Sidney, Nebraska

So I’m blogging this on one of our FUT laptops after getting the wireless lab up and running at the Sidney Public Library.

For all you trainers out there, get this: I come upon this FUT install realizing that I have to set up the Cisco wireless network for the laptops. I’ve never done this before. So I come into the room and start setting everything up, all the while thinking “geez, I hope there are instructions for the wireless stuff” and also “how come there are two separate labs here, Neptune and Denali?” Anyway, I am assuming the two separate labs is so we have all the wireless stuff and…oh who knows. That mystery is never solved and doesn’t need to be (although they were unlocked which we all know is disconcerting considering what just happened with the theft in New Jersey, but I don’t think the last trainers had a chance to lock these).

Anywho, I find some simple instructions, I get into the router, I set up the network and I put in all the wireless cards. Viola! Done. I felt pretty damn good about myself. But what’s this? No connection! What the hell? So I troubleshoot a few things, while quickly realizing that for some reason my brain is turned off. Eventually I call Kent, the networking God. Here’s where the frustrating part comes in.

Problem #1: No cell phone range, no cordless phone, no phone drops in the room, too far away to use the long phone cord. I end up running from one end of the library to the other while troubleshooting with Kent.
Pride points: drop 2 points for the number of people watching my fat ass run back and forth.

Problem #2: Since my brain was turned off, I hadn’t thought to look for a link light coming from the Ethernet 1 port to their drop. No link light. Switch cable for our own. Now there is a link light.
Pride points: drop 10 more points for having to be reminded to check for the link light, send e-mail to Kent apologizing for being an idiot.

Problem #3: Despite link light, still not working. Can’t ping their network. Spent a good two hours working with Kent, running back and forth, calling him back, sending him the configuration. Still feeling like my brain was off.
Pride points: drop 1 point for occassionally forgetting what I just did on the computer when I was relaying it back to him. Argh.

Problem #4: After all of this, Kent suggests we check where the drop is going and whether we really are plugged into the network. The tech woman and I discover that on the switch side of things, there isn’t a link light and furthermore, that port has died. So we plug it into our switch and SUCCESS!
Pride points: drop all my remaining pride points for not thinking of this from the very beginning when I orginally forgot to look for the link light on the router side of things. Why didn’t I follow that up then? Argh.

So now that I have it all up and running and feel great about the connection and the set up of the lab, I went to check on my e-mails from Kris to see how I did on Ruth’s page and what went wrong.

My Pride points are now in the negative because it turns out I really fowled things up with her website and I still don’t understand the basics of html and tables and crap so Kris, aka Angel of All that is Blog, fixed it. I checked out Ruth’s page and he had COMPLETELY changed it. Because Kris and I are alike in the sense that once we get involved, we pretty much get engrossed in fixing a problem and lose ourselves in it, he basically went in and started from scratch fixing everything. I had been working on her comments and page for about 8 hours yesterday before I finally crashed, but not before sending out my SOS to KB.

So here’s my shout out to KB and my apologies to Ruth for not being better versed at all this yet.