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Yesterday I took the practice final and got ready for school. As I approached my car with my hands full of printed case study pages, lab notebook, jacket and purse, I realized I'd forgotten to grab my car keys off the top of the piano. No problem. I dug into my purse for the house key... realizing in horror that I'd used it the last time we went out to get take-out. My house key was sitting on top of the piano. I'd been careful to make sure the garage was locked up. Our windows are all very secure. OK, no problem. My spare car key is in my purse... um... it USED to be in my purse. At least I cleared out a bunch of trash from my purse. I was already a bit late to class as it was. My instructor is out of town so if we had a lecture at all it would be a guest speaker. Good thing my mom lives two miles away and has our house key! Fortunately, my cell phone was charged and in my purse. Unfortunately, she didn't know which key it was. Our old house key from 12.5 years ago is still in the collection and she brought that over. I tried it (twice at her request) then I climbed into her car to go home with her in search of our current house key. As we left my neighborhood my cell phone rang. My lab partner had just gotten home. There was no lecture! Yay! I was only missing extra lab time.
Since I hadn't gotten over to help Mom with her wireless keyboard that stopped working yet, I took the time while I was there to see if I could fix it. We started downloading a fresh copy of the driver on her dialup connection and left it going. She was going to finish the installation when the hour long download finished. My current house key got me into the house and I handed it back to her with thanks and a kiss after writing a big "M" on both sides of the key with a sharpie.
Lab was crazy. All the procrastinators are there trying to do a quarter's worth of labs in a week. Some were tying up two sets of equipment at at time to get done faster. The noisy young man with CP was there. He has no clue how to be quiet with his piercing voice, shouting about every little thing that works or doesn't work. His joy of life is huge and nobody wants to crush that so we just deal. His backpack and crutches are perpetually in the main aisle. When the crutches wandered diagonally halfway across the aisle, I pushed them against the legs of the table and mentioned I didn't want to trip over them. He apologized. The lady with the noisy sticky kid was there with the kid. My classroom instructor had given strict guidelines about NO KIDS IN LAB before he left. This lab instructor wouldn't enforce it. He told me he has a six-year old daughter. I told him I love kids, but not in lab. The boy was playing with his toys making sound effects. At one point, he dropped a magnet toy with steel marbles and they rolled all over the place. Luckily, nobody slipped on them before he collected them, crawling underneath people trying to work. People with kids are so used to their noise they tune it out. They don't understand how distracting kids are to those of us not used to them.
I got my stuff set up and realized I'd left the lab I was almost finished with at home. Grr. I had to plug my ears when I needed to think, it was so freaking loud in there. Two exercises into the final lab was as far as I got before it was time for my Windows Server class. I was done with that lab in 15 minutes but the instructor didn't have copies of the final to hand out until half an hour past the end of his lecture. We were all finished and chatting for a while before he came back with our final.
Back to router lab only to find it was full. A team with one of my classmates doing the case study (6 workstations) was just finishing. It took them 45 minutes to finally finish documenting things and unhook the equipment. I was sitting right next to them waiting the whole time. The lab instructor kept telling them to free up the equipment and they kept saying, "OK..OK.." When they finally did, I said "Yay!" and my classmate was shocked. She asked if I'd been waiting for them the whole time. I said, "Yes," and she apologized. The lab instructor told her that was why he kept telling them to free up the equipment. People get a bit frazzled this time of the quarter. I understood! I told them patience was a virtue. The lab instructor said patience was fine, but when 10:00 came, he was kicking everyone out.
Thankfully, the kid's dad had picked him up so I only had the loud guy distracting me. While I was waiting, he and his lab partner were stuck so I had him explain his setup to me. That guy needs to brush his teeth once in a while. They were brown and his breath was vile. He found one problem while explaining it. I said, "You're welcome!" and disengaged before I got queasy from his breath.
By the end of lab, I got 2/3 of the way through the final lab. I should finish that up tonight. Then all I have to do is the practical lab final and turn the case study in. Then it's flash card time to memorize the things that haven't stuck yet for the final.
Late to work again! See you my dears!
Since I hadn't gotten over to help Mom with her wireless keyboard that stopped working yet, I took the time while I was there to see if I could fix it. We started downloading a fresh copy of the driver on her dialup connection and left it going. She was going to finish the installation when the hour long download finished. My current house key got me into the house and I handed it back to her with thanks and a kiss after writing a big "M" on both sides of the key with a sharpie.
Lab was crazy. All the procrastinators are there trying to do a quarter's worth of labs in a week. Some were tying up two sets of equipment at at time to get done faster. The noisy young man with CP was there. He has no clue how to be quiet with his piercing voice, shouting about every little thing that works or doesn't work. His joy of life is huge and nobody wants to crush that so we just deal. His backpack and crutches are perpetually in the main aisle. When the crutches wandered diagonally halfway across the aisle, I pushed them against the legs of the table and mentioned I didn't want to trip over them. He apologized. The lady with the noisy sticky kid was there with the kid. My classroom instructor had given strict guidelines about NO KIDS IN LAB before he left. This lab instructor wouldn't enforce it. He told me he has a six-year old daughter. I told him I love kids, but not in lab. The boy was playing with his toys making sound effects. At one point, he dropped a magnet toy with steel marbles and they rolled all over the place. Luckily, nobody slipped on them before he collected them, crawling underneath people trying to work. People with kids are so used to their noise they tune it out. They don't understand how distracting kids are to those of us not used to them.
I got my stuff set up and realized I'd left the lab I was almost finished with at home. Grr. I had to plug my ears when I needed to think, it was so freaking loud in there. Two exercises into the final lab was as far as I got before it was time for my Windows Server class. I was done with that lab in 15 minutes but the instructor didn't have copies of the final to hand out until half an hour past the end of his lecture. We were all finished and chatting for a while before he came back with our final.
Back to router lab only to find it was full. A team with one of my classmates doing the case study (6 workstations) was just finishing. It took them 45 minutes to finally finish documenting things and unhook the equipment. I was sitting right next to them waiting the whole time. The lab instructor kept telling them to free up the equipment and they kept saying, "OK..OK.." When they finally did, I said "Yay!" and my classmate was shocked. She asked if I'd been waiting for them the whole time. I said, "Yes," and she apologized. The lab instructor told her that was why he kept telling them to free up the equipment. People get a bit frazzled this time of the quarter. I understood! I told them patience was a virtue. The lab instructor said patience was fine, but when 10:00 came, he was kicking everyone out.
Thankfully, the kid's dad had picked him up so I only had the loud guy distracting me. While I was waiting, he and his lab partner were stuck so I had him explain his setup to me. That guy needs to brush his teeth once in a while. They were brown and his breath was vile. He found one problem while explaining it. I said, "You're welcome!" and disengaged before I got queasy from his breath.
By the end of lab, I got 2/3 of the way through the final lab. I should finish that up tonight. Then all I have to do is the practical lab final and turn the case study in. Then it's flash card time to memorize the things that haven't stuck yet for the final.
Late to work again! See you my dears!
