Some Days in the Life - April 30, 1999

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Holderness is a beautiful school, nestled among trees and the side of a hill. I wouldn't personally prefer it to the lake we have next to Brewster Academy, but I'm sure others would. It's a very traditional Prep school environment, with traditional classes, compulsory Chapel (nondenominational but compulsory, I guess so nobody at all will feel at home in it), uniforms, required sports, and so on and so on. It's oddly different compared to Brewster Academy, which is radically nontraditional, despite being older than Holderness. The one thing we still have in common are required sports and a dress code -- and our dress code's a lot laxer.

It was a good range of places, from "we've got a couplea' computers an' we plugged 'em in and WHOO -- they worked," to Brewster itself (subtitled "we're utterly insane, be kind to us"). It's kind of fun to be the place that's way out front -- some of the Tech Coordinators had called me before, to use our example to drive additional staff in their IT departments. The one breathing down our neck is Bridgeport -- and they're not the same sort of school we are. They cater to 18-22 year old Postgraduates, looking to realign themselves to a college model.

I'm torn between pride in the Academy's preeminence and a mad desire to wave my arms, shouting "you fools! The waters are rising! Get into the ark! I'll show you the way!" It's simply not that hard to do what Brewster's done. You just have to be willing to force your Faculty to change the way they teach (also called "drive your existing Faculty away") and commit a huge percentage of your resources to the project. The reward? It works.

It's a little like being a Macintosh advocate. It's expensive to switch from Windows to Macintosh. It takes a leap of faith and a good amount of money. The reward is far less headaches, less downtime, far happier staff/faculty/students, and far less learning curve in general. Generally greater productivity and creativity too.

But faith and money are always in short supply in business and education.

There are some things the other schools are doing that I like. I hope they like what we're doing -- I had a good amount to say, at least. But it's meetings like this that make me glad to be in Education. I can't imagine the C.T.O.'s of Compaq, Apple, Dell and Gateway 2000 sitting down and talking about the structures of their network and the way they train the people who work there, but for us it's natural. If it works, share it. We're all on the same team in the end.

One thing that tells me I'm the luckiest kid on the face of the Earth: almost all of the other schools have to fight for necessary funding and generally don't have adequate staff. Of everyone there, only Bridgeport's Tech Coordinator and I were Director Level at their school. (The "Director" level is the Manager/Director/Dean level -- that level that says "we're not Assistant Headmasters, but we're the next best thing.) Everyone else was somewhere below the level of a faculty Department head, with the funding and influence to match. Most couldn't get enough new equipment each year. All were overworked. More than one was a teacher made an IT manager on the side.

That's not possible any longer. If you have a network, computers, a user population between two and five hundred and a full time dedicated Internet connection at your school, your school requires at least as much IT support as a business with two to five hundred employees. The issues you're confronted with match all the issues they're confronted with plus all the issues you get with minors in the candy store. You need professionals, who know the issues, know the difference between switches and hubs and understand the reasons to upgrade and the reasons not to upgrade. Those professionals need the support of their superiors and the respect of their peers. Those professionals need budgets that recognize the world we live in, and the forward progression of technology, and the responsibility of a school to remain on the edge of that. Those professionals need staffs that can take the pressure of the world off of them and make it possible for them to do their job and have outside activities, like sleep.

The others are good at what they do, with the extra bonus of fighting upstream. I am so lucky to work at Brewster, where the Board of Trustees, the Directors, the Faculty and the Headmaster and Associate Headmaster understand and support and have committment for what we do. When you see me complaining in here about how horrid my job is (and you know I will), remind me just how good I've got it, okay?

One revelation I had while there: I'm good at what I do.

Which, given my own natural arrogance, may seem like an odd revelation. Let me explain.

I'm good friends with a large number of Unix Gods. These are people doing advanced work at the best Universities in the country. These are people working in the best professional environments anywhere. These are people who regularly get promoted inside of a hugely competitive field, who pass their Candidacy for Doctoral Programs at world class colleges, who have pulled 4.0's in Computer Science from their Freshman Year to their Thesis defense. These people wake up in the morning and rewrite James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in Perl, then rewrite it Python for aesthetic reasons.

I've been spending time with them since I was a "Desktop Publishing Specialist" at Kinko's. Some longer than that. That's fine. I like them. They like me.

