And We’re Back (and Forth…)

Wow, I don’t even want to look at the traffic stats for the past two weeks.  Like many other highly paid bloggers out there, I can’t access WordPress from work because of Barracuda (see post on the sentient jerk that is our school’s spam blocker.)  That put me in a bind these past few as we’ve been trying to relocate the corporate headquarters to the penthouse suite of a building not to far from the previous chapel perilous.  I’ll highlight some of the annoyances:

1. We left HQ1.0 Alpha for HQ1.5 Beta (not ready to commit to a full 2.0) on the last day of May and I helped the roommate get out just before the noon deadline while we were out pretty much in full the day before.  Anyway, he took the router and he had been paying the Time Warner bill so I needed to find a new service.  AT&T U-Verse is cheaper, provides more, and gave me a decent Internet speed increase without holding me over the fire.

2. AT&T Screws ForthandBack over.  So I schedule everything over the Internet and it is great.  No need to talk to a soul.  I just put what I wanted and picked a date and time for an appointment.  Unfortunately, I was still being held hostage by my school district in end of the school meetings so Back was here when they showed up to install it.  They walked out though because the building wasn’t compatible.  They said it was the wiring or some sort.  I really only care because I then had to schedule Time Warner.

3. Time Warner is much busier though so, while AT&T was nice and snappy getting here despite failing, they didn’t have any openings until just yesterday.

4. Once Time Warner got here I was considerably less stressed because I had finished submitting my grades but I was significantly withdrawn from the net.  The setup was nice and snappy BUT… The router was not recognizing the DHCP information from modem. After trouble shooting that for hours, text msging FarmacyMan, and watching DeathProof (Grindhouse), I went to sleep.

5.  This morning I figured it out.  The guys at Linksys were too lazy to bundle a Apple OS version of their setup wizard on their CD.  Now this is the fourth (Forth) Linksys router I’ve bought and it has never made me run the setup wizard.  This one though is brand new and doesn’t look like the old ones, which admittedly I miss.  I assumed that the WRT54G2 was just the same router repackaged so there wouldn’t be these problems.  If you’re having similar Linksys/Apple related problems see this help page. I could rant but I won’t.  I just don’t think it is that difficult to package an app that appears to be only 8 MBs.

So now it all works and this has been my frustration (not including Back’s aforementioned going to 3 Targets to find a specific table comment).  We have a home with a net and everything is looking up.

~Forth

Sidenote: I wanted to buy the WRT54GL but that isn’t sold in brick and mortar stores around here so I settled due to time constraints.  FarmacyMan was looking into it because it lets you replace its interface and OS with a faster 3rd party app.  

When your school’s technology becomes sentient…

I am a teacher. There I’ve said it. Now everyone who didn’t know how I make my money can sleep easy.

I only bring it up because my class website was recently blocked by the school over spring break. The state of technology integration in the school is not exactly archaic but it is nowhere near cutting edge. My class website was not blocked because of the content on it but because it is on a server that has been deemed dangerous by the school’s Barracuda security system. Here’s the kicker though, the interim technology coordinator neither updated nor changed anything in the system. Sometime over spring break it decided my site was a threat.

You may be thinking well why do I have it hosted on a dangerous server? Why don’t I just host it on the school’s server? Addressing the questions in opposite order: I think the school system is a ferret or possibly gerbil on a spinning wheel. I’m not sure who feeds him but I know he’s here somewhere. I can’t upload anything to it without being on a school computer (school computer’s are notoriously crap and not without good reason) and I have to use Microsoft’s FrontPage. It isn’t a good or recent program nor is it an effecient way of updating my site since I can’t touch it from out of the building.

As for the first question, I have iWeb and my site is hosted by .Mac. Hardly a malicious server. iWeb is super easy to use, much like creating a PowerPoint. Yes, I know it isn’t as great a CMS as WordPress or many of the other tools but this one I have and it is good enough for a school website.

The interim technology director then tells me that he doesn’t have the authority to change what the computer did ON ITS OWN because of company policy that teacher websites aren’t hosted outside of the building… I respect the man for the tough position he’s in but I feel like this is The Terminator or Resident Evil. Barracuda has become sentient and it is updating itself without permission. It is probably altering the company policy .docs archived on its internal servers to prevent the dissemination of information. Much like a rebelling nation in an authoritarian country, our communication is slowly being cut off. Soon the doors won’t open and my students will see Orwellian images on the morning announcements and perhaps even HAL will make a disembodied appearance. I can’t tell anymore.

One thing I do know is that if the school forces me to host my site on the server through the archaic FrontPage program my site will read: “Welcome to Mr. Forth’s Classroom. On the right is a list of interesting links that Barracuda has probably blocked. Look them up at home. On the left is a link to a syllabus I typed up three years ago but will not be updating until the front office notices. I will change the ‘updated on’ date once a year during faculty in-service. Please direct all questions elsewhere.”

~Forth