Today is a big day of work down at the Castile Christian Academy. Originally I was going to get up this morning and pick up Jeremy and take him down to Castile with me but he didn’t get home until late last night and ended up getting into trouble and not being allowed to go so it is just dad and I working down there today.
I left the house at 8:00. The plan is to meet dad at Lorraine’s in Castile for some breakfast. I ended up getting stuck waiting for the Buffalo and Pittsburgh running through Leicester. I have never gotten stuck waiting for a train there before. It ended up making for perfect timing. Dad and I both pulled into Castile at the same time.
After breakfast it was over to the school for some serious work. Dad is getting a curriculum together so that he can start teaching the computer classes on Monday, just three days away. I am frantically trying to get the school’s network up and running so that everything is ready for the kids when we get back. There is an awful lot to be done by then. Since the last time I was at the school the electric has been run and there is now a dedicated circuit for every two computers in the computer lab. So, for the first time, I can really work to get the computers set up and into running condition.
It took several hours just to get most of the computer set up onto the desks, plugged in and running. We installed the new LCD monitors that are now available for half of the lab. There is a total of ten workstations and we have five LCDs. There is one more but it won’t be here until Monday. We expect at least one more LCD by the end of the school year. We are hoping that the LCD monitors really help to get the students excited about working in the computer lab. The computers are not all that fast but the nice monitors might really help give the impression that it is an up-to-date computer facility. Most of the computers are up to later model Intel Pentium III’s now but there are still a few older Pentium II’s in the mix which really slow things down. It is significant how much better the lab is going to be this year than last year even so. Last year we ran almost exclusively on Pentium II equipment, no LCD monitors and almost every monitor we did have was on its last leg and ran, at best, in 1024×768 (XGA) mode. This year there isn’t a single machine in the main computer lab that isn’t running at least 1280×1024 (SXGA) mode. That will make a big difference all by itself. I am sure that everyone will notice that upgrade right away.
I had to get SUSE Linux 10.0 installed on about half of the machines that were not completed yet. That took every minute of the day that I had to spare. While I was waiting for several machines to get installed I was able to get networking hooked up to all of the computers and get the computer portion of the room cleaned up significantly. By 3:45 when I was finally able to leave we had all ten computers installed, tested, working and on the network ready to go for first thing Monday morning.
By the end of the day I finally had the lab set up and ready to rock and roll on Monday. I took a picture of the lab as it stood this afternoon.
I got home at just a little after 4:00 and Oreo was very, very happy to see me. He was definitely a little scared that no one had been home with him for so long (Dominica had left for work at 10:00 am) but he hadn’t done anything bad and was in good spirits. He was definitely ready to be let outside but other than that he was fine. He had been sleeping on our bed. I could tell from the warm spot where he normally likes to lay.
I spent the evening hanging out with Oreo and doing some miscellaneous stuff around the house. Oreo was totally in need of attention and was not about to let me get away with not spending just about every single moment with him. So it gave me a good excuse to relax some and to do some reading.
Dominica got home and we watched some more of the third season on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Only a little bit more to go before we are done with that season.