Wednesday, I spent the day hoping to help one of the schools, but instead had to wait on the elevator guy. He got to the office and did his own troubleshooting. When it was all said and done, he concluded that his modem had gone bad and thus was the source of our elevator communication troubles. He bypassed the modem (the modem is not necessary for operation) and had us up and running with the phone securely connected and working! Excellent!
I passed time while waiting for the elevator guy by cleaning my office some more and installing Vineland one the early childhood computers. I also began prep work for the TIE meeting coming up on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
I also answered emails, took phone calls, and had a discussion with an antivirus vendor about a new product.
Thursday, I spent the morning in the monthly state tech meeting. We met with Belinda Kittrell regarding ERate updates and issues, then met with DIS for their announcement of the new B.E.E. program to provide more bandwidth to schools. It's a partnership between DIS and local telcos. I will be sharing the information with my area techs, as they have been begging for a bandwidth solution for quite some time.
The afternoon presented itself with two great keynote programs for the TIE program: Tim Holt talked about problem-based learning and Tony Vincent talked about better presentations (specifically Pechu Kacha and Ignite). The notes were taken 'live' and posted on Plurk, Facebook, and other social outlets.
Friday, the group was broken into three subgroups for breakout sessions. My order of sessions went from Tim Holt's Professional Learning Communities/Networks to Tony Vincent's Ignite presentation development session (we are to develop an Ignite-based preso for Saturday), and then to Jason Borgen's session on advanced Google.
Again, notes were streamed to Plurk, Twitter, Facebook, etc.
I will try to collate notes and post those here for your perusal.
Friday, October 15, 2010
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Monday and Tuesday (10/11 and 10/12)
Monday, I helped make further preparations for the AMTRAK presentation to be held on Tuesday. I also helped get several workshops up and running with their technology. I met with Jeff Madlock, tech at Hope schools and together, we met with Jim Sutton, outside sales rep for Howard Computers. We discussed various projects, needs, etc.
During that meeting, I received a call that our server room was once again roasting. I called Daniell Electric and was informaed that the manufacturer was sending replacement circuit boards for both wall units. Evidently, something had gone awry. The kicker is that one of the units was ALREADY a replacement unit (thus why we are one remote control short for it). I hope the replacement parts do the trick. We'll find out once the parts arrive and the guys can install them.
Josh and I went to the old building to disconnect the electricity from a storage shed we had sold at the auction on Saturday.
I spoke with a tech from Otis Elevator, and he told me he would be out on Wednesday to address our elevator phone issue.
Tuesday - spent the morning getting ready for AMTRAK presentation. As visitors and guests arrived, I got a chance to catch up with Rep. Mike Ross, who is a friend from before his Congressional days. I hadn't seen him in quite a while and it was nice to talk for a bit.
Tuesday afternoon, I worked on getting my office cleaned up some more (a project in itself, as I had been spending my time getting other folks up and going). After the presentation, I helped pitch in with washing dishes, glasses, silverware etc. It was an 'all-hands on deck' scenario!
During that meeting, I received a call that our server room was once again roasting. I called Daniell Electric and was informaed that the manufacturer was sending replacement circuit boards for both wall units. Evidently, something had gone awry. The kicker is that one of the units was ALREADY a replacement unit (thus why we are one remote control short for it). I hope the replacement parts do the trick. We'll find out once the parts arrive and the guys can install them.
Josh and I went to the old building to disconnect the electricity from a storage shed we had sold at the auction on Saturday.
I spoke with a tech from Otis Elevator, and he told me he would be out on Wednesday to address our elevator phone issue.
Tuesday - spent the morning getting ready for AMTRAK presentation. As visitors and guests arrived, I got a chance to catch up with Rep. Mike Ross, who is a friend from before his Congressional days. I hadn't seen him in quite a while and it was nice to talk for a bit.
Tuesday afternoon, I worked on getting my office cleaned up some more (a project in itself, as I had been spending my time getting other folks up and going). After the presentation, I helped pitch in with washing dishes, glasses, silverware etc. It was an 'all-hands on deck' scenario!
Thursday, Friday (10/7 and 10/8)
Thursday, I spent much of the day helping to set up technology etc for the Open House to be held the next day. Around 10:30am or so, Trish Brown and I met with Don Miller and Naomi with One Vision regarding products and services, mainly service agreements for our video equipment.
Josh and I went to the old building to make sure things were ready for the auction held on the upcoming Saturday.
Friday, we held our Open House and Ribbon Cutting. I spent Friday afternoon getting ready for the AMTRAK presenation the following week.
Josh and I went to the old building to make sure things were ready for the auction held on the upcoming Saturday.
Friday, we held our Open House and Ribbon Cutting. I spent Friday afternoon getting ready for the AMTRAK presenation the following week.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Tuesday and Wednesday
The days all blur together as we get closer to our Open House on Friday. The air conditioner guys came by on Wednesday and effectively told me that the air conditioner was cutting off because it was too cold outside. I told them that was unacceptable. While it may be 35 degrees outside, in the server room it was 90+ and that just wasn't going to cut it. They need to come up with a solution. He called tech support. We'll see how it goes.
Tuesday and Wednesday were spent cleaning, moving thing, hanging items on the wall, tying up loose wires, etc. Basically, getting ready for Friday. Thursday will be much of the same.
Tuesday and Wednesday were spent cleaning, moving thing, hanging items on the wall, tying up loose wires, etc. Basically, getting ready for Friday. Thursday will be much of the same.
