Let's back up some computers?
Good morning. This is me. We're up and have some time to spare. It's just after 5 am and we've taken our shower. We're going to need remember that we still need to do lunch and take our medicine. Rich was up for a few moments, but we're thinking that he went back to bed. His alarm clock has been going off at 5 am, but his mind just isn't there yet. Poor Rich :(We had a pretty good day yesterday even though there were a few meetings AND it was a Monday. Yeeks! No one wants meetings on a Monday. We had a staffing at 10 am, but then the one that was done on Friday was in part done over because the CSO person Kathy wasn't there. It was a confusion of dates that I'm most likely responsible for. Just a mix-up between communicating through Rosa. I thought she confirmed the 2nd Friday where she'd confirmed the first. One way or another we ended up with a second annual at noon.
I think the meetings went pretty good. We've come up with this new format signing papers and then introducing the more formal meeting and then going over a preference interview and then we go over the DSP notes and end with doing old and new goals. It's loosely structured so anything that needs to be changed can be which is good for the spontaneity factors. It seems to cover the span of an hour, it gives a good review over what's happened and people seem to appreciate the line of discussion. Primarily for those who can speak for themselves it really includes them in the meeting and for those who can't ... it seems the family is very willing to respond toward the whole. I'm really pleased and it seems the response is good from individuals and family.
The first client yesterday had help from his sister in explaining my questions to him in Spanish. That usually doesn't happen, but I was pleased that we got better responses from him. I don't think I ever asked so much from clients directly. I'm happy that the focus is more direct on the clients. The noon meeting was held in my office because there were only 3 of us there. Usually the meetings are held in the staff dining room, or sometimes in the leadership room in front of my office. Having it in the office made it more casual and cozy.
I took good notes on the clients meeting the first time on Friday, so we just reviewed those notes. This particular client is very verbal and able to communicate and it feels those meetings are the best. Toward the end of the meeting we had somehow gotten into a conversation about computers, phones and other devises. It turns out the client was very well learned as to all of that. We had the most fun conversation between the three of us about it and we talked about some of the stuff we had, were getting, or knew about. It was nice to find someone who could appreciate the technology. He left the meeting talking about all the toys Ms. Ann had. It was the funniest thing because he was so dramatic. It really was fun.
Normally, we're not such a part of the meeting, but the situation was very receptive to it. Just fun is all.
After that we were reminded that we'd talked about getting the computers protected with Norton 360. That was harder than it looked, because it seemed that as long as I was doing the computers, they would need some other care-taking. This is a list of what we were working on and the numbers represent the first, second and third computers that we were doing at the same time. If the number is down it means we've finished that process on that machine.
8-24-09
Updated with Microsoft updates - Update.microsoft.com/windows/update
Service Pack 2 & 3 (1, 2 some-3)
Mini-updates up to 46
Turn on automatic updates - Sunday or every day @ 3 am (1, 2, 3)
Update to Internet Explorer 8.0 (1 & 2in-process)
Change auto-load page to http://Google.com (1, 2,3)
Clean files including document, photos, etc. (1, 2, 3)
Clean programs look for any that might be unnecessary (1, 2, 3)
Check start menu (1, 2, 3)
Delete Browsing history (1)
System tools disk cleanup (1)
Defragment (1-in process)
Load Norton from Symantec (1, 2)
Run something on Norton (start new)
Print history (figure out)
It is a slow process to get everything done, but when we added the third computer the time seemed to fly past faster. Basically, they are old machines - 2003, so it's taking a while to do. I'm feeling real good though about how the computers are brought up to date and in general, it's a real good thing for me to be on top of what each are doing. I know that I'm supposed to be responsible over them, but they're usually on the lower priority list. It's just we just got the Norton 360 for 15 computers and you've only got 15 days before the licenses expire. The program itself is good for one year. It's really fine in that the 5 disks with 3 licenses each cost a total of $18 through our non-profit web site. It's really good all in all. Just now I have to fix 15 computers.
