Starting the 5th month back on the job in IT, I am already feeling the stress. Currently I have the following projects in the works:

• Build a Help Desk Website


• Build the schools official website


• Finish writing a windows application to monitor virus protection status and report to server


• write windows policies to restrict student access


• build NAS for student and administration file storage


• ....

This school has been open for 7 years, these things, a majority of them, should have already been taken care of. But the person before me made the job seem much larger than it was, to cover for the fact that he actually had no idea what he was doing. For 5 years he dodged around, looking very busy while actually doing nothing. To give you an idea of what I'm having to clean up after I'll tell you something that happened to me recently.

Recently, while talking to some of the staff, I heard a story about this printer in the attendance office that is very, very rare. You can't find the drivers, so they just use it as a straight fax. I went to this office and found an HP printer. A fairly new one. So, I went to install the printer and the Mgr. there says, "Good Luck, it took 'John' 2 months to get that thing working." I thought perhaps she meant two weeks, but she went on to describe this other guys attempts. He'd come in once or twice a week and mess with this printer, bringing in driver after driver and never getting it right. Then he finally does. So I say, "Oh, so it works now?" No. The computer that had the drivers was replaced. So, I sat down and I went to the HP website and downloaded the most recent drivers for this printer and had it working in a few minutes. It would have been faster, but there was a lot of network traffic at that time of day... Well, she was so impressed. And that, I have to tell you, frightened me. The fact that something so simple is so new for them makes me wonder how they got on this long.

The list goes on and on. Add to that, we've decided to move one of our campuses to a new location for some expansion. The place we've chosen has five very large empty buildings to build in. So, I have to design, research, cost, budget and build a network from scratch for an elementary school on top of all my other duties. Is it just me, or does that seem like a lot. Oh yeah, forgot to mention that the move has to be completed by July 17th. So I'll have to do this by mid June. I have no idea how I'm going to do this. Especially since they want the websites done at the same time.

So, we're moving to a new school, and we're getting a new tech grant. That means I get to buy cool stuff and spend as little as possible. Currently, I've figured out how to build 80 computers for 18,000. And, right now I'm deciding whether I'd like to go for a full Windows Domain like we have now. Or, install Ubuntu (or Edubuntu) and run Samba for user access. Bringing the cost of the network OS to $0. That leaves a large problem. All commercial education software is written for Windows. So, am I stuck in Windows? Maybe not.

Imagine if you could just install Photoshop once, drag it onto a thumb drive and have it with you to use on any system without having to install it on the others. Sound cool? Well you want ThinApp. I'm not going to go into the specifics, because, while it's simple in execution, describing it would take pages. Let's just say that I can take a program and make it think it's in windows 95 when it's actually in Vista or XP. And I don't have to run a full Virtual Win95 interface. I am going to try to take this program and marry it with WINE and see if I can't get software to think it's in Windows WP when it's actually in Linux. Here's hoping.

So, I've installed Ubuntu on my TabletPC. I forgot how cool Ubuntu is. One of my fave distros. Well, for ease of use and all. I have other distros I like for other reasons. INSERT is a good one. Knoppix STD. Anyway, so, now I'm going to try to get something to run inside of a Windows Package inside of Linux... If I get Photoshop to work I may never use windows again. :-D