<strong>Your Name:</strong> Ben Hyman
<strong>Today’s Date</strong>: 2008/1/18
Reporting on most recent week
<strong>Day(s) worked or described</strong>: T, F
<strong>Total hours for week</strong>: 5
<strong>The School</strong>: Canter Middle
<strong>Kind of Work</strong>: Tech General
<strong>Main Report or Narrative</strong>:

Tuesday, I took care of the recent account-remediated computer, making sure everything was okay. I also started the Windows 2K installation process on the computer I took up from the bathroom last week, but had to leave before it was finished. A fair amount of time was spent considering the best way to back up the meager number of files on that computer; it's difficult when Windows 98 doesn't recognize your flash drive and there's no floppy disk handy. Ultimately I think I used a command line SFTP program to upload it to my space at U.Chicago -- I doubt the backup was even necessary, but there you go. More on that in the Friday narrative.

I got to Canter Friday and went to check on the computer that had been upgraded to Windows 2K that Tuesday. It looked like the installation went fine. After some time spent taking care of other things, I downloaded the entire 500 MB remediation package and ran that ... is it supposed to take an extraordinarily long time? It's been running for at least an hour, and finished (as far as I know) the second-to-last-step (System Patches) before restarting and then stuck on a blue screen as if explorer.exe hadn't been started (not that kind of blue screen, though!). Hang on (yes, this is real-time blogging) -- I just started explorer.exe manually using the Task Manager, and then everything kicked back up again. However, I still don't believe it's done yet; I'll have to check back on Tuesday. Is that normal?

Anyway, I had two teachers approach me with problems today, both of which I ultimately diagnosed as memory-related problems of the type that appeared back in fall quarter. When I had the problems on other computers, they pretty much went away by themselves, and I don't think I can increase the virtual memory anymore than it already is. By the end of my three-hour session, I had gotten so frustrated with another Windows 98 computer (more on that later) that I impulsively opened it up, snatched the memory, and put it in one of the faulty computers (they were the same model...it wasn't really *that* impulsive of a decision).

One of the computers is still low on memory, but the symptoms weren't quite as bad as for the computer to which I added new memory. As a temporary solution, I've logged into the generic school account (which doesn't seem to cause as many memory-related problems as logging into the INSTR domain), and told the teacher to just stay logged in on that. Do we have any alternatives?

Ah, and now to my Windows 98 archnemesis. This is a computer in the teacher's lounge, which I was going to back up and update today. Turns out it can pick up my jump drive but has no drivers for it, and the Internet does not work. My handy Ubuntu CD didn't seem to want to boot on it either...it started loading the file system and then the display sorta cut out. Right now, since I took the RAM out of it, it won't really function. Maybe next time I can hook up the hard drive to another CPU as a slave, and pull all the data off of it...but that still leaves the problem of where I'll get new memory.

I also had another teacher inform me of a problem with their monitor which I'll have to address Tuesday.

As for the CUIP website I referred to in my <a href="http://reporting.cuip.net/2008/01/11/week-1-canter/">post last week</a>, I actually meant the NSP reporting website on which you're currently reading this. Next time, when I have a chance, I'll sit down and list out the visual problems I'm seeing.

Anyway, I've decided that in many cases, backing up, upgrading, and remediating a computer is one of the most soul-crushing things a human being can do! Hehe ;-).

<strong>Remaining Issues</strong>:
<ul>
	<li>DeepFreeze Remote Console, eventually. I know Russ said he would take care of that later.</li>
	<li>Experimenting with the spare printers lying around.</li>
	<li>Working with Russ to set up a wiki (is this still even necessary?), as well as getting back to the teachers who had been interested in the blog. I haven't heard back from them, though.</li>
	<li>A long-term labeling solution for the computers.</li>
	<li>The report sheets for general usage, and my schedule.</li>
</ul>
Thought of the Week: Same as last week (sorry, the notion's stuck in my head!): anyone thought of installing Linux on a spare CPU or two and letting the kids play around with it? If we have one of the Windows 98 computers that we don't want to upgrade, for example...just a thought!

-Ben Hyman