Work has kept me super busy lately.

This week was the first week I actually had classes in the computer lab. Whoa. Of course, I spent all this week going over the rules, expectations, and procedures with students. Last year, I didn’t really do that because I was hired after school had already started. The rules were already in place. I am soooo sick of rattling off my rules. I am so sick of saying the same thing over and over. Boorrrring.

The kids all really like the new lab setup though and the ocean theme I have going on. I bought a betta fish for the lab. I got another female (girl power) and my mom helped me pick her out. She was kind of unusual. Most female betta fish are very light in color. All the ones I have ever seen anyway. This one is a really deep purple/blue/black mix. She’s very pretty. I named her Techie (like…Technology…). The kids LOVE her. I figured they would. However, each time I had a class and introduced Techie, it started a huge chain reaction of kids who either had a fish, knew someone who had a fish, saw Finding Nemo (there’s a tiny Squirt the turtle in Techie’s tank), or other miscellaneous fish stories. I had to nip those in the bud. If I let them keep talking about fish, we’d never get anything else done. A girl had a betta fish that almost jumped into her orange juice one time though….

In between classes I spent this week helping sort out the Scantron machine and the GMADE software. We finally got a computer setup so I could install the software on that computer so it wouldn’t tie up mine in the lab. Luckily, I’m not going to end up being the one who has to scan all those 460 something tests. Yay! I also spent a lot of time working on the computers. I didn’t have to do anything too major this week. I mostly had to reset data locations on some of our software/programs. There are a lot of things that the technician needs to come fix. On our new work order system we use to place work orders, it gives us a graph of all the total number of work orders in the district. My school has the most with 60 something. The second highest number is like 20 something. It’s ridiculous. I don’t know why anyone else isn’t having as much trouble with their new computers as I am. *rolls her eyes* I mean, there are just certain things I can’t do. Whatever.

I had a lab attendant meeting on Friday. We got some goodies: a Kid Pix book with a cd-rom that has some pretty cool activities/lessons to do with kids, a new flash drive (a 2 GB one this time), and a cd with all of our lab manuals on it. We can throw away the huge binders now that just sit around and collect dust and take up space. Yay! My friend who works in the lab at another local school asked the Technology Resource Trainer if she thinks they’ll ever hire certified teachers to work in the labs. She said no, that they did that several years ago and had to go back to hiring classified assistants to do it because of the lack of money. Lame.

My dad’s going to race tonight. I don’t think I mentioned this before, but my dad does have a race car. He’s raced a few times each year for the past 5 years or so. I think he wants to start doing it more regularly though. Last time he did okay, his car just didn’t go very fast. He got a cam or something though that’s supposed to make him go faster now though. My camera doesn’t take good pictures at the track. The lighting is bad and the cars are moving of course, so it’s hard to get a picture.

I had to get a new aquarium for Freebie. His tank’s filter sort of died. I don’t know what happened exactly, but green algae started invading. So, I just went and got him a 10 gallon tank like Chunk’s. He seems to be waaay happier now. I planted several plant bulbs in there. I hope they grow. The one in Dazzle’s tank has grown, and she really likes it.

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