Time for a micro-rant

It's 2245. Since I got home I've cooked two meals for a total of four people, done some ironing, exchanged a few words with the members of my family who have fewer responsibilities than me right now (I'm not bitter, they'll catch up) and since then I've been trying to find a way of drawing composite shapes (such as squares with semicircles on the top or rectangles with a quadrant on one side). Because I think my S3 class (well, let's be clear about this - about 60% of them) need to practice splitting composite shapes up into their components so they can calculate the area or perimeter. And I need to be able to display it to them in class. Sounds easy?
I digress. My reason for needing this is irrelevant. I'm working on my laptop at home. Using OpenOffice. I do not have access to the school network yet (though that has been promised to me since the induction block). The school computer's behave *very* strangely when you try to import anything from a flashdrive. The school computers use Microsoft Office. There are compatibility issues, which vary from machine to machine within the school (they don't have a standard set-up, for the very good reason that not all the machines are capable of running the latest versions...). And people are understandably a bit sensitive about allowing someone else to access "their" computer in "their" room using "their" login. Gods, I spent years telling people to do just that, it's basic computer hygiene: don't let anyone use your PC with your login, don't let anyone import files without your say so.... blah di blah di blah. *I* know I'm OK but ..... I digress again.
I'm not technology illiterate, despite my age. I was peddling online data before the WWW was invented. But I'm expected to do a lesson at 9.00am tomorrow which involves using the ICT resources available. And I simply do not know whether what I have done will work. If I had access to the school's network and software resources, I would be in a much stronger position. But apparently I can't get access to the school network until I'm authorised by the senior depute. Funnily enough, my access to the network is not his top priority.
Questions (for discussion):
- most (probably all) commercial organisations can create a network login for a new employee (even a temporary one) within 24 hours. Why can't a school do that?
- few organisations would require the authorisation of the second-in-command to create a new user on a network. Why would schools lumber the senior depute with a sign-off job that would be better suited to the level of (say) a Principal Teacher?
- and why should it take more than a day between authorisation and creation?
Meanwhile, I'm stuck trying to create presentations which I can only hope will work once I've created them with OpenOffice, saved them in a compatible MS format, transferred them to a flashdrive, plugged that into a school PC and which I'm then sincerely hoping will be accessible without trashing any hardware.
If you have doubts about that last point.... I have a nice-looking 1GB flashdrive which I was given by the nice people at the SSTA. So far, so good. In order, presumably, to assist in my brainwashing there are two partitions formatted onto this flashdrive. One is available for data, the other is spoofed to appear as a CD-ROM drive which autoplays when inserted into a USB port, bringing up some useful information for n00b teachers and about the SSTA in general. Some computers only recognise this spoofed CD-ROM drive, rendering the data partition useless. Others see the autorun feature of the spoofed CD-ROM drive as a dangerous self-installing, mad, dangerous and potentially viral nasty, so they refuse to accept it. I have tried everything I know to delete this partition but because the machines read it as an undeletable CD, I have failed to do so. This flashdrive has crashed one computer at my placement school already when inserted. Thanks SSTA. I don't think you thought that one through very well. If you have speakers attached to your computer, turn them down. The next thing you hear will be the sound of that flashdrive being crushed under my heel. I think I'll join the EIS. And buy myself a flashdrive that works as a portable medium. Damn. Gonna cost me money.
But only if I need to: I want to use ICT, I'm happy to use ICT but if I don't have access to ICT, I'll just use the whiteboard.