The other day I took the floppy drive out of the IBM at work and stuck it into my computer, the one with the dead floppy drive. I was trying to copy an olde Quicken from floppy to flash drive. Don't get me started on THAT!
Of course, in sliding the floppy drive out I found it doesn't QUITE clear the CPU fan. So I had to remove the fan.
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| No clearance! |
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| Now with a bit a spare room to slide! |
A silly little quarter of an inch, if that.
I put the IBM back together at work. It, of course, did not work. Dead as a doornail!!
I messed with it and messed with it and messed with. Several hours into the messing I happened to push on the battery a little, and the fan started up. OK, says I, I must have jarred the motherboard battery. Now we're good!
Oh, no, we are NOT good. It wasn't booting up. I pushed on the battery more, and sometimes it would fan up, as it were, and sometimes not. I plugged and unplugged it several times, and eventually it actually started to boot up. I even got to the login! Would not accept my password, though. I pulled out the network cable that I had just borrowed from an old printer I don't use. Blue crud all over the pins!
Yikes! I cleaned the network socket with water and baking soda (power off, of course!), dried it, and fired it up with a NEW cable. It now accepted the login and I was flying!
Or maybe not. When I shut down, it wouldn't restart. Or when it did, it did the F1/F2 thing. So, I took a look at the startup configuration. It looked ok, I hit save, and now it SEEMS to be running ok. We shall see, tomorrow!
We had a LOT of people in using the computer lab. Of course the lab printer started acting up, and it appears it needs a new fuser. I can't switch ALL the printers to the library printer, it would take FOREVER! So I just switched the flat-screen Macs, they are pretty easy to switch.
Tons of kids had problems using the computers, that sucks up a lot of time. One student was using Safari and it kept quitting every time he tried to Google something. I tried to take a look at it, but he was being so obnoxious I finally told him to go find himself another computer, and I left it for another day.
A parent came in wondering why their child had no textbooks. My bad, I ASSUMED they were using ESL textbooks, which I don't handle. Turns out they need regular textbooks.
Another parent came in inquiring about a report that their child had been hit by another child in the library. Well, I didn't see it, but it was apparently on my watch, so I feel bad about that.
There were a LOT of noisy and ill-behaved students running around. It's very hard to concentrate on technical problems with so much disruption. So much different than yesterday, a day that was extremely pleasant.
Well, we shall have to see how tomorrow goes!
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