The Screaming Viking

It’s year end for the school, and with that comes the onslaught of ordering.  I like this time of year because I get a chance to play with a few new things.  It also gives me the opportunity to set things up the way I’d like them setup.  Like I’ve said before, there is nothing wrong with the way the previous guy configured things…I just have a different idea of how I want it to work.  I want to move towards a more “enterprisy” environment.  I want to be able to manage all the machines from one central point, and I want to do it as cheaply as possible.

So far we have received approval to build out 2 business computer labs.  I’m going to use iMacs for these labs running both lion and win7.  They are going to be setup to dual boot.  I think this gives us maximum flexibility.  For one of these labs they are looking at teaching multimedia applications and some web design.  We’re looking at dual monitor setups and all that.  I think it will be pretty decent by the time we are done.  The only real concern I have is getting enough data pipe to these machines.  I don’t think the network drops in that room was ever really designed to push as much traffic as these machines will potentially push/pull.  What I’m going to do is build out the room the way I want, then I’ll look at going back and attacking the networking situation later.  The way the building is segmented there is no real main switch closet.  There are a couple of locations that have auxiliary switches.  In the next few years I would like to run fiber…but I’m not sure how much that is going to cost.

Something else I want to do is replace all the ancient macs we have here.  There are 90 or more emacs, which at this point are long past their usefulness.  I wonder how much we’d save on power alone if these were replaced…  My thoughts are instead of replacing X amount each year, we finance it…replace them all at once and pay it off over a few years.  This is going to be quite a bit of work for me, but I think this would jump start us on to a regular replacement schedule.  Also, in five years maybe we would be looking at some kind of 1 to 1 initiative where we can downsize the desktop machines.  Right now I don’t know how that would work…but we’ll see.

If all this replacement action gets approved, it will keep me fairly busy over the summer.  Physically setting them up and moving things around will take a little bit of time, but the big time sink will be putting images on the machines.  With deep freeze it has to copy the size of the frozen disk with each image…that’s what takes all the time.

We’re also ordering a few iPads.  Not a whole bunch, I will probably have around 20 to mess with and get ready for the school year.  The management of the ipads is something that is a bit tricky.  I’ve decided to quite expecting that people won’t use them for personal stuff.  As long as they are ready for school and they have them for that…I don’t care what they are used for.

Gonna be a busy summer.

Traditionally, Bottineau doesn’t have a very good football team.  I credit that to the kids that play exclusively hockey or basketball and forgo football.  I don’t think that’s the best idea, in BFE ND the odds of you getting a scholarship is pretty slim, and pro can’t even be a thought.  I think it makes for a better athlete in any single sport if the athlete plays multiple sports.  Football can be a great sport for helping foot work and being more physical for basketball players, the cardio and “in shape” aspect can’t be ignored for any sport that comes after.  It’s the athlete and the parent’s choice if they play of course..and this is the same thing we struggled with when I was in school.  If all the guys had played that could have…we’d have a better chance at being a better team at the very least.

This year Bottineau did quite well, they went 8-1 and took the second seed in the region for playoff ball.  The game they lost was by a field goal at the end in really bad weather…so even in that game they were competitive.  Being the 2nd seed, they got to host the first game of the playoffs…they faced Wahpeton.  Looking at the difference between the teams warming up…Wahpeton had quite a size advantage.  Their linemen looked like they were going to walk all over us.  We have fast guys at all positions, but, especially this time of year, there is no substitute for size and pounding the ball down the middle.  Our backs looked to be a bit bigger than theirs, and our boys are fast.  The one position we have had an advantage over everyone we’ve played is at running back.  We have two guys back there with great size and speed.

Bottineau received the ball in the beginning and went 3 and out…it didn’t look good.  Wahpeton took the ball, ate up about 10 min worth of clock and drove down the other end of the field.  They got called back inside the 10 for a hold…but it didn’t matter as they punched the ball in.  After that, I don’t remember quite how the scoring went.  There are a couple of key plays though that ended up blowing the game wide open.  The first was an uncalled late hit.  One of our guys, I don’t remember if it was the QB, was down…clearly down…and one of there guys comes in and pounds him in the back.  It was the kind of hit that a player in the NFL would be writing a check for.  The crowd erupted.  The ref was right there…no flag.  Our man wasn’t injured…but it was still something that could have been flagged.  Honestly, I don’t much care about late hits…I didn’t see it as a huge deal at the time.  If this had been the only call that was blatantly missed it wouldn’t be a big deal, but it was one of a few that turned the tide.

