Tech Support Nightmare

OH. MY. GOODNESS.

I recently purchased a new Dell laptop computer, something Hubby agreed I could do if I got a job. I got a job, so I got to buy a computer. Anyway, I've had the thing for exactly 3 weeks today. 21 days is the magic number for being able to return it and get my money back if I'm not satisfied. I had been satisfied... until Thursday.

Thursday morning I saw the blue screen of death no less than 6 times before school started that morning. Every time I tried to disconnect my USB flash drive, it was immediately going to the blue screen, and then spontaneously restarting the computer 5-10 seconds later... SO FRUSTRATING!!!

I didn't have time to call Dell tech support on Thursday. Friday I didn't even take my computer to work since I was having problems with it Thursday. I didn't sit down to deal with it until this morning. About 11 AM I called Dell tech support...

... for the first time...

The tech guy (probably in India) remotely accessed my computer and updated my USB port driver, and maybe messed with one other thing... problem not fixed. I could make my computer go to blue screen on command with my flash drive practically on command. It was not a power I enjoyed having, let me tell you. So that guy finished with me and sent me over to a software tech support guy who basically told me that I should get my money back while I had the chance, today being day 21 and all.

I got off the phone with him, had a conference with my hubby, and tried to call Dell back.

I should make it clear to my reader(s?) that every time I called in I waited on hold for at least 15 minutes before I spoke to an actual human being. And the music playing was a very fast-tempo string quartet piece that was edited together so that it never ended. Every few seconds a recording would interrupt the music and tell me how to go online and/or solve my problem some other way. It was obviously designed to make people want to hang up. Good thing my computer was still working well enough for me to be sitting there playing Free Cell and watch HGTV while I waited.

So when I called Dell back to hopefully talk about my options for returning my computer or exchanging it, I was redirected once, and then left on hold until the recording on the other end finally came up and told me that they were unable to complete my call and to call the 800 number again.

So I did, but I was much less nice about everything by then.

TWO technical support people, one supervisor, and 4 hours later, my computer was fixed by uninstalling some recent Windows updates. Befre it was fixed, I had already threatened to drive to Round Rock's Dell campus and yell and scream until I got somewhere... I was so frustrated...

But now my flash drive and my computer are on speaking terms again, and I no longer want to throw my new laptop out the window.

So even though I went through the tech support nightmare, I guess the story has a happy ending... until the next wave of Microsoft updates comes out...

School Has Started

I don't know how good of a choir director I am, but if step 1 is making relationships with my students, I have definitely started mostly on the right foot.

Today I played a name game with my students. It's the second day I've seen my students, and in order to force myself to learn their names, I played a game where I'd say their names, and then throw them a ball. If I had to ask the kid his/her name, then that kid got to choose whether I had to do the Macarena or the Chicken Dance right then. The students laughed at me, I turned red. I have never been so motivated to learn names in all my life. It's voluntary humiliation. It also became a vocal exercise when the students started saying "WHEEEE" as the ball flew through the air. Some classes even sang the songs for the Chicken Dance and Macarena.

I have enjoyed this week for the most part. It's interesting to me how quickly I can tell which kids I need to keep an eye on and which kids I know will be the ones I can count on.

I have a very silly song in my head.. I don't even think I can properly describe it... I'll go looking for it online some other time. Now that I'm getting up every morning and going to work, going to bed early is a MUCH higher priority!

San Francisco - Part 2

I have realized that if I don't do this now, it will never happen. I apologize for taking this long to get to the vacation recap for a trip that happened over a month ago... Life has just been so crazy since we got back. If you're a regular follower of this blog, then you already know that...

Back to the trip. (For Part 1, read here.) I think I forgot to mention that we ate lunch at In & Out Burger on Friday. It was so crowded...

After that we went up to Coit Tower. It's a neat place, but there's not much to do there but look around. There's a mural all around the bottom floor, and that was cool. Coit Tower is on Telegraph Hill, one of the 7 hills in the city. From there we saw Lombard Street, the famous street that zig-zags down the hill (I say down because it's one way). After seeing it from afar, we decided to go there next. We took the bus from Coit Tower over to that area of town near Russian Hill. We probably should have picked a bus route that would take us to the top of the hill, but we didn't. We hiked up and up and up a few blocks to get to the very famous part that everyone knows. It felt like we were climbing stairs, it was so steep.

