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What do you do at work/school?

Back Working!!

Back Working!!

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Well moving on from all that I've being working since January 2nd this year at one of the massive housing estates (just out the back of Burke! ;-)

I've just being promoted to Chief Technical Weed Supervisor :-o Who's position is to co-ordinate and form a strategy of keeping weeds (or unwanted plants) out.

The problem with this position (being an estate) is the number of complaints recieved from local residents, rest assured work has commenced on areas which present the most problems, eventually the results will leave areas looking good for them.

Personally in my position I try to use the friendlest methods to the environment possible, I hate using Herbicides because they don't offer any permanent solution, the area is very Windy and when combined with spray makes a serious health hazard.
 
CP/M User;51572[FONT=Courier New said:
I've just being promoted to Chief Technical Weed Supervisor :-o Who's position is to co-ordinate and form a strategy of keeping weeds (or unwanted plants) out.[/FONT]
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Hah!

Dude - you're TOO much. Chief Technical Weed Supervisor. :mrgreen::mrgreen:

Heh.

Well - I never added my 2 cents:

I, obviously, work for a Cruise Line IT department.

Title says, and I quote:
"Ship Systems Analyst/Programmer"

Except, I don't analyze squat, and the only thing I program, is my PDA or TV remote. I was always partial to "IT Ship Systems Engineer," as that was a good, generic catch-all!

'nuff said on that...

Basically, I support the IT behind the Casinos on our 7 newest ships, and have now inherited the logistics/maintenance system, ballast control system (I THINK that's what it is) and NOx monitoring system.

<raising glass to toast> Here's to no sleep!


Tony
 
Heh - don;t even know if that exists.

You should SEE what slot machine manufacturers go through for approvals.
Even on the Casino Mgmt Software side!!!

Those gaming commissions are HARD on them, and they spend ALOT of time with the machines/software doing testing!


T
 
I wasn't back in the board when this thread was posted, or else I would have pointed out that a MSDN subscription is for one and only one developer. If you take a MSDN subscription and install it all across the company, MS gets pissed. How anal are they?

I remember in a MSDN FAQ back in 2001, it said (paraphrased): I have a legitimate copy of Windows 2000 installed on my machine. I was prompted to insert the Win2k CD, but I'm not sure where it is. My coworker has a MSDN subscription. Can I use his CD.

Answer: No.

Yes, they are that anal about them.




dreddnott said:
I think most of you have figured out my line of work already, at least if you've read my thread in the Collections forum.

I'm not only in charge of reclamation and refurbishment, but I was immediately saddled with the co-responsibility (along with eBay guy) of administering all of the office computers (which are Dells made from spare parts, not one actually paid for new), the main server (got root, well, Administrator password on it anyways), and the DSL modem/router (so they can blame us instead of crappy Verizon for any problems). I also have the pleasure of building the company's new servers and testing machines (using Netfinity (xSeries), eServer, and Poweredge boxes).

When I arrived to work at the warehouse, the network was a hopeless spaghetti tangle mess with 10BaseT hubs all over the place and about a half-mile of CAT5 going nowhere. A week or so after my supervisor quit to work for Geek Squad (making $1/hour more...), eBay guy and I single-handedly (double-handedly?) rewired the entire network, routed and crimped the cables ourselves, and reduced the LAN components to a single 26-port 10/100 switch (2 of the ports are gigabit!). Downtime for personnel was 5 or 10 minutes.

Then about a month later I realised that although we had an MSDN subscription, with a big fat folder of DVDs full of ISOs for everything Microsoft makes now, we were using HACKED copies of Windows XP Professional with fake serials and cracked activation DLLs on *every* office and warehouse computer. The only legitimate one was the original server! So I took it upon myself to use our legitimate copy of Windows 2000 on all of the company's PCs...this involved making a master hard drive image, copying it to ten others and standardising the hardware in all of the Dells to match. Needless to say, it was a bit more efficient than crashy XP with unlimited permissions. All the computers really need to do is act as an MS Terminal Server client for Remote Desktop work.

So far I've received nothing from the company besides my mandatory 3-month $0.25 raise from the California minimum wage of $6.75. Pearls before swine, I guess.