But when I was hired at different forms of Networking and Systems Administration, I always felt sheepish talking to them about it. I mean, it's like you're studying at seminary for four years, debating theology and philosophy, having the Pope write to you and raise counter arguments, be ordained and walk into the world, a Reverend before your God, and having some punk kid show up with an official, legally binding Ordination from the Universal Life Church, for the price of a postcard. Yes, they can legally be called Reverend, and yes they can perform marriages, but which one's the Minister and which one's just a big ol' fake?

(By the by -- I'm a Reverend myself by the second standard above. So are a large number of my friends and people who work at Kinko's in Seattle. My best friend Frank, over in Ithaca, New York, has performed a couple of marriages. He sent in the five bucks for an extra certification, and now is officially and in the eyes of the Universal Life Church a "Rabbi of Thor." Which I can accept as easily as I can any other religion, really.)

So, I became an IT Manager. And Brewster Academy's been very happy with my performance in the role. And all evidence was I did it well. But I would look at these Unix Gods who are my friends and think "just who am I trying to kid, huh? I have an English degree for Christ's sake." I kept waiting for the shoe to drop, and it never did.

So I'm sitting in this meeting today, and we're discussing issues. Issues in education and academia and networking. And it hits me, like a sledgehammer to the face. These are the things IT Managers deal with. IT isn't Unix coding (though it can involve it). IT is getting the network to do what you want it to do, while supporting the Macintoshes in your library and labs that have one type of Firewall access out and the Powerbooks the students have which have another and a whole different level of access and service for Faculty and Staff and then there are the sad people across the street forced to use IBM-Compatibles and helping set the Technology Plan and then implement it and writing documentation and explanations for the users and explaining what's going on....

And I'm good at it. I understand it. I'm not a Unix God, but I'm a good IT Manager. That's amazingly cool.

North Conway isn't anywhere near Plymouth. It's in the opposite direction from Wolfeboro. However, we got out around two o'clock, so if I'd driven back to the Academy I'd have gotten in in time for the work day to end. I planned for this yesterday -- no one expected me to come back today. So, I decided to do some banking after the meeting. For obscure reasons my bank is in Maine, not New Hampshire. There's a branch of the bank in Fryeburg, Maine, which isn't all that far from Plymouth, so I left the school after the meeting and hit the road for KeyBank. Having nowhere to be, and being one who enjoys driving, I cut through White Mountain National Forest to get there.

It's gorgeous. Beautiful. The mountains (and they are mountains up there, not the hills you get used to) surround and enfold you, and the trees on them are everywhere. But while it was beautiful, and a gloriously sunny day for a drive, the drought was reinforced every where you look. I drove by no less than four signs that read "Fire Danger -- Extreme Conditions." And the trees were barren -- you could see between them all the way up the mountain. With foliage and undergrowth, you wouldn't be able to see more than twenty feet. Even the evergreens are looking a mite brown.

It was somehow deeply sad, and starkly beautiful, all at once. I heard the weather forecast while on the way. Sunny and fair, and seventies, all weekend long, until at least Tuesday. So, so much for hoping the trees would burst into leaves before Mason gets here on Thursday. No doubt we'll have a beautiful weekend that weekend too.

Exciting News Department

About a year ago, my friends Greg Fishbone, Louise Freeman and I finished a children's book. It was young adult fiction, in the tradition of Johnny Tremain, The Wind in the Willows, and The Chronicles of Narnia, if any of those had been comedies about young super heroes. As they weren't, it's more or less like itself. It's called How to Become a Super Hero (In Ten Easy Steps). It features a Gilbert and Sullivan number near the back.

After we got it fully tightened up and ready for rejection, Bantam Doubleday Dell announced a contest for new children's fiction writers. So we sent HtBaSHiTES in, and promptly didn't hear from them.

About three weeks ago, we decided we should probably inquire. However, various combinations of life prevented us from getting very far with it.

Yesterday, Louise got a call from the editors. We're officially Finalists, and they're going to vote on May the 12^th.

Even if we don't win (which is more likely -- we don't know how many Finalists there are), last year Bantam Doubleday Dell published a number of the honorable mentions, and being a Finalist will look very good on a cover letter for other publishers.

Keep your fingers crossed.

Also in writing news, I finished up an article for a new online magazine which I'm involved in, hight Insanity Magazine. It's devoted to Apocalyptic Role Playing Games. I wrote an In Nomine article on a new minor angelic Choir, the Aeons. 3,000 words or so. We'll see.

I've been in Friendly's for an awfully long time now. Fortunately, it's still bright and sunny outside. Spring is wonderful. I'm heading home. More tomorrow, when I'll try to get the update in a little earlier.