Gavin Newsom’s announcement that all Californians must “stay at home” bothered me more than I cared to admit to myself.
It followed on the heels of an announcement from my school district that all buildings will close and no staff will report. My principal sent an email assigning us an hour to come in and get what we needed. I’d brought home most of what I needed so I didn’t go in. Later in the day I wish I had.
The day before, after an email from our tech person about District Help Desk availability, I emailed her back about my password, set to expire before we are scheduled to return to work. I didn’t hear back until she sent an all staff e-mail on the day people could go in. She told us that the district had added 120 days to our passwords, but, if we wanted to update it we should do so when we come in. My assigned time had passed, and I was waiting for my grocery order. She gave us some options if we weren’t going in.
If you do need to change your password before we return to school, please make sure to keep track of your new & old passwords so we can get you all synced up when we are back in school (you will need both your district password to get you into your mail, etc, but the old one will get you into your laptop).
If you aren’t coming into the building, you can also drive close to any BSD location to connect to the network and do the same thing.
I worried about not doing things correctly and then, if and when we decide to roll out an online learning program, I wouldn’t be able to access the files on my laptop. I squelched my concerns and carried on with my day.
I went to bed trying not to think of the terrible times in which we are living.
Sleep serves many functions. One thing it does is help us process information and then make decisions about what to do next. Clearly my brain was working overtime because I awoke at 1 in the morning, thinking of 15 character phrases I could use for my new password.
As I lay on my back counting off letters a brilliant idea occurred to me: I could go to the school nearest my house as soon as I got up and change my password. I got out of bed to write some of my ideas down so I wouldn’t forget them in the morning.
Lucy got me up at 4:30. I took her for a potty walk, drank some coffee and was out of the house just after 5:30.
The streets and highway were dark and quiet as I drove the 20 minutes to my school of choice. Please work, please work, I chanted as I pulled into the dark parking lot. I decided that right in front of the office might be the best place for me to connect. As I sat on the cold cement in front of the office, I prayed a police car wouldn’t prowl the neighborhood and see me.I lifted the laptop and saw a strong Wifi icon. My password was changed within a few minutes and I now had 149 days before my next change.
I was home just after six. My street was still dark and it didn’t look as though any of my neighbors were up yet. I felt a little foolish, but my sense of relief was greater.
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