me about it.

October 25, 2011

Tuesday: I feel pretty productive already and it is only 10 a.m. I finally have Ms. Hollands speakers back up and working--now just to get Ms. Dixons. I drug that out way to long but it wasn't at the top of my priority list. We have a few more computers to get ready to go places and we'll work on that today. I will be coming up with an assignment by the end of the week. I know, you heard that before.

October 24, 2011

Monday: Welcome back to all the ACT people. I hope the test seemed easier this time. My goal today is to deliver Ms. Pragman's computer and finish preparing Ms. Hock and Ms. Patterson's pc's. Hopefully we can deliver those in the next couple of days. I am also going to have to get serious about core data. It is a most dreaded job and it is actually due at the end of the week but I'm hoping by Thanksgiving because all the schools have to feed me data and they haven't given it all to me yet so it isn't all my fault for being late. :)

Have a great day.

October 20, 2011

Friday: Well it is an early-release day and Curtis is my only student. Curtis gets bonus points for that! I hope the rest of you have learned a lot from the ACT prep week and raise your ACT score a bunch this weekend. Good Luck.

PS: Curtis, you don't have to blog today.

October 19, 2011

Wednesday: Go Cards!!! I spent the morning putting a new pc in for the special services director at the Rock. Hopefully I got everything she needs except I know her e-mail is not transferring over. We have a few other teachers pc's we are going to give out next week also. They were put on hold with Mitchell's room coming in.

Have a good day.

October 18, 2011

Tuesday: I think I'm getting lonely in the mornings. :) We have quite a few pc's left that we need to get ready to deliver. I'm going to focus on these for the next 2-3 days. Thursday is short and no kids in the mornings so I won't get much done this week. I really need to be working on core data but will concentrate on that starting Thursday when we have parent/teacher conferences.

I looked at the challenge problem and a few of you did not zoom in on the picture to notice one of the most important things is that the login and password were taped to the monitor. I wrote down the things that you all missed but overall you did a good job. The one I didn't know was the paypal device on the key ring. I'm not a paypal person so I wasn't familiar with that.

Have a great day!

October 17, 2011

Monday: I was late today because my son was ill this morning--actually he is still home ill but I left him with my older son for the afternoon. So my objective this afternoon is to get the 900+ letters printed for all the parents who have not signed up for school messenger calls when it snows or other things happen. We shall see if it gets a better response this time. Have a great afternoon/evening.

October 14, 2011

Friday: I will be gone today from 11-1 or a little after. I will leave a note taped to my monitor of what you should be doing during 4, 5, and maybe 6th hours. Don't forget to turn in your assignment that I left on the blog a couple days ago.

Have a great weekend.

October 13, 2011

Thursday: I finally got Randy to help me look at 2 sound issues at the elementary where the speakers or amplifier were not working correclty. We determined I should have the amplifiers looked at so I took them to Dark Horse Electronics today and they determined one was good and one was bad. So I brought back new speakers to try in one of the classrooms and the other is amplifier I am having looked at to see if it is fixable because a new one is $130. I can buy a ceiling mount speaker for $200 and not have to worry about it again. So they are going to call me with an estimate on the cost to try to fix the amplifier. In the mean time, Alex hooked up a set of desk speakers so they can hear the computer.

Don't forget to do the picture problem that I put on the blog. You can e-mail it to lkempker@blairoaks.k12.mo.us, hand it to me--typed, or share a google doc with me.

Have a great day!

October 12, 2011

Wednesday: Wow, no one reminded me to blog. You all are not keeping me on top of this like you should! We delivered 4 computers to Lisa Taylor at the MS and fixed a printing issue at the Elem. as well as got 2 laptops ready to be given to teachers. Pretty productive but could have been better.

Challenge Problem

October is Cyber-Security Awareness month so I want everyone to go to this website: http://www.more.net/content/2011-cyber-security-awareness-month and scroll down to the bottom and you will see a picture of a desk. There are lots of things that the person who has left this desk has done wrong. There are 3 links under the picture to zoom in on the desk and see much better what you find. I don't want you to put it on the blog because then everyone can read the others; so you can either e-mail it to me or type it in a word document and hand it to me. Think about all the bad things, not just the cyber type mistakes. Lets have this done by Friday, October 14.