Monday, October 4, 2010
Monday
October 4
I drove straight to Fouke. On the way, it occurred to me that they were most likely having issues due to a loop in the network. I called the co-op and had the technology clerk (Terry) ping the Fouke server from her desktop. She was able to hit it, though it was intermittent. I then called the school to see if their distance learning system was still functioning. It was. These are both good signs. It means that the problem is local (since we could see their server from outside their network) and that it was only affecting "data" traffic and not traffic on the compressed video side of things.
When I got to Fouke, we went to the core closet to start troubleshooting. After quite a while (they have a LOT of connections coming into their core), we were able to isolate the problem down to the High School. At the high school, we were able to further limit the trouble to the distance learning lab. And, once there, we had it nailed down to a switch that had gone bad. We swapped it out with another one, and started hooking things up. Uh oh. Still problems. We narrowed it down to ANOTHER bad switch in the same room. That was pure luck, fate, divine intervention, you name it. After we swapped that one out, we still had an issue. Turns out, there WAS a loop in the network at that second switch! Once that was taken care of, we let everyone know they could get back online and we checked connections. About that time, DIS showed up and we went to the core closet and he (Neil) began running a test on his Fluke. While that was running, we went to the server room.
While in the server room, I realized I had left my phone in the car. I got it and had a message from the office. My server closet was running 90+ degrees!! Whoa! I left Fouke and immediately headed back to the office. As I got close to the office, I got a call about a distance learning event coming up at 1pm (it was about noon when I got the call). I tried talking our Distance Learning coordinator through the connection set up, but I could not visualize the core layout for DL and ended up at the office about 10 minutes until the program started. Through some troubleshooting, we got the DL up and going but had no sound. Actually, it turned out we had sound but the far end was muted. On top of that, the far end was presenting too far from the microphone for most sites to hear. I ultimately connected some powerful speakers to the system and made it through. In the meantime, I was running back and forth to the server room to get the temperature down. I believe I have it fixed, but won't really know until Tuesday morning.
I took a very brief lunch before heading back to the office to check email, answer voicemail, and take care of some E-Rate related issues. One of the things I had in my inbox was a message from SLD about our PIA (Program Integrity something or other) review. I had to answer five questions, and hopefully that will move our FY10-11 funds along! Yes, we are still waiting for FY10-11 funds! UGH... I also called the air conditioner folks about a remote for the unit in the server room and for an instruction book.
And then, it was after 4pm. Time flies!
I drove straight to Fouke. On the way, it occurred to me that they were most likely having issues due to a loop in the network. I called the co-op and had the technology clerk (Terry) ping the Fouke server from her desktop. She was able to hit it, though it was intermittent. I then called the school to see if their distance learning system was still functioning. It was. These are both good signs. It means that the problem is local (since we could see their server from outside their network) and that it was only affecting "data" traffic and not traffic on the compressed video side of things.
When I got to Fouke, we went to the core closet to start troubleshooting. After quite a while (they have a LOT of connections coming into their core), we were able to isolate the problem down to the High School. At the high school, we were able to further limit the trouble to the distance learning lab. And, once there, we had it nailed down to a switch that had gone bad. We swapped it out with another one, and started hooking things up. Uh oh. Still problems. We narrowed it down to ANOTHER bad switch in the same room. That was pure luck, fate, divine intervention, you name it. After we swapped that one out, we still had an issue. Turns out, there WAS a loop in the network at that second switch! Once that was taken care of, we let everyone know they could get back online and we checked connections. About that time, DIS showed up and we went to the core closet and he (Neil) began running a test on his Fluke. While that was running, we went to the server room.
While in the server room, I realized I had left my phone in the car. I got it and had a message from the office. My server closet was running 90+ degrees!! Whoa! I left Fouke and immediately headed back to the office. As I got close to the office, I got a call about a distance learning event coming up at 1pm (it was about noon when I got the call). I tried talking our Distance Learning coordinator through the connection set up, but I could not visualize the core layout for DL and ended up at the office about 10 minutes until the program started. Through some troubleshooting, we got the DL up and going but had no sound. Actually, it turned out we had sound but the far end was muted. On top of that, the far end was presenting too far from the microphone for most sites to hear. I ultimately connected some powerful speakers to the system and made it through. In the meantime, I was running back and forth to the server room to get the temperature down. I believe I have it fixed, but won't really know until Tuesday morning.
I took a very brief lunch before heading back to the office to check email, answer voicemail, and take care of some E-Rate related issues. One of the things I had in my inbox was a message from SLD about our PIA (Program Integrity something or other) review. I had to answer five questions, and hopefully that will move our FY10-11 funds along! Yes, we are still waiting for FY10-11 funds! UGH... I also called the air conditioner folks about a remote for the unit in the server room and for an instruction book.
And then, it was after 4pm. Time flies!
Friday
On October 1, Josh and I spent the day over at the old building. We dismantled two projectors to bring back to the new building, then we set up the TVs and VCRs for the auction. That involved getting everything unplugged and carrying the equipment down the hall to the old conference room. The TVs are "old" - as in, no remote control. You know, the kind you have to "turn the dial?" Well, they are bulky for sure. And the VCRs are pretty "aged" themselves. But, they still work. And that is the key to selling them off in the auction.
Once we were back at the co-op, I went through the spam filter. I also tried to set the temperature in the server room so that it would be cooler in there. More on that in Monday's post.
Near the end of the day, I got a call from the Fouke Supt asking me to come down on Monday because they were having "major problems" there.
Once we were back at the co-op, I went through the spam filter. I also tried to set the temperature in the server room so that it would be cooler in there. More on that in Monday's post.
Near the end of the day, I got a call from the Fouke Supt asking me to come down on Monday because they were having "major problems" there.
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