20
I hadn't been told why, but the nighttime computer teacher at the
Business College was gone by the end of the Spring Quarter, Nineteen
Eighty-Five. An early champion of mine, he had gotten me my one
day per week computer room monitoring & tutoring job. His
initial attempt was to have the existing weekend monitor let go a
year earlier which, as it was the daytime computer teacher's protege,
didn't go over well and I was instead deemed as first runner-up if
the protege should leave at some point in the future. Four months
later, he transferred to the accredited big brother College to our
little Business College and after a few weeks of attending class at
that campus while coming to the old campus for his one day, he
decided to find something else to do during his Saturdays and I
inherited my first regular job since moving to Colorado.
Still, as there was that rivalry between the nighttime and daytime
computer teachers, I was viewed with a touch of suspicion by the
daytime teacher who also lead the computer department. While I did
all of my Saturday tasks well, such as performing the weekly
backups of the system onto various removable harddisk platters,
helping computer students with their projects, and guiding accounting
students through their one quarter of 'Computerized Accounting',
when the daytime computer teacher had a problem, it wasn't me he
called. Due to some mistake on his side, the daytime teacher had to
restore the system disk from backups and, as he wasn't as familiar
with the process, he called his protege for instructions on how to do
it. After three failed attempts following what his protege had told
him, he was becoming desperate and called me...
He had corrupted the system disk and for some reason the protege had
told him that the TI-990's software was backwards for restoring
from backup and the daytime teacher needed to specify the destination
system drive as the 'source' and the backup harddisk platters as the
'destination'. Following these instructions, the daytime teacher had
gone through all three official backups of the system disk and none
of them had restored the damaged data on the actual system disk.
When I came in and he told me this, a retired military man who
normally had a sharp confidence, he was shaken as he had gone
through and 'somehow' ruined all the backups. He was thinking I'd
have to go to the Pueblo, Colorado, branch and get a fresh system
backup from a sister school there.
I gave him a pleasant surprise that there was yet another backup
copy in the room; as his protege had NOT taught me how to backup
the system on his final day working for the school, I had to
figure it out for myself. To be extra safe, at that time, I
used a spare set of disk platters from a cabinet for practice before
using any of the official three backup disks. I checked the cabinet
and this test backup was still where I had left it and I recommended
we first try to restore from it before sorting out an emergency drive
to Pueblo. He agreed but then when I went to specify the destination
as the 'destination' and the practice backup disk as the 'source' he
pointed out that I didn't know what I was doing and had to do it
backwards like his protege had told him. While it was obvious to me
that was how the three official backups had been ruined, I instead
sold it as ''trying something different'' and ''let's see what
happens.''
The daytime computer teacher left the room in a huff as the disk
copying began, officially ''to get coffee'' he actually called the
Pueblo branch to let them know I'd be on my way. When he returned,
the copying process was done and system disk was now running fine.
The daytime teacher was stunned as his old protege had assured him
the source & destination prompts had been backwards. He
concluded that his protege had intentionally mislead him, but as he
no longer worked at the school, there was nothing that could be done
about it. As the protege had not spent his last day bringing me up
to speed on maintaining the system like
he had been supposed to nine months earlier, I
wouldn't be surprised if he had back stabbed the daytime teacher.
But given the daytime teacher's ego, it also seemed to me that he
could have been told something like restoring the system was the
same as backing it up and to just 'reverse the process' and the
daytime teacher over-thought it to mean the 'source' and
'destination' prompts on the computer were reversed. Either way, I
had now proven myself in the eyes of the daytime teacher and he no
longer saw me as the former nighttime teachers 'plant'.
A few weeks later, when the print-head of the TI-990 died, the
daytime teacher found the school could get a replacement, rebuilt
print-head from a company in Denver and I was tasked to make the
trip. As the school didn't have any formal relationship with the
company, it was a 'cashiers check only' transaction and the head master
& secretary nervously gave me the check in an envelope and had me
sign paperwork officially accepting ''the money'' and acknowledging
what it was supposed to be used for. I successfully kept a
straight face and they gave me the driving directions to Denver and
told me I could file for 'mileage' compensation along with my hours
at the end of the week. This was my first time driving to Denver
alone and the place was actually at the west side of the city so it
was unfamiliar territory to boot. Still, I succeeded in getting
there, handing over the cashier's check, receiving the print-head &
receipt and driving back. On the return trip, I had a sudden fear
that perhaps the reason the business had wanted a cashier's check
instead of billing for it was because the 'rebuilt' print-head wasn't
in working condition and when the school found out: Who would
they blame? But my fears were for naught as I plugged in the
replacement print-head at the school and it worked just fine.
It was at this time that the daytime teacher told me he was leaving
for a new job at the end of the summer quarter and, having seniority,
I would now be ''the head of the computer department'' as they had
never hired a replacement nighttime computer teacher. I took this as
a bit of humor until the start of the fall quarter and, sure
enough, the new
daytime computer teacher was coming to me to coordinate his hours and
lesson plans...!
Being in charge of myself at the Business College would be a
huge help by the end of the year.
No comments:
Post a Comment