October 11, 2011

Tuesday: Good Morning! I want to remind everyone that I give a grade for posting to this blog and I will go back and read your posts from almost every day of the quarter. I will be looking for good explanations of what you did and not just went to elementary. I want to know who's room you went to and what you were sent to do and if it was successful or not and if not, what did you try while you were there. If you are reformatting computers it would be good to list the software that was loaded: for example--I worked on reformatting 2 computers in the lab and loaded the following software on both: Office, Vixera, Adobe Reader, and Flash.

If you have any questions, let me know.

October 10, 2011

Monday: Wow, am I tired after the weekend. You all probably are too with all the homecoming activities. We still have computers to be reformatted and loaded with software and then taken to the MS. Whatever is left will probably go to Mr. Karsten because he wants some updated ones for his classes. Maybe by the end of the week we can be finished. We then have a few new teacher machines to deliver. Those teachers will be surprised because I haven't even told them yet.

Have a good day!

October 7, 2011

Friday: Happy Homecoming and TGIF! Seems like a long week for me since I was gone 2 days last week. I was supposed to be gone Monday and Tuesday next week for a conference at the lake but I have chosen not to go. Hanging out with you all is more important. :)

The usual reformatting is on the agenda today. We may even deliver a computer this morning. Next week, we will finish up that project and hopefully move on to other things.

Have a safe and fun weekend!

October 6, 2011

Thursday: Well I actually had the blog all ready this morning and the window closed before I got to post it. Sorry this is late again. You all aren't doing a very good job of reminding me to post in the mornings. I know we are busy.

I hope to spend time just getting pc's formatted, delivered and out of my office so that we can have room and maybe do some other learning besides reformatting pc's.

I hope everyone enjoys these last couple days of homecoming because your high school years fly by and all of a sudden you are out and working all the time. Be safe this weekend.

Ocotber 5, 2011

Wednesday: I have graded all of the quizzes and I think several of you do not understand the importance of the device manager window. This window tells you if pieces of hardware in your pc are working, like the network card, sound card, display adapter, etc... If the items have yellow ! on them, then they are not working. It may be as simple as installing the correct driver to make the device work or it may be toast and you have to replace it. We would start by trying to install a driver, update the driver or find a new one on the web.

The other thing I want you to know is that you can ping any object with an ip address. When we use ping, we are testing the sending and receiving object to be sure that the network card and cabeling is working correctly. I like to use the gateway's IP 10.10.0.254 because I know it is always working. The gateway is the router that takes all of our computers out to the internet. The only time it would not be working is if the entire district is down and no one can get on the web. If we use this ip then we know we are really just testing the pc that we are pinging from. This IP is also memorized and would be easy for you to use. 10.10.1.253 is the IP of the server. This would also be a good IP to memorize.

If you didn't score all that great on the quiz, never fear, most points come from the blog and daily work.

October 4, 2011

Tuesday: Good Morning--I'm actually blogging first hour. :) Quiz today! Be prepared. As of now, we will concentrate on reformatting computers today and maybe delivering a few. I hope to clean out the lab and office by the end of October. Seems like a long time to do that but we have been busy with other fixes throughout the day. I will be coming up with a project for you to do before the end of the quarter. Not exactly sure what but I'll have to decide soon because the end of the quarter is a week and a half away. Don't forget to blog everyday!

October 3, 2011

Monday: Sorry I am a day late blogging. I'm sure you will be able to remember on Tuesday what you did Monday. I spent a lot of time working on the Sp. Ed directors PC. I took the hard drive out and hooked it up to a machine in the office so we could scan it and see what was wrong. Her machine was in an infinite loop and just kept restarting. The harddrive scan did find some errors. You can check a harddrive by going to the command prompt and typing: chkdsk c: /r This command tells the computer to check the C drive and repair any problems. I want everyone to try this command on a computer. Just remind me during your hour and I'll watch/help you do it the first time. It is a great tool.