Our time at Lombard Street was very memorable. We happened to see an estate sale at 1018 Lombard Street, so we went in. We were thinking, When else will we get an opportunity to go into one of these houses? Why not? It turned out that the woman who had lived there was an artist. There were many water color paintings for sale with prices ranging from $10 to $250+. Some of them were framed, and some were not. After poking around the house, looking through some or the things for sale, we found a painting we liked. I had noticed this painting had a building in it that I had seen from the window. It looks like the lady had painted it in one of the rooms we had been in. It seemed very cool that our souvenir from our trip would be something so very unique. It is our tradition to buy wall hangings as souvenirs, so this fit right in!

Here's the painting in front of the window where it was painted:

We figured that whole stumbling on the estate sale part of our vacation was pretty unique, and then to get our souvenir there, was just gravy. Very cool. We shipped the painting home to ourselves so we wouldn't have to take care of it on the plane. It was hard enough just to walk up and down Lombard Street with it in our hands, then catch the bus and get back to the hotel. At least the UPS place was right by the hotel.

As if our trip wasn't already going great, we had our Alcatraz tour that night. We had been told that the night tour was the best, so we were pretty excited about it. The way it works is that you follow a park ranger up to the prison building (after riding the boat over, of course), and then you get a headset with the audio tour. Hubby and I pushed play at the same time so we'd be together on the tour. It's really cool. It tells you as you go to find different things, and the people who were there tell about whatever it is. They actually have former prisoners and guards on the recordings. Once the audio tour ended, we were on our own to explore.

At one end of the island is the power plant, and at the other is the light house. The light house end of the island is where the guards lived. That's where we were when our adventure really began. It was so windy and cold, it was rather unpleasant to be out there. We saw a staircase that led down from where we were to a sidewalk that lead down and around the building. It was blocked off, and obviously not safe to use. We found another way to get down there, a round about way, so we went down that way to see where that sidewalk would lead. There was no one else in sight, and we kept wondering if we were even allowed to go that way. Seagulls' nests were everywhere. It was obvious that those birds were not used to sharing their space. We even had one seagull squacking at us, blocking the sidewalk, protecting her two chicks. The chicks were gray all over, and not as big as the mama seagull, but they looked like they were almost old enough to learn to fly. Anyway, we mustered up our courage and ran past her. The further we went down that walk, the more we wondered if we were supposed to go there. We were the only people in sight. It was eerie.

The sidewalk led to a concrete staircase that went back up toward the prison building. We went up it, and it led to an iron door. (Are you getting how spooky this was? It was foggy, windy, and we were on ALCATRAZ! The only living things we could see were the seagulls all over the place.) We went in the door, and found ourselves in the rec yard of the prison (pictured below). It was so very creepy. Al Capone was there, once upon a time. The Birdman, Robert Stroud was there. On July 17, 2009, we were there. And it was so spooky.

I think that if our trip had ended there, we'd have been satisfied. But it didn't. It got better!!

On Saturday, we rented bikes and rode from Fisherman's Wharf, over the Golden Gate Bridge, to Sausalito and then all the way to Tibouron. Summing it up in once sentence really doesn't do the experience justice. It was so very satisfying. The whole day we kept saying to each other how we felt like we were accomplishing something. And we did. It wasn't easy. As bike rides go, it wasn't too hard, but it was work. I had some trouble with my bike chain, and Hubby had to fix it a couple times. I think I ate the best lunch of my life that day. We ate in Sausalito at a very quaint little restaurant. We had a pizza with pesto sauce, spinach, tomatoes, garlic and pine nuts. YUM! It wasn't just that the food was good, we had biked 8 miles to get there, and we were HUNGRY! We toyed with the idea of taking the ferry from Sausalito, and skipping the rest of the bike ride to Tibouron, but opted to press on. And the ride from Sausalito to Tibouron ended up being the prettiest part of the trip, and very worthwhile.

That's all we could handle that day.

Sunday was our last day to spend in sight-seeing in San Francisco. That morning we rented a car and went to Muir Woods. Hubby had earned a voucher for a free rental from his business travel back in 2007 and 2008. Muir Woods is a redwood forest. It was neat to see. We spent a couple hours there. Once we got back to the city, there was only one place left on our list of things to see, and that was Alamo Park. That's where the famous row houses are from the opening of the sitcom "Full House". They're called the Seven Painted Ladies.

We had a fun time sitting in Alamo Park. There were some "kids" there in the park, maybe about 10 or so, drinking beer, playing guitars, and one was playing a sousaphone. They were playing a Weezer song at one point. We enjoyed that. It was just so very appropriate for San Francisco.

We had dinner that evening in the Italian district. Then we flew home on Monday morning.

And that was the BEST VACATION we've ever taken... so far...