The next missed call was huge.  They broke around the outside and our contain man was held bigger than life.  It was one of those shoulder turning type holds that you just can’t miss.  This was our outside contain man, so they were able to bounce outside and got a 40ish yard td run.  Maybe he would have made the tackle, maybe not…but it was a hold, the ref was right there and no flag.  Our head football coach is usually a cool customer, there have been close games through the season and he doesn’t react too much to bad calls…but this time he went ape shit.  It was to the point of being restrained he was going so nuts.  It was good to see tbh.

The next missed call was the game…there wasn’t going to be a way for the boys to recover after this.  We’re on their 2ish yard line.  Our back swings out to the crowd side, stretches out and crosses the goal line/fumbles.  Now the ref was right there so they should have the best view of the call.  The fans (including myself) thought he was in, then fumbled.  The refs confer…nope, fumble before the goal line, they recover.  I thought it was the wrong call, the crowd went ape….clearly everyone thought it was the wrong call.  Wether it was or not, who really knows.  Up to this point, they had that 1 holding penalty called (we had maybe 2?).  After the refs set them at the 20, they start calling procedure penalties on them like crazy.  They finally managed to run 3 plays and had to punt.  I could see how they might have jumped once…twice…but several in a row?  It doesn’t make sense.  It is that set of calls that makes me believe that the refs also thought they screwed up on the td/fumble call.  They kick to us…we start our series, off sides call.  Maybe they came with a rash of penalties…but it seemed like a bunch of make up calls to me.

Later on there was another swing around the outside/hold type call that was missed.  One of our players was giving the ref hell about it…tbh, it was late in the game and didn’t much matter.

In all fairness without the penalty calls (or with them I guess) Wahpeton still had the better looking team.  Football, esp at the high school level, is a game of momentum.  Maybe we could have come out on top but in all honesty they looked sharper than we did today.  They ran a 1/2 back pass that left us in the dust.

We had a good year though, it would have been nice to keep it going.

Cross post from Hillbilly Coach

It looks like I’ll be able to get on with the 5&6th and 7&8th boys basketball for the upcoming year.  I’m not sure if that will allow me to do the girl’s 5th&6th at the end of the year, but we’ll see how the dates work out.  I would like to coach the 6th grade girls.  I worked with them a little bit last year and there is quite a bit of potential there.  I think some more work this year and they could be pretty productive.

I was able to work with some of the boys in the above groups during basketball camp this past summer.  There is quite a bit of potential there but I’ll need to battle the NBA mentality that was there for some reason.  I’m not sure if the guys I played with had the same mentality at these ages, but anytime I’ve been involved with these age groups it seems to be getting more and more prevalent.  Hopefully we can shelve some of that mentality and build a solid foundation for the kids to build on at the higher levels.

One of the main factors in taking a job with the school system and moving back to this area was the potential for coaching positions.  I’ve coached basketball and baseball in the past and found I really enjoy it.  I enjoyed that feeling of accomplishment when the team was successful and I found as a coach there is a different form of satisfaction (and frustration) in helping the team reach their goals.  I didn’t get here till March, so the only season starting up was girls pee-wee (5th and 6th) basketball.  I didn’t hear anything about them being short staffed so I went to work focusing on my new position and decided to wait till later in the spring to make sure my interest in coaching was known.

About mid season I heard from some friends of mine (parents of a girl in that age group) that there was only one coach and she was pretty short handed.  I made the offer to the super that I would be willing to help out, and I emailed the athletic director as well.  I was contacted the next day and lined up to help out with practice.  I was also informed that I would be compensated a little bit for the position.  All the coaching positions with the school are paid spots, and that’s fine.  I thought since I was coming in significantly after the season started that I would just consider it a try out for other positions in the upcoming school year.  It sounds like I might get a couple bucks and that’s great, but I still saw it as more of a try out than anything. Read the rest of this entry »