In fact, on top of all this garbage, it looks like I'll be setting up the company's MS Exchange server when we migrate from off-site e-mail to on-site. At least it'll be on one of the nifty boxes I've built them - either the Netfinity with 15 drives in 3 channels (RAID5'ed) or maybe the xSeries, with 6GB of RAM...I might even be able to put in a purchase request for the 3 additional Xeon 700 processors that machine needs...I practically had to beg for a $200 UPS, even though the power went out every day for about two months! We lose it every week or so now, and it's mostly to them tinkering with the new panel and not so much the breakers overheating. Last week in fact they pulled the ground wire for the upstairs box (where I work) and I lost a UPS and a surge suppressor. Blammo.

Needless to say I'm looking forward to my second interview with a local elementary school district for Artist-in-residence, or music teacher, which pays $18/hour, and only 30 hours per week, 9 to 3, instead of 40 hours per week, 7 to 3:30 (I only get a 1/2 hour lunch here). My best bud from college choir has the job currently and recommended me, so I'm hoping for the best.
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Sharkonwheels wrote:

Hah!

Dude - you're TOO much. Chief Technical Weed Supervisor. :mrgreen::mrgreen:

Heh.

But that's what I am, what do you mean by "Too much", I'm paid Too much or I do Too much work? The job doesn't exactly give me an instant house Downtown Burke, though at least I'm not begging for Money!

Guess the joke is the Supervisor bit - this Supervisor has no staff to manage - so this Supervisor manages themselves! :-o Guess that's for the best since the only way to get this job done properly is to do it yourself! I have a rival though in "The Waterboy", it's their job to get the plants into the garden beds. Their problem seems to be getting enough mulch around the plants - it's ridiculous how little they use - might as well plant the weeds instead of plants.

Well - I never added my 2 cents:

I, obviously, work for a Cruise Line IT department.

Title says, and I quote:
"Ship Systems Analyst/Programmer"

Except, I don't analyze squat, and the only thing I program, is my PDA or TV remote. I was always partial to "IT Ship Systems Engineer," as that was a good, generic catch-all!

'nuff said on that...

That would be pretty cool to get a free trip with your job - I wonder though how you would get away with looking down at a screen on a boat though - I always get sea sick if I look down on a boat (I guess a good deal of people would though).
 
I think Sharky thought the job title was too much fun to take seriously. It is not like you would print business cards that say "Chief Technical Weed Supervisor" on them? I like how you describe you have a rival in "The Waterboy". In my mind I can see a pastich of the 1960's Batman series where you are "Weedman" in green tights, stopping Waterboy from doing evil deeds to the city gardens.
 
carlsson wrote:

I think Sharky thought the job title was too much fun to take seriously. It is not like you would print business cards that say "Chief Technical Weed Supervisor" on them?

The only place I could imagine anybody doing business cards saying "Chief Technical Weed Supervisor" is at a "Friends group". Although people there wouldn't need to know about your "Supervisor" status (why would they care), "Chief Technical Weed Controller" would have more relevance, though us bushies don't really need business cards to advertise ourselves, we simply show people what we do in our work.

I like how you describe you have a rival in "The Waterboy". In my mind I can see a pastich of the 1960's Batman series where you are "Weedman" in green tights, stopping Waterboy from doing evil deeds to the city gardens.

Yeah, we're just missing the Batcave! :-D
 
I now do contract work for a computer manufacturer at the local airplane plant. Most of my day is spent moving machines around and configuring them for end users. I've now got to work to get back up to the standard level that I was at before I took that damn video game job, never again am I taking anything from Aerotek.
 
Mad-Mike wrote:

I now do contract work for a computer manufacturer at the local airplane plant. Most of my day is spent moving machines around and configuring them for end users. I've now got to work to get back up to the standard level that I was at before I took that damn video game job, never again am I taking anything from Aerotek.

May I ask what happened with the Video Game Job?

Sounds a bit of a shame really, I've been a bit fortunate in that while I've had many jobs I feel there have only been a couple of times (when I was doing all sorts of work in 2004) where my wages were lower than the previous jobs I had.

Now I seem to confident as to how much my line of work actually pays, there was some website somewhere which allows you to look up the type of work you're doing and how much it generally pays.

Some jobs are worse than others and some are incredibly low paying for the amount of hard physical work they bring.

CP/M User.
 
