What a week

 But at least today there's no Jack Donaghey to say "But it's only Wednesday!"

Today was very long and while it wasn't exactly *unpleasant,* things took a lot longer than they ought to have.

First, I came in and thought, "Now that they've updated the smartboard software, it would behoove me to test out the combo of smartboard, my little camera/microphone, and Zoom recording. 

So I went down to that room. Couldn't get the projector to go on, meaning the smart board won't activate. Okay, first thing - look at the batteries in the remote.

Turns out, whoever changed them last* put one of them in upside down. My stomach dropped because sometimes that mistake fries the electronics in a thing. (Sometimes it just drains the batteries, which is what seems to have happened here).

(*Definitely not me, this projector is new since the last time I used the room)

So okay. Find new batteries. Except the AA, who usually keeps the battery stash, was out. Did I have any in my lab? As it turns out, I had exactly the right number of the right size left....so I returned, said a little prayer, swapped them out.

That worked.

Then, I had to go through the morass of "YOUR SMARTBOARD SOFTWARE HAS EXPIRED, UPGRADE NOW" (that's if you want all the bells and whistles) and finally get the whole thing open. Then open Zoom. Then fight with the camera/microphone to get it positioned - I can share screen so that people can see what I am writing, but if they want to hear me, too, I have to have the microphone somewhere.

The first try, no audio.

So I got the tech guys in. They changed SOMETHING but as is the habit of tech guys everywhere, they did it FAST and didn't show me what it was so if it goes wrong again I'm helpless. (I do not like that. I need to be shown how to fix things myself).

At any rate: I finally got it to work for as long as it will recognize the little microphone I have. 

 It may be a moot point - this is a small class and everyone can come and distance, and maybe everyone can be there. If we have to "abandon campus" (well, if the students do: faculty will most likely be permitted to stay), I can do a test run of a brief recording every time. (Heck, I even could the first day - I am the first class in there). 

 Then I had to set up the link between my intro class and the textbook-publisher's website because we're expected to do homework through them (though now, I wonder: why do we HAVE to? Because we're told, but I wonder how much trouble I'd be in with just my own homebrew homeworks....)

 Couldn't get it to "pair." Deleted the thing, re did it. Nothing. Tried everything I knew how. Finally I called the publisher and spent nearly an hour on the phone with a rep, her final conclusion was "Well, that's a problem. I will need to send it along to our coders" and so I don't know if it will ever work or not. If it doesn't, eh, I can write my own homeworks and do them through BlackBoard though I know the students will be angry about buying the code - maybe they can get refunds.

 There were other stupidities: I got "schooled" on how I pronounced something by someone that is, well, my charitable interpretation is this is someone who is insecure and who "medicates" that by making sure they feel smarter than everyone else. Whatever. I will admit the correction stung because it was very long and pedantic and the person made sure to repeat the "correct" pronunciation to me over and over again, like I was six. (It was a word I had only ever read, so whatever).

Later on, I brought the word up with someone who is even more of an expert in the field than this person is, and she was like "Uhhhh....the way you are saying it is a secondary pronunciation and actually the one many people in my field prefer" so whatever, but someone ELSE (someone on ITFF) noted "it's rude to correct an adult's pronunciation" and yeah, I kind of think she's right (though I have, on occasion, when a student was practicing a talk they were going to give somewhere for me, and they hit a hard scientific name - white-tailed deer's genus name, Odocoileus,  can be hard the first few times - and if they look at me and flail, I'll quietly give the correct pronunciation. That seems different to me, though, because I get the sense they are asking "help, how do I do this"

 And then finally, since we are in the Sod's Law Alternate Universe: apparently a number of faculty on my campus were mistakenly given parking tickets through the new "self-serve*" system that covers things like payroll and the like, and some of the tickets were real but some were an error (???) and apparently the university president just forgave all of them because it's too hard to track down which ones were wrong but....yeah....

Stuff just keeps going wrong and failing and it is very unsettling because I tend to see patterns where there might not be any. But also it's exhausting to spend HOURS on things like the whole BlackBoard/McGraw-Hill not talking to each other thing.

(*"Easy? Oh, easy for Leonardo!" This is "self service" but it is NOT intuitive, and of course in the middle of a freaking pandemic when you can't simply ask someone into your office to walk you through it is the WORST time to roll out a new system, but apparently we were already committed. At least I managed to figure out how to get my class rosters, everything else can come later)

At least my Mochi-cat came today, after apparently taking a roundabout trip (first to Dallas, then to OKC, and finally split the difference and got to me....I am guessing it was being shipped via Amazon's own homebrew parcel service, which doesn't exist here - I have seen the Amazon vans in my mom's neighborhood but we are too rural for that so USPS brings everything. 

On the other hand - the Oxo measuring cup I ordered a couple weeks ago is still reported to be in San Marcos, though I doubt it was actually ever sent. I did get a refund for that, and was able to get a set of cups for not much more money at the local place, so that's neither here nor there. 

At least I got my BlackBoard pages MOSTLY set up for when they "go live" Monday morning - they become available a week before classes start. I am still not sure how classes are going to go and am not in love with the idea of having janitorial, mask-police, and other duties added to my already groaning load of mental tasks, but "it is what it is"

As I've been saying before: if this were the NICE fairy-tale universe, we'd all get some good reward at the end of this but I don't see that happening. I just hope ALL the disruption of everything is not for too much longer.