Andrew Hale: IT Talk & Other Topics

Over the summer, I went on a job interview and I thought it went well. It started with a phone interview. Then, I further researched the organization. Then I had an in-person interview, followed by even more learning about the organization. After weeks of silence, I got a template email from the parent company's HR portal telling me I didn't get the job and wishing me luck in my search. I'm an adult and can handle not getting a job. Heck, they probably did me a favor. However, the notification process most companies follow feels rude.

When I started my new job in December, they had an abysmal hostname policy. It's in the process of being changed for the better thanks to a new IT Manager. The entire point of a hostname is to make a computer more identifiable to humans. How do computers identify each other? IP Addresses. Why? Humans aren't good at remembering numbers. We like names, so we give things names to be more easily identifiable. DO THE SAME THING TO YOUR SERVERS. 

My "Time Management" that I've been using for the last 27 years could be summed up with 2 words; "Wing it". I assume that since I'm a relatively smart person that I can just remember things. Well, I've never had a particularly impressive memory and I have forgotten things before. Birthdays, appointments, grocery items, assigned tasks at work... You get my point. Lately, I've been feeling like I'm spending so much brain-power trying to remember all I need to do that I hardly get anything done. It feels very odd to work for 8 hours and not think of a single thing you've completed. I knew that I needed a system but where to do I start?

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...

All credit goes to Scott Adams. I'm not claiming this as my own work but merely sharing due to the lolz and that it's kinda true sometimes.