So here I sit...
...or rather, lay. A lot has happened in this past week (though it's been even longer since my last journal entry) and I feel the need to share. Let’s see, I bought a nice little mp3 player, I started and finished my first week at my summer job, I got a nice T40 IBM laptop for the summer (for my job), hmmm what else...well I’ll save other stuff for my next entry, let’s cover this stuff first.
(NOTE: I wrote this Saturday night.)
MP3 Player, Sunday: I really wanted to get an MP3 player. I’ve had a nice CD player for a few years that could play MP3’s that were on the CD and it’s awesome because I was able to get 800MB’s of MP3’s versus the 32-64 offered for so long. The only problem is that at the heart of it, it is still a CD player. It has moving parts, limited skip protection and is the size of 6 or so CD’s stacked together.
I finally gave in to my urge to use up money and decided to buy the MP3 player this weekend. I must say, it was quite an impulse buy. Oddly enough, I researched my impulse buy before I bought it. While there are many great players out there that can hold gigabytes of data, those all use small hard drives and can skip or encounter errors if they get jostled around too much. The i-pod was out of the price range I was looking at anyways, and the 4gig nomad just didn’t seem worth the $200.
Anyways, instead of getting a 128 or 256 player that would cost me upwards of $150, I decided to get a nice small 64MB one with an SD/MMC slot for expansion. I figure I can get at least 320MB total for less than $120. I picked up my player at Wal-Mart of all places. I was looking for an older model and places like Best Buy didn’t carry it, naturally. I’ve been using it off and on for the past week and the little AAA that supplies it with power is still going strong.
As a side, through my searches I did take notice of the nice little ditty that came out just the other day that had Bluetooth integrated into it so that it could be used as a cordless (though the thing hangs around your neck and you have to run the headphones up to your ears, laugh) headset.
My Summer Job, Monday: So I started my new job last Monday. The official title is “IT Clerk” but I think “gopher” is a more appropriate term :p Really, I’m there to help out with minor computer problems so that the other guys that work there can take care of more major network and server problems. I think it’s working well and I like the people I work with.
The company is call eP-Solutions and it’s an “oil company” in that it supplies the parts to the companies that actually to the drilling and pumping of oil. It has sites all over the globe ranging from Venezuela to the Mid-East to South Africa and Asia. It’s a continually growing company and as such has a network that is both increasing in size and complexity. They use an AS/400 server for a lot of their company specific processing and then have a rack server for each unique eP-Solution satellite location. Where I’m working is the center of operations for them.
There are three guys there to make sure everything computer related keeps running. Sean is “the boss” out of the three guys. Rey keeps the AS/400 running and fields the many problems that user have with it. I share an “office” with Drew, also a very knowledgeable fellow. Between those three the entire network is taken care of, all computer problems from within the building are handled, and all tech problems from every satellite location are handled (though they mostly only call with big problems the change in time zones around the world makes their nightly calls a bit troublesome).
I was hired to help reduce the work load of day to day problems that these guys handle so that they can work on more important projects, like scaling the network up for all of the new company growth around the world. As an example of my duties I have gone out and fixed or replaced several broken phones, imaged and set up several laptops for new employees (including my own 1.5 GHz Centrino powered IBM T40 *drool*), replace/added/removed ram/hard drives/sound cards, helped people with minor network problems (permissions and mapping new network drives mostly), and eaten doughnuts.
That’s right, as an “IT guy” I consider it a responsibility of my job to eat doughnuts :)
Laptop, Monday: So as part of the job I get to use this swank new laptop. Let’s see, some specs…
Processor: Intel Pentium M Centrino 1.5GHz
Hard Drive: 35 Gigs
RAM: 512 Megs
15 inch screen
*drool* It’s pretty nice. I’m using it to type this up right now. I’m probably going to use it during free time at home to also edit video (and maybe watch some movies).
Ugh…I have so much more on mind, but I’m tired and want sleep and this is probably long enough as it stands.
(NOTE: I wrote this Saturday night.)
MP3 Player, Sunday: I really wanted to get an MP3 player. I’ve had a nice CD player for a few years that could play MP3’s that were on the CD and it’s awesome because I was able to get 800MB’s of MP3’s versus the 32-64 offered for so long. The only problem is that at the heart of it, it is still a CD player. It has moving parts, limited skip protection and is the size of 6 or so CD’s stacked together.
I finally gave in to my urge to use up money and decided to buy the MP3 player this weekend. I must say, it was quite an impulse buy. Oddly enough, I researched my impulse buy before I bought it. While there are many great players out there that can hold gigabytes of data, those all use small hard drives and can skip or encounter errors if they get jostled around too much. The i-pod was out of the price range I was looking at anyways, and the 4gig nomad just didn’t seem worth the $200.
Anyways, instead of getting a 128 or 256 player that would cost me upwards of $150, I decided to get a nice small 64MB one with an SD/MMC slot for expansion. I figure I can get at least 320MB total for less than $120. I picked up my player at Wal-Mart of all places. I was looking for an older model and places like Best Buy didn’t carry it, naturally. I’ve been using it off and on for the past week and the little AAA that supplies it with power is still going strong.
As a side, through my searches I did take notice of the nice little ditty that came out just the other day that had Bluetooth integrated into it so that it could be used as a cordless (though the thing hangs around your neck and you have to run the headphones up to your ears, laugh) headset.
My Summer Job, Monday: So I started my new job last Monday. The official title is “IT Clerk” but I think “gopher” is a more appropriate term :p Really, I’m there to help out with minor computer problems so that the other guys that work there can take care of more major network and server problems. I think it’s working well and I like the people I work with.
The company is call eP-Solutions and it’s an “oil company” in that it supplies the parts to the companies that actually to the drilling and pumping of oil. It has sites all over the globe ranging from Venezuela to the Mid-East to South Africa and Asia. It’s a continually growing company and as such has a network that is both increasing in size and complexity. They use an AS/400 server for a lot of their company specific processing and then have a rack server for each unique eP-Solution satellite location. Where I’m working is the center of operations for them.
There are three guys there to make sure everything computer related keeps running. Sean is “the boss” out of the three guys. Rey keeps the AS/400 running and fields the many problems that user have with it. I share an “office” with Drew, also a very knowledgeable fellow. Between those three the entire network is taken care of, all computer problems from within the building are handled, and all tech problems from every satellite location are handled (though they mostly only call with big problems the change in time zones around the world makes their nightly calls a bit troublesome).
I was hired to help reduce the work load of day to day problems that these guys handle so that they can work on more important projects, like scaling the network up for all of the new company growth around the world. As an example of my duties I have gone out and fixed or replaced several broken phones, imaged and set up several laptops for new employees (including my own 1.5 GHz Centrino powered IBM T40 *drool*), replace/added/removed ram/hard drives/sound cards, helped people with minor network problems (permissions and mapping new network drives mostly), and eaten doughnuts.
That’s right, as an “IT guy” I consider it a responsibility of my job to eat doughnuts :)
Laptop, Monday: So as part of the job I get to use this swank new laptop. Let’s see, some specs…
Processor: Intel Pentium M Centrino 1.5GHz
Hard Drive: 35 Gigs
RAM: 512 Megs
15 inch screen
*drool* It’s pretty nice. I’m using it to type this up right now. I’m probably going to use it during free time at home to also edit video (and maybe watch some movies).
Ugh…I have so much more on mind, but I’m tired and want sleep and this is probably long enough as it stands.