Author: kathleen

The good things:

Lots of good materials and lots of practical advice.

The fact that the presentation will be available for two months.

I also compliment the presenter for keeping up with the back channel.

But talking for two hours – please my students would never let me pull that off nor do i have that much in my head at any one time.

Again thankfully the presentation is supposed to be available for two months.

I end up laying awake at night worrying because they don't turn in their work, and they don't seem to care that they are failing.

I don't know why I care, but I do.

Yes, still going to the Windows Phone Developer Conference and the good news is that it got approved as Professional Development!  No losing Personal Days.

Can't wait to share with my students.

So last Saturday night my Mac Mini blew up (literally, I think the noise the power supply made blowing up woke me up.

I took my Mac Mini to the Knox Street Apple store, and as always they took their own sweet time. 

Before I go further, I am an experienced Ham Radio operator (Extra class) and Computer Scientist and I know darn well if a power supply explodes to the point that you can smell the burnt component, more than the power supply is gone.

Now, if they had replaced the Mac Mini on the spot, I would have bought something else, and I was leaning towards a notebook or iPod, hadn’t decided. I am quite serious about this.

However, they lost their chance and it gets worse.  i looked up the service status yesterday and it was still showing "Service in Process".  Good news is that it now showing "Service Complete".

I had to call and ask the status on day 7 of the estimated repair.  They did replace the Mac Mini with a new computer BUT they should have called me and told me that they were replacing it as soon as they opened it up.  I NEVER SHOULD HAVE HAD TO CALL!  And the status should have not been showing "In Service", but it should have told me to pick it up.

Very unhappy with the Apple Store experience.

I’ve been registered for some time, but wasn’t 100% sure I was going.  TCEA is rewriting our TEKS though and adding courses, including a course in writing mobile phone software.  This looks as good as any to get started on that, though I have played with Mobile phone programming with Visual Basic and even a little with Java.

I’ve been trying to get the school to give me the time off for staff development but haven’t gotten anything back.  Plus looking at the new attendance report, it seems we don’t have a Staff Development code that doesn’t dock days anyway.  Weird.  I already mentioned to Alfred that I figured one of the reasons it hadn’t been approved  was budget issues, and I suspect I’m right again.

Looking forward to some training on something new!

I posted last weekend that my Mac Mini blew up.  Apparently the power supply is no longer working.  The device smells burned and won’t power up.

Took it to the Apple Store and they told me the repair would take 5-7 days.  It’s morning of day 5, and no signs of repair. 

Here’s what I expected to take place:

Be given a refurbished Mac Mini on the spot, and have to restore my data from Time Machine

If that had occurred, I would have bought a new device on the spot, either a notebook, an iPad or an iPhone, not sure what I would have gone with.  Probably the new iPhone because my Windows Mobile phone is driving me nuts.

I really liked the Mac Mini until it blew up.  It kind of scares me now, and I probably won’t leave it on over night any more, I keep wondering about it catching the house on fire after it blew up.

I also don’t like their service – I paid extra for Apple Care and honestly did expect faster service.  They could at least keep spare supplies in stock.  What is standard turn around on Notebooks, etc?