There are 8 laptops in the Leadership group and DSP or trainers computers. They are all housed in a computer cabinet in the leadership room. Then I've got to do Sr.'s, Rosa's and Holly's computer, Candice's computer - fortunately she's gone, and my laptop which is a back-up computer ... that brings the computers to two more which is my desktop and one other ... I might end up not doing my laptop at work, and instead doing my home desktop and netbook. Or, we might find the laptop gets done because I can't do for some reason all 8 of the clients. It's a bit of work one way or another.
Poor sister saw me in the Leadership room with the computers all around me. She confirmed what I was doing and she complains if I don't do the work, but she knows everything like this that takes me away from my regular CARF work is just keeping me that far behind. I know she's appreciative though that I can do the work. Holly will talk about stuff, but she never does it. The other day we were checking out on-line saving of memory and so I did an evaluation of the computers. My documents add up to 12 G, Rosa's at 5 G and Holly's at less than 1 G. Wow ... seems we just MIGHT be doing more work - at least the kind that gets written out in documents. Maybe though she throws away more than me. I've been saving documents from the beginning.
I knew that I was getting home late last night, but I couldn't help but to finally make it back to my office where I could clean off my desks. I really hate to go home with stuff on them, because it's not a good practice and its hard to walk in the next morning with stuff laying about. Closing it down gives us that needed sense of closure.
I had to do about 15-20 minutes of work to do things half way close to proper. I had called Rich and he very patiently put dinner aside and told him to call when we got to First and 47th. This is the corner right after getting off the expressway. He knows that I'm just 4-5 minutes away then and he can do the final prep for dinner. I can't believe how lucky I am to have Rich. Words cannot say enough.
After we got home, Rich and us ate dinner and then someone was surprised with some SPECIAL time. WooHOO!!! After that we decided to go to the gym. Rich let me show him how to do the bike and we went to the whirlpool. We'd been bothered by a sore hip twinge and thought we could work it through. After the swimming pool cleared out a bit, we got in and did our stuff. We've done a couple times now 36 laps - or 72 if your counting back and forth. I think we're doing pretty good, but feel pretty tired by the end. It's a regular regulation size pool and we just go back and forth.
Last night we decided to add to our patterns that on the "8" count we go sideways one way, on the "9" we come back sideways the other way and on the "10" count we go backward. 1-7 we just go forward straight through. I was surprised by doing it this way how fast it made time and counts go. I liked it too because we could tell Rich to look for the backward one and then he would know we just hit another 10. That way we could pace ourselves out with each other.
After Rich got done with the bike ... he did an entire 20 minutes. WOW!!! I had set him on 6, but he's got to figure out for himself the balance between minutes and difficulty. After that though he came in the pool and swam four lengths and then we cajoled him into walking 2 lengths with us. After that he got into the whirlpool and finished with the sauna. We caught up with him for the last 5 minutes in the sauna, but otherwise we were pretty much on our own.
I checked my weight today and I'm still up at 264, but we're feeling better about doing work. I don't think I got much past - maybe 22 minutes to Rich's 20 minutes on the bike. He's really much stronger than us - especially his legs! I had a problem Rich helped me through yesterday in that I'd worn my tan skirt and top to work. I knew it was a little loose, but by the time I got out of my car at work, I found myself picking it up from the grass. I knew it was long, so I just hoisted it up and got to my office. Then we found a few clips to hold it tighter, but ended up calling Rich to see if he could bring us safety pins, because the clips had rough edges and was hurting us - plus, they'd fallen out a few times. Rich stopped at the cleaners for clothes and got the pins. Pswhoo!!! It's really embarrassing holding up your skirt, but it does make me believe that we've gotten a little better shape than before even though the weight is still there. Well, just a little. Hmm?
I've been talking to Rich for a few moments and petting the kitties. We set a new goal yesterday to start getting ready to leave at 6:15 am to get to work more fairly by 7 am. Its still a half hour early, but I like beating in the cabs. Sister has to come to the door to let me in, but the cabs can't drop of clients until 7:30 am. If I get there too close to their time they want in like me. Yeeks!
posted by Ann Marie @ 8/25/2009 06:19:00 AM
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