I hope this is not setting precedent...
(Preface - If you are unfamiliar with the program Power of the Pen , please click on the link to learn more about it before you proceed)
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Stayed much longer at work than I should have last night, with several problems and responsibilities there taking a lot of concentration and effort. When I got home, I had to prep things for today (I know; ever the procrastinator) and when all was said and done, I finally fell into bed to grab a few winks of sleep at nearly 3 AM. I knew that the travel to Tiffin would be relatively uneventful and in comparison to some of the events that I have scored, the distance not long, so I allowed myself the liberty of sleeping till 6 before literally throwing myself out of bed to get myself ready to leave.
I had every good intention; I had my computer ready with drivers loaded, a bag ready to be packed, and my Nano loaded with all the music I could have ever wanted to listen to in the hours that pass between doing nothing to being the center of everything at these events. I stopped on the way out of town to grab a quick nibble, then hopped on the expressway to head toward Tiffin, by way of Perrysburg and Fremont.
The morning was cold, but the car was not; it was a comfortable drive and I was actually taking enough time to grab the camera out of my backpack/purse to snap a few pictures of the beautiful sky as the sun started to rise. The progress to the split in Fremont was quick…because I was distracted by the fact that my Nano had stopped dead (froze) when I tried to use it in lieu of the radio on the last leg of the drive. Frustrated, I dropped it on the seat with my other items of necessity on this trip and redirected my attention to the road.Tiffin is a college town, but even with that in mind, it has the appearance of a small community. It has a pretty little downtown area and several high schools, as well as Tiffin University and Heidelberg College within its boundaries. It was (not sure if it still is) home to the State Mental Hospital (a standing joke among folks who are long time residents of the area). Tiffin must also hold some sort of world record for the most one way streets in a small town...How do I know all this, you ask?
Well...once crossing the city limits line of Tiffin, all of my magical intuitive navigation skills went totally OUT THE WINDOW, and I spent way too many minutes driving east to west and then eventually north to south, criss-crossing the area in which my Mapquest map indicated the school would be. Finally, I spied a very welcome “School Zone” sign. Eureka, I thought to myself; finally my flawless sense of direction had gotten me to my destination! Alas, it was not to be; the school was Tiffin Calvert High School, and in my desperation I entered its hallowed halls seeking aid in my quest for the elusive Tiffin Middle School. A very lovely lady there actually escorted me to the school from Calvert HS, assuring that I reached my goal without further incident. I cannot express how nice it was to encounter such a generous soul so early on a Saturday morning!Once at the school, I resituated all the accoutrements of my work in their containers for transport into the building. I first approached (logically) the main doors to the building. All locked, and taking a peek inside, I saw no lights on and no activity of the human sort. Not totally unusual for events of this kind, and after all, even with my “dilly-dallying”, I was still early for any activity of the registration or scoring sort. Nonplussed, I proceeded to a side door; the parking lot there appeared to be the temporary home to quite a number of vehicles. A pull on the door handle….also locked; all four of them. I peeked in these doors; at least there were lights on in the hall! Standing in the cold air (did I mention it was cold?) and with all my supplies in their bags, slung over my shoulder, I stood disheartened at the door, wondering if there was some OTHER Tiffin Middle School that I didn’t know about. Just as I was losing hope, I saw a woman walking in the hall inside. I knocked on the door and gestured to her to let me in. She came to the door and held it open; I queried, “Is the Power of the Pen event to be held here today?”. She responded yes, it was, and offered to escort me to the staging area in the building. Isn’t it nice that so many people are willing to take care of me? I have been twice amazed so far today at how kind and generous people have been.
The event Tabulation Room is in the Media Center. I chose a tiny piece of desk in the Mac (yay!) lab there. The lab is equipped with about thirty eMacs, and the building, as far as I can tell is equipped with at least 4 unsecured access points. My NIC (Network Interface Card) is old and not all that good, so although I can connect to the access points, the signal is not strong enough to support a connection (after some additional investigation, I determined that there was a further complication of a manual proxy in use for filtering services for their district which was impairing my ability to use the wireless access points to surf and use instant messaging). No worries, I thought to myself; I still have my Blackberry and RAZR if I need to communicate with the outside world.
