Tech Woes

I got behind last week, while I was fighting off the insidious illness that had me flat on my back from 3:30 Friday afternoon to about 10:00 last night.

That means that I've been making today what the kids will be doing for their journals tomorrow.  Homework just got printed (fortunately, between our field trip and two short weeks, I had an excuse to make it a 2-week homework assignment).

I haven't been running this close since probably 2 years ago.  Lately, "behind" has meant "madly printing out next week's stuff Thursday evening so I can get it ready on Friday."  It's been a long time since "behind" meant "making tomorrow's journals."

But anyway.

My poor dying computer froze twice to the point of the mouse cursor not moving for five minutes twice today.  There was a POST-code-like beep (except I thought those only happened at boot-up) each time.

But that's not my main tech woe, other than it made it take way too long to get everything printed (I broke my no-school-stuff-after-8:00 rule SO hard today).

My tech woe is this, and pardon the second CAPSLOCK OF RAGE in two days.

FOR THE LOVE OF THE LORDS OF KOBOL (cough! Battlestar Galactica season 4 coming soon! cough!), I DON'T CARE IF IT'S THE PRINTER, THE PRINTER DRIVER, WRITING WITH SYMBOLS OR SOME COMBINATION OF THE THREE, OH-MY-FRAKKING-GOD WOULD YOU PLEASE PRINT THINGS CORRECTLY?!

Ahem.

In English:  When Writing With Symbols doesn't like a printer, it prints the first two lines on a page over each other.  Some mystical combination of font size changes, additional lines, and other random things sometimes help.

In all seriousness, I am now carefully weighing the various costs involved in between an iMac and Mac Pro.

iMac plusses:

* cheaper

* one piece

* purrrrty

iMac minuses:

* I would need an external DVD drive to run Writing with Symbols and Boardmaker concurrently ($$)

* I would have to buy a USB hub to connect my external hard drives PLUS the DVD drive ($)

* 2 core

* I'd have to upgrade the memory ($$)

* I'd probably upgrade the hard drive at purchase, 'cause it's harder to upgrade

Mac Pro pluses

* 8 core standard

* easy to upgrade (memory and/or hard drive space), so I can do it later myself and not pay the Apple premium

* multiple DVD drives

Mac Pro minuses

* more expensive

* I'd have to buy a monitor

      ** well, I wouldn't have to, but my measly little 15 incher would look pretty sad

At some point, I'll have to sit and do the math.  It may be that once I upgrade the iMac to the specs I'd want, the equivalent Mac Pro would be more or less the same price.

Here's hoping Sparky Jr. can hold on.

Now, about the epidemic in my class.

In my first year of teaching, we had this horrible flu bug that made the rounds among kids and adults alike for nearly a month.  Despite judicious application of hand washing, Clorox wipes, hand sanitizer, etc., we just couldn't get rid of it until we had spring break and were gone for a week.

I suspect we've got that going on again.

Superhero was back today, but he wasn't here for more than an hour and a half before his fever spiked back up -- to about 102! -- and we sent him home.  Elastigirl was sick with M's stomach flu yesterday, was here for a while, then went to the doctor.  Sleeping Beauty coughed the whole way home yesterday and was gone today.  The Boss was grumpy, and I suspect she's getting it.

Oh, and Bulldozer and Mr. Voice were both warm, but not enough to show as a fever.

Yet.

Meanwhile, I'm mostly better.  I had to take a nap after school today and by 1:30 or so I was tuckered...but that was a lot better than making it to 8:15 yesterday!