Man there were a lot of college students roaming the streets this morning on the way to work. They were also wearing a lot of green. Oh right, that’s because today is Unofficial St Patty’s Day.
When I was back in college (oh yes, back in the day), the only time we had an Unofficial was when St Patty’s day fell on the week of spring break. However, now, in order for the University to look better at Engineering Open House, they have persuaded the bars to do it a week early regardless.
Nothing like heading to the bars at 8am and drinking green beer till they close at 2am. Ah, what it was like to be a student.
This will mark the fourth department in 6 months. I’m hoping to set a new record. Granted, my moving is not due to being unable to fit into a dept. It’s just because there are so many depts that need fixing at the University. It’s actually quite sad, especially since UIUC used to be such a leading university for IT related things. It’s amazing how far they have fallen behind by simply not doing anything.
Here I am, sitting in my office sweating with the windows open and the window mounted A/C units running. And people wonder why the University doesn’t have any money. Maybe it’s because they don’t spend a little money initially, only to blow wads of cash later. All I’m asking for is a simple thermostat, but I suppose that’s what I get for being forced to work in an old dormitory. Oh well, it won’t last much longer…
As a coworker said today:
“I thought u were gonna be liek the BRC bought this toaster and although there is an AD account for the toaster, the GPO has the security filtering set wrong, and there’s this SHITTY ldap code that doesnt handle recursion of groups… so NO ONE can toast their fucking english muffing and we’re about to be paged about it.”
It’s funny because it’s true.
Yesterday I had a meeting with the boss, and I found out exactly what’s going on. I’ll be working half-time at both Architecture and EWS (I’ll save you the links for these, since I included them in the last post about this). Apparantly at both depts I’ll be using my Group Policy and MSI mojo to make things run a little smoother. Yes, that’s right, my GPO and MSI skills are being whored out to other DS run departments.
I can see why this is done, but in all honesty, nothing that I’ve learned about GPO’s and MSI’s has been difficult. The only true advance knowledge I have about the stuff is actually using them. Otherwise, you could just as easily read a book and setup a test machine to play with. I just find it funny.
I think I’d rather jump into something totally new, but this will be nice, especially at EWS, because they are essentially starting all over. They used to use a eDirectory and Zenworks, but they are now migrating to use AD and the free tools for machine administration and package deployment that come along with AD. From what I gather they really don’t have any experience with AD stuff at all. So, hopefully, I’ll be setting up what DIA is like from scratch there. At Architecture, they have labs that they want fairly automated, like what we have here at DIA. That shouldn’t be too hard, since everything can be done via GPO.
I’m looking forward to the move, but as I’ve said before, I still have my reservations.
**Update**
The more I thought about this post, the more I sorta want to change my opinion. I’ve sorta realized that this is indeed how businesses work. It’s not really about knowing how to do something or not, it’s more about how you do it and that you’ve done it. Like I said before, anybody can read about GPO’s and MSI’s and making their lives easier. However, I’ve actually helped implement a system that uses these technologies fairly seamlessly. I can see why someone would want me to come in and help. It’s not that they can’t, it’s just that, since I’ve already done it, it will be easier for me and make the user experience better.
Well, from what I’ve heard “through the grapevine,” it looks as if there is a chance of me moving to three different deptartments: Food Science & Human Nutrition, Engineering Workstations, or Achitecture. Apparantly, I’ll be doing a half-time position at 2 of these. Which 2, however, has yet to be figured out (at least, that’s the last I heard).
Of course, I haven’t heard any of this from my actual boss. I’ve heard it 3rd hand from my Unit Contact at DIA.
But I won’t bother you all with a fun topic about that :) Instead I’ll talk about the beast that is half-time. When I worked for
Benteler Automotive I essentially worked half-time at Goshen, IN and Fort Wayne, IN. Well, actually it was more 3/4 time at Goshen, and 1/4 time at Fort Wayne. Talk about a pain. Granted, most of my time was spent in Goshen, because they seemed to have all the problems (also 3x the users), but working out a plan to hit problems in both locations became strenuious at times. And then, if there was only a few things to do in Goshen, my boss would ask me to stay there in case other things cropped up while I was away, essentially taking my time away from the Fort Wayne plant. Now, I understand that things will be different here at the University, since both depts will be have me for half my time no matter what. And since each dept here is run so differently (especially the 3 that are my possibilities), it’s going to be totally shifting gears when going from one to the other. Hopefully I’ll be able to divy my time up by days (i.e. 2 full days at one dept, 2 full days at another, etc), instead of half a day one place, half a day another. I don’t know how well I’d be able to handle that.
I’ll guess I’ll just wait and see. Hopefully I’ll hear something about it before the 1st of July (when I’m apparantly moving).
What’s that you say, move depts? Yes, it’s true, I’ve talked to the boss’m and have asked to be moved out of the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics (DIA). Yeah, yeah, yeah, sit there with your mouth open. I know that DIA is definitely one of the best depts on campus, and that you get all the perks when you work here, but alas, I still want to move out. As I see it, there’s no challenge left in DIA. Thanks to Nick and Bud’s foresight, and my ability to continue what Bud was trying to do after he left, DIA works as a well oiled machine. In my mind, there’s also no need for 3 full time IT employees there either, especially since there are 5 students doing a lot of the day-to-day work.
The only hard part that I’m going to have to work with is moving out of working in a “business” scenario, into an “academic” scenario. Everyplace that I’ve worked worked at, including DIA, has been either a business or run like a business. When I say business, I mean that computer users are just that, users on their machines, not administrators, and that the IT department controls computers and other IT related devices (networking, mobile computing, etc). Now, here in the world of academia, it doesn’t necessarily work that way. In many of the depts on campus, professors and other users of computers are administrators. That means they can install what ever they want, whenever. There is no baseline for what machines should be, or where they come from. The machines are essentially stand alone machines with not centralization at all. Now, for those of you that are systems administrators, I’m sure you’re just cringing right now when I say this. Hell, I’m cringing. Being a systems admin of a dept like this is like trying to battle an x headed dragon, when x is the number of machines and/or users you’re trying to administer.
Also, many of the academic units don’t have any money, or at least they don’t feel like they have any money, that can be spent on IT related goods. Things such as centrally housed servers with user data, backups, machine patching, and anti-virus goes overlooked in many of these departments because nobody has shown them the light, so to speak. A certain part of me wants to be that person who guides them into IT bliss, but another part, the part that hears the horror stories from other academic system admins, runs in fear because it knows that it’s not going to be easy at all.
However, I definitely don’t want to spend my time doing nothing here at DIA. When I worked hourly at various different IT jobs, if I wasn’t doing anything, I’d just go home. To me there was no point in sitting around doing nothing, when I could be doing other stuff at home. Granted, I wasn’t being paid to do other things at home, but I guess that didn’t really matter to me. I still feel the same way now, but since I’m salaried, I’d feel even more guilty just going home than I do trying to find work to do.
I’ve talked to my supervisors, and they are aware that I want to move. And hey, that was one of the perks of joining DS. You’re not stuck in one place the whole time if you don’t want to. There’s opportunity to move around.
Hopefully I’ve made the right decision.