Andrew Hale: IT Talk & Other Topics

So, you want a motorcycle? Got the need for speed? Maybe you just wanna cruise and feel a bit of wind in your face , right? Whatever your reason(s) may be for wanting to get your two-wheeled beast of your choice, there are plenty of differences between bikes and cars. According to the Motorcycle Safety Foundation, the primary differences between cars and motorcycles are stability and vulnerability. In the real-world, there's a few other differences worth noting.

My organization had an awards show today. They gave out milestone awards for people working 5s of years, for people that went "above and beyond", people that had perfect attendance, people that took the most training programs last semester, snappiest dresser... you get the point.

I'd like to discuss a new form of energy that I believe my organization is harnessing. In my department, I feel like I understand how things work. Not just the machines and policies and such but just the general flow of work. The NOC, where I work, is the first round of help. We're akin to emergency dispatchers. We'll help however we can but it's usually outside of our scope so it's our job to get information about the problem and pass that info along to the proper group. If it's a network/server problem, notify the Admins. If it's specifically a security issue, notify the security Admins. More often than not, it's a staff IT problem so we create a ticket and pass it along to our Support guys who contact the end-user and handle it from there. As NOC, we also support the other departments where we can. We run reports for the Admins, assist a student-run team designed to help other students connect to the campus network in the dorms or the wireless, and we...