If you haven’t played the game, you shouldn’t read this. I might spoil something for you. Skip down to the part where I complain about my job.
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So I played Halo 3. I beat it on Heroic in a few days and couldn’t help thinking, like Halo 2, that this game was too short. The levels are gigantic and gorgeous, but it was over so quickly. I felt a little let down. It was probably my fault since I’d been placing all of my hopes and dreams on the release of Halo 3. I’ve been having a rough couple of months and I was looking to Halo to be the greatest thing ever. Don’t think that I’m saying Halo 3 isn’t a great game, because it is. But I was looking for a final titanic battle where I ran up a hill with hundreds of Marines into waves and waves of Covenant loyalist. I love the game, I just wanted a ridiculously giant battle.
There are lots and lots of fun added things like Achievements and skulls and terminals. Campaign scoring makes playing through the campaign again and again more interesting. I haven’t really played on live yet and multi-player has just been between friends but with the added dimension on equipment it should go the distance as far as endless playability.
I love the game, I just wish I had more time to play it.
[Here's the part about my job]
Let’s talk about my job for a second. I guess I still like what I do, but I work in a ridiculous situation. We just let another of our ICT teachers go, the second in a month. And so I’ve been dealing with that for the last few weeks. I haven’t really talked about how stupid our network situation is. I work in a place with no DHCP. Think about that for a second. This is a school, a professional organization, not a junior high computer club. We don’t have DHCP. We don’t have DNS, not a local one anyway. Basically if I’m in the computer lab on the 5th floor, I can’t reach the computer at my desk on the 1rst floor by name. I can’t reach any computer by name. Yes, I have to know the IP address. I don’t have a domain … or a server of any kind! Our network is about 150 computers with static IP addresses that sometimes are connected to the Internet.
In this place, I am supposed to instruct kids in the art of computers.
Now, beginning in May I tried to sensitively resolve some of these issues by suggesting solid solutions to our current problems. I pretty much handed them a design for a robust network. They decided not to listen. When we turned up for classes in August it was a little late to talk about network design. When I asked them where are the servers, the asked me “what servers?” When I asked them to set up a domain, they asked me “What is a domain and what does it do?” So I explained, and they said “What does it do? Can you make a list of what it does?” It does like 10,000 things!! I can’t make a list of everything a domain server does!! As you can tell, I’m a little frustrated. My plan now is to stop asking. If they want a worthless network, I suppose they can have it. I’m just going to try and teach what I can, while I develop (not just me, but the other ICT and Math teachers that can help me) the systems without them. Tim and I have already installed Win Server 2003 as a domain controller and we’ll work out the Group Policy and Active Directory stuff as we get time. It seems impossible that in this situation I’m supposed to be developing a central database and a web server. Those things aren’t very useful without a network.
Whew! Well there’s a load off my chest. Anyway, I’m going to try and just be a teacher for a while and see if I can’t get away with working less hours. I kinda’ doubt it.