Oh no! I'm doing that thing I didn't want to do!

I'm not blogging!! I'm so tired when I finish each work day that I'm doing good to read a bedtime story with the girls before they go to bed.

I'm wondering how much I can say here. I know it's not a good idea to be public with opinions about work stuff, should the wrong person see it... Honestly, right now my feelings are very positive, and I'm looking forward to the meeting the students.

I got to meet a few today. All the teachers in the school had to go around the neighborhood and introduce ourselves to a list of 6th graders divided by the streets they live on. It seemed like a painful exercise at first, but it was a very positive thing for the few kids who were home and answered the door. If only it weren't so hot... but that's another story for another day.

It's just about 8:30, and I'm going to head upstairs, get into my pj's, and lay in my bed. I hope I go to sleep very soon thereafter, and that I sleep all night long. The gamble with this plan is that I may wake up at some point in the night and not be able to go back to sleep. I'm so tired right now that it's a risk I'm willing to take.

Goodnight, world. (My kids just went to bed less than half an hour ago... this is weird.)

Shmoozing

I tried to say that word today, and it just didn't come out right... SHMOOZING. That's definitely a word you don't have to say too many times in a row before it starts to just sound like a silly combination of sounds and nothing more.

By the way, the word came up when one of the principals was talking about lunch duty, and I thought that lunch duty, if I have to do it, which it looks like I won't, would be a good opportunity for shmoozing with the students, and passively recruiting for my choir. That's the closest thing to "wining and dining" clients that I'll do in this job!

Work has begun...

The fun has yet to begin, however...

So far, I have attended two days of new teacher training. I am being assimilated.

Tomorrow is day three, and I finally get to go to my campus(es). I'm looking forward to it.

I'm looking forward to August 25th even more. That's when the kids come. There's a lot of work to do before then, but I'm just so excited to put the pedal to the metal, the rubber to the road, to really GET STARTED!!

Goodbye, Summer

Here it is, the first week of August, and I have one day left of summer vacation. I know it's because I got a job, but it feels so wrong to only have ONE day left...

Tomorrow is Friday, my last weekday off before I start work on Monday. Even then, I haven't exactly been experiencing summer vacation for a little while now. Ever since we got back from San Francisco, I've been going in to school to get my bearings, meet my fellow teachers and administrators, and try to get acquainted with my resources. I have spent time digging through my music library, and I feel I've not even scratched the surface there. I have met with the director I'm assisting several times, discussed calendar, and general policies, and all with our kids underfoot (my girls and his son). It's been crazy.

Then there was this training I went to for 2.5 days... Friday, Saturday and half of Sunday... I really don't want to talk about it...

I just had a workshop this morning and was supposed to have another this afternoon that was called off (happily). I've been learning a lot of valuable stuff, and it's hard to process it all. I'm feeling behind the game, having never taught middle school before, and also not knowing anything about my students at all, besides having their names on a list. I am ready to meet them, and definitely ready to hear them, so I can really pick out some fall concert repertoire.

I mentioned that school starts for me on Monday. Monday through Wednesday is just for teachers new to the district. The returning teachers start on Thursday. New teachers, all of us, are donating those first three days to the district. We are not paid and cannot claim a start date prior to the 13th. There seems to be something inherently wrong with that... As I am powerless to change it, I won't talk about that anymore.

Now to the heart of the matter. Working-mom* status begins for me VERY soon. So far, when I've had to do things for school, my mom has watched the girls for me on weekdays, except for twice when she couldn't, and I took them to school with me. Monday through Wednesday, the kids will be with her (and my dad). Starting next week on Thursday, they'll go to a babysitter, when my mom returns to work.

My folks are actually taking the girls on a mini-vacation to visit some friends who live on a river 4 hours away. I'm really kind of jealous (I'd really like to go), but more than that, I'm already feeling the sting of missing my kids for so many days in a row. They're leaving early on Sunday, so I'm dropping them off Saturday night, and then they're getting in late Tuesday, so we won't get them until Wednesday after work. That's a long time to be here at home with no kids to make us smile...

The song in my head right now is the little prayer song we sing with the girls. It's to the tune of "Frere Jacques":

Thank you, Father, (repeat)
For our food, (family, friends, etc...) (repeat)
And our many blessings. (repeat)
Amen. (repeat)

*Let it be known that I do consider all moms to be working moms, whether or not they work outside the home. This reference should be interpreted as "working-outside-the-home-mom". Any offense taken by the reader is not the responsibility of the blogger. You know what I mean here, people.