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As more students trickled from the Business College to the associated
accredited College, the flow of students on Saturdays to catch-up on
classwork also dwindled. After the spring quarter of Nineteen
Eighty-Six, the weekend office staff decided they weren't really
needed any more and gave me the spare set of keys and showed me how
to open the doors, turn off the alarm system and turn on the lights
for Saturdays, and the opposite routine for the end of the day eight
hours later. From June onward it was just me as the only paid
presence at the school on Saturdays, I was even more my own boss.
When I had started as the Computer Monitor & Tutor I had a high
of six students filter into the computer room during the day who
needed to catch-up and would sometimes ask for help. The majority of
my time, after performing morning backups, I would sit at the
teacher's desk and use his control terminal to explore the TI-990
computer system until I had learned every corner I could, then see
what types of things I could code with it. By this Spring, I had
exhausted that line of interest and was back to either writing code
into notebooks for when I'd get back home to my new IBM PC clone, or
combing through printouts of recent PC code in search of logic bugs
and chances for improvement. By this summer quarter, I'd be lucky if
I had two students come in during the course of the day needing to
use the computer, and rarely needing my help at all.
When there were other staff members on site, I would take a quick
break to pickup some mid-day junk food but as the only one
I now had to get everything on the way to the College to keep me busy
for the next eight hours. When the only one there, I'd roam the
single floor building and peek into classrooms I had once had
classes in and remember a brief highlight or two. By the end of the
summer quarter, I started to bring in my stories to proof read &
edit in the computer room as there wasn't enough people around to
notice it wasn't computer related.
Then one Saturday in August I opened the building and walked to the
office in my thirty second time period to type in the alarm code to
disarm it and... It didn't work. I tried
again, no luck and the alarm went off. What
do you do? I opened up the closet where the main
alarm system was stored, and found a company contact number
emblazoned on the box and called, letting them know of the problem
and it being a false alarm. They said they'd send someone out to
disable the alarm and, while it blared, I went to the computer
room to get the morning backups started, then returned to the office
to wait. I decided to call the Headmaster's phone number and let him
know, but was only able to leave a message on his answering machine.
His was the only number I had to call if there was a problem.
About a half hour later the alarm company rep showed up and asked me
what had happened, I told him and he checked the system and couldn't
figure out why the alarm code hadn't worked. As he opened-up the
guts of the system two police officers arrived and wanted to know
what was going on, I told them and they asked for my Employee
Identification to prove that I worked here. The school had never
issued one so we brainstormed how I could prove I had a right to be
there. We came up with me showing them I had the keys that could
lock the door and unlock it again as well as the classrooms. They
felt that was good enough as the alarm company rep was there as well
and finally got the alarm stopped after about an hour of it sounding
continuously. The rep had it reset to its initial state and I needed
to type in the code I wanted for it to be ready for rearming at the
end of the day, I used the only code I had ever been told and once
the rep left, I called the Headmaster's phone number again and left a
message that the problem was resolved and the code reset. That was
my only excitement of the day and was otherwise alone as no students
showed up.
The following Monday I was called by the Headmaster to come back to
the school after I finished with my grocery store hours. When I
arrived he explained to me that he had decided to change the alarm
code the previous Friday evening and had forgotten that I needed to
know it. He had once again reset the code and he told me what it now
was... And he then disappeared a few of days later. After
the first days passed, the office staff called the out-of-state owner
of the Business College about it and they sent someone to temporarily
head the place. From that out of state office, they were able to
provide the home address of the Headmaster and some of the office
staff went there to find no answer at the door. Only when the
temporary guy arrived were the police contacted and a 'wellness
check' performed, with the police breaking down the door of the
Headmaster's house to find that he had been on a full drunk bender
for the week and the out-of-state owner decided to permanently
replace him by September.
My Saturdays were back to being what they were. By this point the
Business College had discontinued daytime computer classes after
discontinuing the nighttime ones the year prior. Now the only use
for the TI-990 was for the 'Computerized Accounting' courses
still held and given that I'd coded-up a great new interface for that
the previous winter, there was no need for those students to come in
on Saturdays and catch-up. I started to bring in my Dungeons &
Dragons books and formulate my next games for the Friday evening
group. I had continued to try and recapture the great D&D
feeling from my final high school year once I had moved to Colorado
and my most recent attempt was a Friday evening group, the one
evening I didn't
have classes to be at. I had rounded-up about four people to
play, but it was limping along and soon one of the four left...
Even though there were no students coming into the school to use the
computer, some still arrived to drop-off necessary paperwork at the
office or to pick up blank forms. But this just made for brief
greetings as they were soon gone, if I heard them at all while in the
computer room. I was called in by the new Headmistress of the school
the Monday after one Fall weekend and when I arrived I was chewed-out
because a keyboard in one of the rooms at the far end of the building
had been broken. At my blank expression the Headmistress
explained that it must have happened during Saturday as those using
the room hadn't noticed it broken before the weekend and what did
I know about it? Nothing. She felt I should be
held responsible for it but I pointed out that, while I did roam the
building a couple of times during my Saturdays, that my assigned
place was the computer room and my job to monitor it,
not the other rooms. As the broken keyboard was at the other end of
the building I didn't see what I could have done about it. This lead
to some grumpy considerations during the week and then I was told
that I was to now check the halls first thing Saturday morning to
make sure all the other doors were closed & locked. I agreed.
By the end of the fall quarter, they decided to skip having
'Computerized Accounting' for the coming winter quarter and I decided
I wasn't really needed anymore. Over the course of the year, despite
getting my headaches under control, I had continued to lose more
weight and finally even my stamina was giving out; I could use
another true day off just to rest-up for my night classes and
effectively full-time grocery store job. I went to the Headmistress
to let her know that I'd be leaving with the end of the year, that
I'd spend my last weekend ensuring the system could run fine without
me and recommended that they have one of the accredited college
computer monitors come by from time to time to perform backups and be
on call if other problems arose. But if needed, I'd always be happy
to come in if a problem came up and they couldn't get someone else.
She accepted this and, frankly, I doubt she had seen much reason for
having the campus open on the weekends at all once she had taken
over. After my last weekend, I turned in my keys the following
Monday and took one last walk through the building, partially filled
with its daytime students, and reflected on my having started here as
a student three years earlier, and this being my first regular job in
Colorado since I had moved here. Where once I thought I had no
chance of a post high school degree, this College had told me
otherwise and provided me a glimpse of my future.
I left, never to hear from them again and never returning on my
own.
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