Two Down

The last weekend with Tim wasn't what I had hoped, and probably not quite what he had hoped either. It got off to a rocky start on Friday, which is still rather painful for me to recall.

We had planned to meet for dinner before going to the football game Friday night (North vs. Seymour). Tim told me he would call me when he was ready to meet for dinner, so I waited in the office for his call. When it was getting a little late to be able to fit a meal in before kickoff, I tried to call him a couple of times and left voicemails asking him to call me and let me know what was going on. Finally, it was late enough that I had to get going, and I grabbed a quick meal at McDonald's alone before going on to the game.

I called him and got through as I arrived for the game, and found out he had decided to eat with friends. He was at the game with the same friends. Now eating with his friends and going to the game with them didn't bother me at all; but the fact that he didn't have the courtesy to call and let me know did.

So I talked to him briefly when I arrived at the game, then headed for the stands. He and his gang appeared and sat (if you could call it that) several rows below me. They seemed to be having a good time, talking with others who came by and seemingly paying no attention at all to the game. They weren't there long, as sometime in the third quarter I noticed that they had left that area. By halftime I looked around and guessed that they had left the game altogether.

No, sitting at the game with friends and leaving early didn't bother me per se. But making no effort to at least come and talk with me in the stands, tell me they were leaving, or answering my call late in the game to try to find out what was going on did.

I arrived home about 10, and began to be concerned. Tim wasn't communicating with me at all, and I took that to mean he had plans he really didn't want to share with me. I tried calling him a couple of times, leaving a couple of messages in the process. His normal curfew passed with no contact and me still unable to reach him. I began to get concerned.

Another hour passed, with still no communication. Concern turned to anger. Anger that he was completely disrespecting me by refusing to take my calls or otherwise let me know he's OK. I assumed (correctly) that he was of a mindset to have one last blowout before he went to school, which by itself is understandable, but his failure to even discuss it with me was not.

So in the wee hours of the morning I finally get a call. By this time I'm so angry I'm about to burst a blood vessel or two. And unfortunately I gave him both barrels, ending with removing his rights to the Volvo and promising to withhold my payment to Butler if he didn't get home immediately.

So things improved somewhat Saturday, when Tim packed and we prepared a list of items he needed for school. We went to town for church, then went to find dinner. But the power was out in a huge chunk of Columbus, so we had to go all the way downtown to find a place to eat that had electricity. Then we visited grandma and headed to Target for the supplies.

The Target trip was expensive. Painful for me to recall in a different way. But by Saturday night, we had Jed well packed and ready to go.

Sunday morning we made the drive to Indy. What a contrast between the move-in day for Nick at Rose and the move-in at Butler. The information we had from Butler made it sound like the move-in process would be similar, but that turned out to be wrong. First we found Tim's RA, who was hanging out in his room playing a video game. He found Tim's key, pointed out the room (next door), and that was about it. No welcome, no offering of information or assistance, well, pretty much nothing beyond "here's your key, there's your room". What a slug.

So we went searching for a parking spot, and of course there were none. I parked on the street as close as I could get to the dorm, and we began to lug Tim's stuff into the room. There were no students around to help move things in, contrary to the Butler literature, and it took something between 8 and 10 trips for both Tim and I to get everything into the room.

Tim began working on setting up his computer, so I started unpacking and storing his clothes and other stuff. He's in a "triple", and we soon met the two roommates. They both had moved in on Saturday, and of course had taken the prime beds and desks. The room wasn't really designed as a triple, so it had 2 closets and only 2 actual desks. Tim was relegated to a small computer workstation that had no drawers or shelves. He needs to build some shelves, as there is absolutely nowhere in the room he can keep his books.

So he couldn't get the computer online to the campus network and it was lunchtime, so we went for lunch. The lunchroom was jammed with people, of course students with parents and often siblings. It took awhile to get through the lines, but I was able to grab a table and we had an acceptable lunch. We also stopped by the bookstore, where I purchased the MS Office suite for him. I was expecting a great low price, but apparently there is no such thing at Butler. There was another painful purchase.

Back at Tim's room, we found that he had to upgrade his XP operating system with SP2 and a bunch of other security patches before he would be allowed onto the network. But unfortunately, there was no way to install those upgrades since he didn't have a valid copy of XP. I figured, no big deal, we'll just see if we can get IT to let us online long enough to purchase and download it, and we'll be all set. We visited the IT workshop in the basement of the dorm, and initially they seemed to think that would work for us - we just had to bring down the computer.

So much for that strategy. After proving to the tech in the basement that we needed a valid XP license to access the network, he had no solution for us. He couldn't get us on to purchase and download it, because that was against policy. Nobody on campus sells XP, so we have to find somewhere to purchase it. However, there were people from CompUSA on campus, and maybe we could buy it from them.

By now it's time for the welcome ceremony. We walked over to Clowes, where Tim sat with the rest of the freshmen on the main floor and I climbed the stairs all the way to the top of the highest balcony. After the university president took the podium to deliver his speech, I must have lost consciousness, because the next thing I knew I was being startled awake by applause. At least the Butler chorus and string ensemble were pretty decent.

The photo of the freshman class had them on the lawn forming a giant "150" for Butler's 150th anniversary.

Then Tim and I went to find the CompUSA people. They didn't know that people would be wanting to buy XP, and had no copies with them. They would be happy to bring some with them the next day (Monday). For an outrageous price, of course.

So our last gasp was to try to go out and buy it from a store. But we don't know the area that well, and the nearest store I knew of was off the northern section of Indy's 465 loop. By the time we got into that area, we were already running late for Tim's opening orientation session back on campus. So we drove back to campus as quickly as we could, and good-bye was just a drop-off from Jed in front of the building.

I was very worried that this was less than the positive experience I would have hoped for Tim. A long, tiring, and frustrating day to kick off his college experience didn't seem a good omen, and since then I've been worried about how he will do.

But I talked with him today, and he seems to be doing well, settling in, and enjoying himself. I ordered XP from NewEgg.com per Nick's recommendation, and have them shipping it to me to make sure he gets it as soon as possible. I'll run it up to Indy the day it comes in.

Now I can't quite figure out why I wrote this extremely large post. It might be of no interest to anyone but me, but what's done is done I suppose.

Only one left in the nest. I'm not sure how to adjust to that.