Mondays...

Today is the first Monday after Spring Break.  And, it has been a Monday.  It started off with a call from one of my districts asking if I had a spare server he could use. I told him that I did not have one, but then realized I did have one I could take offline for his use.  He appreciated the offer, but decided to use a desktop he had sitting there as a temporary solution so I would not have to take mine offline. 

I got a call from another district asking for help with Teachscape.  Turns out that he could no longer log in to do classroom walkthroughs.  I gave him the support number to call since it seemed to be related specifically to Teachscape.  Normally, I offer to help in these situations, but he had already done the troubleshooting was looking for the next level.  In this case, it was the designer.

Then, we lost Internet connectivity at the office.  This has happened before, so I had pretty good idea it was the firewall acting up.  What I did not expect was the firewall to LOCK up.  That was followed almost immediately by two other servers locking everyone out.  I rebooted the firewall a couple times after unsuccessful attempts to correct the issue.  I then rebooted the other errant servers.  After everyone came back online, things seemed to be happy again.  Users could get out to the 'net and they could get online to their mail, documents, etc locally.

Parts have been ordered and will hopefully be here asap.  In the meantime, it has become apparent that new servers may be in order, considering these are now 5+ years old and have been heavily used since day one.  As it so happens, another co-op is looking at new servers, too.  We are sharing info and exchanging ideas about the direction(s) to take.

I worked with another district, helping them budget for a new server and the software to go with it.  Seems to be a lot of that going around lately.

I received a call from USAC (E-rate) this morning as well.  they need verification of student counts from one of my districts.  Luckily, I had already been planning to visit that district this week and will be able to pick up the documentation when I head down there.

It's funny how things come about: Sunday in church, the discussion/topic centered on crisis situations and what did or did not constitute a crisis.  This morning came close to meeting the definitions learned yesterday.  Nothing like becoming the object lesson for a Sunday sermon.