Be Careful What You Wish For

The network is down again at school, and I was irritated this morning when I came into work. It had actually gone down about half an hour before my shift ended yesterday, but along with the internet being down, our phones were down, too. I figured it had something to do with our phone and internet provider, but we called them this morning and they said it was all on us. Well, on me. I purposely tried to stay away from any and all server stuff since I fixed it last Monday, but maybe I should’ve babied it a bit while it was recovering. Regardless, the internet was down for everyone, and it was my duty to fix it. Unfortunately, I didn’t. The internet was down. I couldn’t do any research. Reception is horrible in Charlo, so I had to go outside and pray to the reception gods for a little bit of 3G. Every time I found something to try on Google, I walked back to my office, tried it, and when it didn’t work, I walked back out, spent some time in the cold while waiting for Google to load, and then go back into my office once I found something else to try. This got old really quickly, so for the last part of the day, I just tried figuring it out on my own. I made progress, took a lot of notes, and I’m going to go back tomorrow to try a few more things that I couldn’t get to or didn’t even think about today.

All this reminds me of is being careful for what I wish for. I complained last week how work was slow and boring compared to the insanity of the week before. Oh how I wish I had a boring day today. Oh how I wish to respond to teacher’s telling me their internet isn’t working, and when I get there, I tell them that the ethernet cord isn’t plugged in. I wish all problems were that easy. Unfortunately, they’re not, and that sucks. The internet is down, and I don’t know if it’s a network card issue or a software issue or a specific server issue. I’m not sure if I could’ve done anything that could have done this, and I did, what that thing was. I don’t know if it was Windows Update again screwing around with our systems, or something in Group Policy, or if we were hacked or infected with a virus. I don’t know.

I’m tired of these issues, but I am the tech guy there, and I am making more money than I’ve ever made in my life, so I have to suck it up and deal with it. I don’t think I’m panicking or anything, but this is getting ridiculous. I just renewed my Lynda.com subscription because I knew I didn’t know enough and I wanted to learn more and be better. I literally just had a day to even try to learn more before it all went to hell again. When I’m at work, though, I’m calmer about it because my mind is focused on a singular problem and doing all I can to find that solution. It’s only when I come home when all that frustration comes out. It did help me out today as I worked out harder than I have so far in Insanity Max: 30. Before when it took me at most around 10-11 minutes before I maxed out on any particular workout, I lasted over 17 minutes today. I needed an outlet to let loose and working out was it.

There’s no point to freaking out when I’m the only tech guy at the school, and it’s my job to fix any and all problems that come up. I love this job, and I’m getting paid handsomely for it, and I don’t want to get fired. That’s motivation enough. And I love solving problems. Here’s to tomorrow’s entry being about how I fixed everything.