It Just Works™

For the past few weeks, I’ve been learning about and setting up a piece of software called System Center Configuration Manager 2012 R2. How Microsoft chooses to name these things is beyond me, but most everyone on the internet chooses to refer to it by SCCM 2012, so that’s how I’ve come to refer to it. What it does, in a very uninformed (because I’m still learning it) and simplistic way, is help me deploy software across all my Windows machines, including a way to deploy Windows 8.1 sometime in the future. It helps me build a library of approved software for teachers and students to download from either a piece of software I’ve pushed out to everyone or by following a link to a page on our server. It’s super cool, super useful, super complicated, and super fun. I’m still learning all the little intricacies of a very small piece of what it can do, but even just that makes me happy and satisfied.

One of my favorite teachers at work told me about a problem she was having with her SMART Board. These boards have touch capabilities, and she likes writing stuff with her pen on it and manipulating Windows and whatever else on it, which is cool and it should just work™, but it wasn’t working. I checked a few settings and tested out what was going on with it. Everything worked for me. She saw me doing everything she wanted to be doing, and she was frustrated. A running joke with everyone at school is that whatever problem staff members and teachers are having is automatically solved by me just showing up. Like my presence fixes everything. And that’s what seemed to be going on. I told her to try to recreate everything that led up to the issues as much as possible, but it seemed like stuff she wasn’t able to do yesterday was working with me just standing there. What made this whole situation really funny and really fun was that her class was super amazed that everything was working. They were all telling me that the computers like me and that it’s only working because I’m there, and the teacher also was joining in on the teasing, and I laughed because I didn’t know what I could do. I told her to call me as soon as it starts acting up again because I want to see what’s going on.

This has happened a bunch of times to me since I’ve been here. There are problems teachers seem to be having, but once I come to take a look, those problems disappear. It’s frustrating because I believe that they are having problems, but I can’t fix it because they don’t know how to explain themselves fully and correctly and because I can’t recreate the issues myself. Another teacher today has been complaining about his wifi the entire time I’ve been working here, but every time I go into his room and check it out, it works just fine. Today he wanted me to check out a few of his laptops because they were having issues. I tested them and they all seemed to be working fine. I took them into my office and did some routine maintenance to appease him and brought them back in time for a few of his students to test them out. They all worked just fine. They were all stumped, and all I could think was that maybe I do have some superpowers. Maybe I’m like Aquaman but with technology. Technoman. Digiman. Netman.

I feel more confident at work, and I look forward to coming to work every day, and I love what I do there and what I want to do, and I love joking around and getting to know all the students and teachers and staff members, and a big reason why I’m able to do all that I want to do is because work doesn’t tire me out. I don’t come home stressed and tired and irritated. I come home energized, and that energy is important because I need to write, work out, read, and write some more. I wouldn’t be able to do this if I was unhappy, and I’m the complete opposite of that. I’m lucky and grateful.