Thursday, March 29, 2012

Slice of Life # 29 - Biggest Loser

Those who read my post about figuring out the statement, "Just put it in a cloud" or anyone figuring out technology in general will appreciate this story...

A few days before spring break I get a note from our tech person, directly to me, saying that there is a new guideline and that everyone's "P-Drive," our network storage, should be less than 2 GB. It's embarrasing, I didn't even know for sure what GB stood for at that moment. I could have guessed, but have been telling the story saying the letters "G" and "B". Well...I was at 19 GB!!! Included in his note is that he has let the librarian at my home school know so she can help me if I need it.

To which I replied, I'm sure our dear librarian has better things to do than sit and watch me delete and transfer files! And that I'll get on it. I'm thinking to myself they could have let me know a few GB's ago, but whatever. I decided now I really gotta figure out this cloud thing and I just heard about "dropbox," I guess it's a file cabinet in a cloud and now in someone else's post I read about "LiveBinders" both are free - I think. But just as a back-up I decided to go ahead and get one of those external hard drives. Not excited that this will now be a spring break project - Boo!

O.K...Then, the day before spring an email goes to "All Staff" from our tech guy, declaring the new 2 GB guidelines and attached is a picture of how much EVERYONE has saved in our "P Drives" and if you're over 2 GB you have to take care of it by May or it will be deleted. Wait for it...there's a BIG RED ARROW pointing to the GB column and guess who is at the top - ME, at 19 GB and the next person with something like 6 GB. GREAT! How embarrassing!

I "Replied All," to the whole staff and here is the email dialogue that resulted - Too funny!


Nice - way to call me out, being first on the list and all!!! I'm working on it, I'm working on it! FYI I have lots of videos for the district. I did just buy an external hard drive and I'm saving things to a cloud with Drop Box! Oh brother!

Have a great spring break everyone!

Jen

(From the gifted resource teacher) Shouldn't there be some allowances for seniority or the gifted teachers?!?

(From the P.E. teachers) We are willing to sell some of our GBs for a fair asking price...

So is this the black market for GBs. Hey I might get in on the bidding for that, but looking at the data I will have to hit up some other less than 1%ers - Anyone, anyone? (Ha Ha) I don't think (our tech guy) will go for that :(

Jen

(From our Tech guy) Sorry Jen, didn't think about that!

Yeah - big red arrow right to me! AND leave it to (another teacher) to be right at 2 GB! O.K. - I'm not bitter or anything... ;)

Jen

(From our sweet librarian) Jen, let me know if I can help.
Consider it an honor to have been number one out of the entire building.  :) 

(Again - sweet librarian) That's a positive way to look at it!

Here's another way of thinking, Jen, though the district wouldn't ever acknowledge this.  Add up all the schools + all the teachers + all the students you have worked with directly and indirectly as a literacy coach + all the meetings you've attended + all the personal hours you've spent in the past few years reading professional books, articles, reports, and journals,etc.  Divide your GB's by that number... I bet your number would look much better then!!!!

OR NEW BIGGEST LOSER CONTEST! Jen B, Jessica, Dan, Sarah, Jim, Dawn and I compete to see who can reduce space on our P: drives the quickest!  (Our tech guys) can be our coach. "Delete, delete, copy, move!  Come on, give me four more deletes before you add any more pictures!"  "Do you really need that document?  Can't you create one with less bytes?"


I guess we were getting a little punchy right before spring break and needed a little email banter.

Good news: I'm at 0 GB. I think I won at least one of the BIGGEST LOSER contests.

Bad news:  It's all on and external hard drive and my beautiful files kind of got messed up a bit. So more organization required and still have to figure out the drop box thing, but I can tell you...THAT won't be happening over spring break!!!




                             
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13 comments:

  1. It is 4:25 AM. I wish I was sleeping but have been up since 3:00 unable to do so. Your post made me forget lack of sleep and just laugh. I had a clear vision of this whole thing going down. How far we have gotten into the geek world that you can write about Gigabytes, clouds, and external hard drives and everyone knows what you are talking about! Sounds like the staff at your school has a great sense of humor and you do too.

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  2. I got up early to finish some work and read blog posts - yours put a BIG smile on my face....I too have way too many GBs at school and at home! I might do beter with this "loser" contest than with ones involving the gym and scales!

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  3. I love it!

    I'm often frustrated by this. We keep getting told "use technology, make videos..." And yet our drive space is SOOO small.

    "put it on a flash drive" Yeah, so what happens when I LOSE that flash drive? Isn't having it on the network drive supposed to help with that? Who's going to back up my flash drive?

    *sighs* *Chuckles*

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    1. You're right! I probably will lose it or I'll just keep collecting flashdrives and I won't know what's what. Uggh!

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  4. Fortunately you are the biggest loser. Unfortunately your files are not in the shape you want them to be in. Fortunately I don't have to figure out this tech stuff. Unfortunately I don't have a tech person around to help me when I need it. Hope it was a great break with no glitches in technology for you.

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    1. I love the format of your post! I do feel very lucky to have a tech guy. As I wrote it, I felt like saying, "I gotta guy...." No glitches - rest of break will be low tech. :)

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  5. Looks like you have a fun staff to work with. ;) I can relate, last summer the district office went ahead and just deleted some of my files because I was over on space. I wasn't even given the chance to copy them or move them! I was a wee bit angry. Now I store almost everything on the district drives rather than my personal drives since they rarely shrink those in size.

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  6. Yikes! This would be me too. But at least you have a sense of humor, right?

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  7. I couldn't help but giggle with you. I tend to be a saver and am in the process of moving everything to Dropbox and Diigo. It's a pretty slow process. Good luck and congrats on your biggest loser win.

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  8. So funny, I wouldn't know where to begin. Love your sense of humor in the situation and how the staff rallied around you!

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  9. Being the biggest loser is a good thing here! So great that you can laugh at yourself because all our tech friends think the rest of us have the same understandings about the tech world they do -- not true!!
    Love the back and forth email dialogue. Thanks so much for the chuckle!
    Have a great spring break!

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  10. Haha! I love the story, and the dialogue made it that much more engaging. Sounds like you work with some great people! Congrats on the Biggest Loser Win and good luck with Drop Box! :)

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  11. I love the back and forth of the email. Sounds like everyone has a good sense of humor about the whole thing. :) Congratulations on getting down to 0 GB. Happy Spring Break!

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