OK, so here’s the deal…there must be some sort of “black hole of communication” in Tiffin. The RAZR can get no signal, even after power off/ power on (I will probably try the “remove the battery” reset a little later) The Blackberry is in exactly the same circumstance; I don’t think that I have ever seen it with NO SIGNAL AT ALL. Coincidentally, both are connecting using Cingular wireless service; perhaps they would be well advised to “enhance” coverage in the Fremont/Tiffin area?Right now it is about 9:45 and orientation is going on for the students (a Welcome Address) and the tab room staff. When I arrived at about 8:30 the student volunteers were getting their orientation about what runners do and other stuff that they can help with. Once all the registrations are looked over for changes, they will be handed over to me, so that I can change any team members (drop/add) or teams (drop) in the scoring database. After that task is complete, I will wait again, until the first round of writing is over, then I will have some data entry to do. The event has 10 teams today with usually 6 kids per team. There are three rounds of writing for which I will enter scores; not a high pressure day, but accuracy is imperative so it never pays to be complacent.
I think I will save this document for now…go track down some coffee…I think I am gonna NEED it!....back in a bit…
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Been drawing for about an hour….as I was waiting for scores to come to me, I overheard one of the late arrivals to the Tab room explaining to all the other folks in a rather loud voice that she was late because SHE GOT LOST. See, it is not nearly as uncommon as you might have thought, since it was only me up to this point that had a hard time getting here! Again, the issue of the “one way street” plague was mentioned as well. Also, I overheard a person who is apparently a teacher, or AV person for Tiffin Schools complaining with some contempt that someone had used a Whiteboard as a dry erase board in one of the rooms…they need to put the little warning labels on theirs like the ones that have been applied to the ones in our local district!
Scores coming in now (11:25 AM), so off to data entry; more in a little while.
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After a few groups of sheets, I decided to dig up the iPod Shuffle to keep my distracting outside noises under control; nothing worse than hearing people around me speaking the same kinds of numbers and letters that I am trying to enter...can be very confusing...so now Neverending White Lights is my companion as I go back to data entry...back later...
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After many score sheets, two pieces of pizza and a can of Coke that one of the tab room folks very kindly brought to me, it was time to finally rank the scores so that reports could be run for the awards ceremony scheduled to take place at 2:30. I did the ranking on the 7th grade only to find that there were ties that needed to be broken by the representative of POP that was running the event. I generated the scratch sheet for her to use to figure everything out and then waited to see what would happen next. There were two ties of students so evenly matched that it was determined that there was no way that they could be broken, so the tie was left as is. This made it necessary to manually renumber the rankings for all the top people in that grade level so the two students tied would be both be the same rank and then the ranking from that point would continue with the next number. I did not recall the procedure for doing this, so we had to make a call to the Big Kahuna of POP, Frank Merrill. Our unfortunate connections with cell phones caused us to have a significant amount of difficulty communicating, but Frank, much to his credit, was persistent, so the issues were resolved, the reports were run, the newspaper people got their information, the ceremony proceeded only marginally later than scheduled, and as I was leaving, as there always is, I heard the cheers of kids emanating from the gym, where the awards were being...well...”awarded”.... :-)
When I left, I had no idea how to get back to the route I came in on because the lady who was kind enough to get me to the school traveled on the few roads that I had not already driven on my own during my early rambling tour of Tiffin. I decided to head in a general northerly- feeling direction and hope for the best. Amazingly enough, staying the course (so to speak) and trusting in my own sense of direction, rather than some dumb map paid off. I approached an intersection after a few minutes of my northern progress and as I got my bearings, I burst into peals of uncontrollable laughter...I was again at the intersection I had originally turned on to create my “lost” condition; now it was taking me back exactly to where I wanted to be....
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In a change from my usual rambling narratives about the POP experiences, I am stopping here for this day’s entry. I took quite an extensive “long way home” drive after the tournament, and in order to do it justice, I have decided to take tonight to work on it a little more and post it tomorrow, along with a photo companion...stop back tomorrow for the concluding entry for this weekend’s Power of the Pen event saga...."This is my part of Ohio"
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