<strong>Your Name:</strong> Ben Hyman
<strong>Today’s Date</strong>: 2008/2/22
Reporting on most recent week
<strong>Day(s) worked or described</strong>: T F
<strong>Total hours for week</strong>: 5.3
<strong>The School</strong>: Canter Middle
<strong>Kind of Work</strong>: Tech General
<strong>Main Report or Narrative</strong>:
Tuesday I fixed Mr. Fishbein's memory issues for the student computer (the old "restart-in-safe-mode" trick worked on this computer), and looked at the computer in 103 that I had gotten a complaint about. Everything seemed to be in working order for that computer, and I haven't heard anything back.
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I also helped the social workers in the building set up and log into ChildServe on the computer it's set up in the lab, and that was pretty successful. I sent Mitch and Russ an email about not being able to log into INSTR on certain computers, which I believed was a local issue. Mitch replied later with a few suggestions, but I had left by the time he replied. Also on Tuesday I looked into the possibility of disabling some of the gratuitous visual effects (yes, even on Windows 2K) in order to see what effect it would have on memory. I also researched some other ways of improving memory management. This was prompted by the fact that computers E3 - E5 are essentially useless, as they all started having the memory problems. I'll see what I can do with those next Tuesday (didn't have time to get to them this Friday), and I'll write more on possible solutions to memory issues in future weeks (or next quarter) when I have time to test a few of them. 

On Friday, I was able to test Mitch's second suggestion, of fully changing the workstation to being part of a workgroup, and then back to the INSTR domain, and it worked well. However, the problem disappeared on one of the computers I'd encountered it on (C4), and appeared on another one (C6). I had just disjointed it from the INSTR domain to start fixing it, but now it's having the classic memory problems I've seen over the last two quarters. So basically, it's no longer connected to INSTR <em>and</em> you can't get anything done with techco as a result of the memory problems. Very frustrating: I'll deal with it on Tuesday somehow.

On a random note, I discovered (by way of the compliance page and some detective work) that the computer in room 303, Ms. Escalona's room, is low on memory but she doesn't use it anyway. I'll talk to her to see if she needs it at all (she brings her laptop in), and if not and it's okay with her, I'll salvage the good parts.

A teacher notified me of a problem with the computer in the in-school-suspension room. It turns out that the primary hard drive is perilously low on free space. Even though there's another larger drive in the computer, Windows needs a certain amount of free space on the primary to run. I moved the pagefile to the secondary drive, and defragmented. Although the space left is still quite low, it appears to be doing better. I'll take another look next time I have some free time.

It also happens that the printer in the lab (the...only... printer) is out of toner. It's effectively non-functional, and there's nothing I can do about it. I talked to Dr. Conlan, and she said that I could give her a list of cartridges so that she could order more of them. She forgot to mention (and I only found out by happenstance) that in her office were the many printers the school had just received, something on the order of one-per-every-classroom. Russ, do you know anything about this? Regardless, I'll give her the list of toner cartridges to order. I have a feeling I might end up setting up a few of those printers in the coming weeks as well.

I had enough time to check out all the other printers lying around. They all work well, and one even has a sufficient amount of toner to print well! It's a humongous Lexmark already situated in the teacher's lounge, and I think I'll use Tuesday to set it up to replace the one with the bad drum unit. I'll also talk to Dr. Conlan about ordering some toner for the other one.

And I'm just now about to send Ms. Spector the blogging directions.

<strong>Remaining Issues</strong>
<ul>
<li>GAHHH! RAM!!!!!!</li>
<li>Set up the good printer in the teacher's lounge.</li>
<li>Spare mice (considering Mitch's comment on last week's report)</li>
<li>Using Canter's compliance website</li>
<li>Editing the theme for this site. <em>Mitch, I'm still not sure my permissions are set properly for this. Can you help me out?</em></li>
<li>It would be really cool to resolve those DeepFreeze issues in the lab.</li>

</ul>

These RAM issues are killing me. They really are!

-Ben Hyman