So what I set out to do at first was craft and mold BHS's web page into a thing of beauty- a fountain of information that would let visitors see the best of what BHS has to offer while also be a community building part of our school by providing information for students and letting students and teachers define our web page. That however never actually happened instead it's still kinda lame and the webserver is constantly crashing.
Despite failure with the web page-I did manage to do some pretty cool stuff.
What I worked on by far the most-DTP. DTP however proved eventually quite detrimental to my sanity had to be what . DTP is short for the Desktop Publishing Center. DTP is where all of the school's wonderful publications; The Yearbook, The Ujaama, The LitMag and of course The Jacket (which is of by far the best of the four) are produced. The thing about DTP is that it has quite a few down sides:
- It smells pretty bad.
- It's really dirty(see #1).
- There are absolutely no windows!
- There are typically 20-40 people (sometimes more) in there during 8th period working on any of the afore mentioned publications.
- Without any windows and 40+ bodies not to mention several computers that generate heat it gets oppressively hot.
- It's a kitchen-that's right DTP is a Kitchen there are stoves and ovens and sinks in there because when the B-Building was built the room that DTP now occupies was a home-ec room.
- If those factors weren't enough to make the place at least slightly unpleasant-the fact that the computers constantly die-by die I mean Hard Drive crashes, network card problems, Green Blurry monitors, and anything else that you can possibly imagine-this is the worst part since the machines are constantly dying they are constantly needing to be fixed (that's why I've spent a lot of time there).
Brace yourself now -because this is the absolute highlight of my project. Right now you are sitting in the G-Building browsing documents that are housed on a server in the B-Building(that's the ugly white thing that you can see if you look out the windows on the east side of this room). Now you would not be able to do this-this being communicating with the B-Building- had it not been for Aaron Glimme and an idea that was too crazy not to try.
Up until a few months ago the computer network in the B was not connected to the computer network in the G. Further more the computer network in the G was not working correctly. So you say, why do the G and the B Buildings need to be connected it's not so bad having two separate networks-ah but the thing is that the school's internet connection comes into the B-Building, and internet hungry phreaks like Ms. Marantz (my beloved BEST mentor) wouldn't leave good enough alone-they needed internet access.
So Glimme devised a plan to take wire up to the roof of the G and then string it across to the roof of the B and then take it down to the first floor and into DTP and from there hook the G-Building up to the existing network. Like I said before too crazy not to try.
So we (Gabe, Glimme, Marantz and myself) came in on a Saturday-well really a Friday but this pion tis that there was no school-and we were able to do most of the work then. Glimme and I then finished up the job on the next Monday. Here is how I described the event in a BEST journal entry-
Wired the G-Building today, it was extremely rewarding when we hooked that wire up to the hub in the B-Building and we went over to fish (a computer in DTP) and it actually worked. I couldn't believe it 500ft of cable and it worked. Glimme and I had been so worried that it wouldn't because when dealing with computers far too often one does everything right following directions to the Tee but for some random, unknown and always extremely frustrating reason the damned thing won't work. After we got the network in Building G to work I said, "woo-ho, we're winners." and Aaron turned and said "Yes, we win, but now we get to find out if we really lose." referring of course to our forthcoming attempt to connect the 2 buildings. And thank god it did work because after giving up a Saturday, and climbing into the Asbestos filled ceiling of the B-Building for the better part of 3 hours it would have surely been a disappointment not to have it work, but since it does, work I'll not talk about that anymore.
It wound up all tolled being about a 2-3 week thing-fixing the network in the G-Building, Connecting the 2 buildings and then setting up all the computers in the G so that they could be on the internet
My other accomplishments aren't so noteworthy. I've done several odd and end things. I helped for the staff development for technology. I've fixed computers and installed software all over the school. And most of all helped people, giving out little tidbits of advice here and there answering questions like "How do I print this?" "What's a DNS entry?" "How to I save my file onto a floppy?" etc. I also eventually managed to learn HTML (as you can see here). HTML-stand for Hyper Text Mark-up Language and it's used for making webpages (like this one).
Well that about does it for the tangible accomplishments in my project.