Fully Orchestrated

Nan and I were out vacationing, seeing some sites along the coast. L was with us, started flirting, it was pretty funny until I flirted back. The panic set in, Nan was angry, and some very wealthy woman, long blond straight hair offered to take us all back to her mansion for a couple of days. (The fully orchestrated dream music was suddenly changing from the highly charged to the bucolic.) When we got the the mansion we settled in one of the rooms, it was all massive futons, the frames were made of 4x4's like the one we own, only full length rather than chair sized. They opened and closed with ease. Nan warned me not to sit down on a bed with her (ominous chords creep into the music.) About that time our hostess took the opportunity to get topless. Let's just say our hostess was the picture of womanly health. "That's a good look for her..." Got me jammed in the ribs by both Nan and L.

Back at work (I hate dreaming I'm at work, it just doesn't seem fair that I would work all day and then spend much of the night back there, and then there's the going in the following day and not getting any real benefit from the night's work.)we are having a meeting about the computer rollout. We're replacing computers for about 8 of our sites from August to December. The teachers at the meeting were furious. They were all carrying Frye's and Best Buy ads, copies of computer edge and one man had about fifteen 11x17 pages of cartoons and other drawings, spec sheets, etc. The music was in a full modern classical frenzy. Finally I jumped up on the conference table (very unlike me, I'm usually more of the chair type) and shouted everyone quiet. My partner was hunched in the corner nearly in tears. My Boss was standing in stunned silence in the doorway. "Now, one at a time."
I explained that the cost of the system was double because of the 5 year onsite warranty. I asked the graphics teachers what was wrong with the high end workstation, "It's not a Mac" was the response, then I pointed out that MacIntosh systems were part of the bid and they could simply choose them instead of the PC system. "Oh, really, you'd let us do that?" I pointed over to my boss.
"That's why we made sure they were included."
"Oh, never mind."
Then the instructor with the stack of drawings came forward. "Didn't you get my emails?" he asked, still very angry, "I've been trying to save the district money here!"
"Why didn't you put in a bid with this information?" I asked, knowing that most of the sheets were not really plans but cartoon characters whining about the inadequacy of the specifications of the lower end teacher workstation. The one that's for taking attendance and browsing the web. Once in a while it would be used to assemble a powerpoint slide show from photos, or to create word processing documents. Not exactly demanding tasks. I had seen the emails and had considered them the lunatic ravings of my subconscious mind (that's part of the trouble with lucid dreaming) so had dismissed them.
"But let me answer that now." I said to my subconscious teacher avatar, "talk to your principal, and you can convince them to get you the higher end workstation, or the MacIntosh." I think I am seeing a theme developing here. "Our low end workstation meets your needs as you've outlined them on page 8, and then exceeds them in some areas, I'm not convinced there is a problem here other than we are not buying the brand you want." The room laughed. I felt a little bad for making such a direct comment, but I felt I needed to say something to get to the real problem.
"I just think we could have saved a million dollars and still hired enough techs to support us, then you'd be able to do the support yourselves." I couldn't disagree, that was/is my thoughts all along.
"Unfortunately that plan requires two things, space and a break from the site-based management model." I didn't mention that it would also require about a four year transition to the new system, which means whoever is in charge of the new support model has an ever increasing staff and workload. It would take very talented leadership to lead what would essentially be two IT departments.
At this point the meeting went much better and I had myself convinced that even if this wasn't the best plan, it was THE plan and we could work to make learning happen under it. (Cue sappy violin music.)