Mad-Mike said:
I now do contract work for a computer manufacturer at the local airplane plant. Most of my day is spent moving machines around and configuring them for end users. I've now got to work to get back up to the standard level that I was at before I took that damn video game job, never again am I taking anything from Aerotek.
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Aerotek the IT contracting company?
If so, down here in S. Florida, they switched their name to Tek Systems MANY years ago.

They found me some pretty good contracts, and a couple contract-to-perm gigs.

T
 
Wow.. ok long thread but we have new folks and I've been curious about a few of ya anyway. So what do you all do for a living? If you already posted, have things changed since? To keep it a little vintage has your experience or memories with vintage computers affected your current choice profession or current job/talents?

Guess I missed the thread or got caught up with the misconstrued comments originally. I've done a few jobs from programming, to helpdesk/support, and now I'm more server oriented but also support some desktops if they need it as well as some network and security configuration and support. It's an odd field where we all do quite a lot for a smaller team, so Windows server and linux (here it's usually gentoo) maintenance, implementation and all the rest.

Since I was a kid with our first home computer that my dad brought home when I was 5 or 6 it was the most interesting thing in the world to me. I couldn't believe how it would seemingly talk to my dad and interact back with him from keystrokes that I didn't understand. I immediately wanted to know everyone about how it worked so yes, that lead me to my current career path although I'd truly like to go into full time computer security but that's a tough step to make.

How about the rest of ya current posters?
 
My main job is as a corporate and technical writer for an IT consulting firm, a position I've had for just over three years. I also am a freelance writer (articles, mostly) and have had a few books published with major publishers (Vintage Games, and Wii Fitness for Dummies), with more presently in the proposal stage. I'm also working as a writer and producer on a feature film documentary on the history of videogames for Lux Digital Pictures. This Sunday I should be interviewing Nolan Bushnell in NYC for the film. That pretty much sums up my freelance activities.

Certainly my interest in/passion for both videogames and computers from a very young age have influenced me in a wide variety of ways, including my career path. I also spend way too much of my money on a large videogame and computer collection...
 
DOS-Master said:
I used to design burgalur alarms for black and decker but now I work for unisys and erase old files all day
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One of my coworkers use to work for them (Unisys) back when it was Burroughs on the large systems. It is interesting listening to him tell stories of how things use to be, and how you had to use an oscilliscope to test anything.
 
I currently work as a sr software developer for a major software company. I worked for a smaller firm that got bought in 2007. I've worked in software for the last 25 years. Prior to that I worked as an electronics tech on mainframe disk drives.
 
strollin said:
I currently work as a sr software developer for a major software company. I worked for a smaller firm that got bought in 2007. I've worked in software for the last 25 years. Prior to that I worked as an electronics tech on mainframe disk drives.
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Well i kind of have two jobs and go to school.. I go to Arizona State for Engineering part time, while i work at T-Mobile doing sales and whatever else needs done, and i also do pc repair/system building as my own side business. If i can get the pc repair a little more steady, i could actually break off t-mobile and just do that, but the benefits at T-Mobile are too good for me to do that anytime soon.
 
Just a college student.

I worked at a place for a month during Christmas break from Dec 09-Jan 10. The company didnt have any money so they couldnt pay anybody and they were on there last crutch. I have a scholarship to go to school so I really wasnt hurting. I decided to spend a large percentage of my online gambling winnings and started buying a bunch of old stuff I found at the company (just to see if I could help them out). I was really only interested in old (relatively speaking) nintendo games/systems. There wasnt too many video game other than Atari stuff and pinball machines so I ended up buying those. A few days later I found some oscilloscopes..... I had no idea what Oscilloscopes were and I ended up buying about 25 of them (all for around $10 each). I had no clue about anything I bought but I saw calibration stickers from 1978 and just bought what ever I could (most of it was older engineering equipment). I've always collected old football cards so it really wasnt something totally out of the blue - rather I just expanded my collection of "vintage" items. I bought a bunch of TRS-80 "keyboards" one day (only to later find out that they were actually the computer), so I decided to shell out money for everything else TRS-80 related. I thought Heathkits "looked cool/old" so ended up buying those as well. Whats funny is i've never really been into computers/electronic equipment/etc up until I started to take a look at what I had. I remember that our company needed an additional $500 to pay some back rent they owed, so I ended up selling the first item I ever had.. on ebay, and it was an Atari Cat Box.. almost enough to pay the back rent for that week.

I've never really checked what I had because I left the company (because the semester break was over) and I went back to college (and I go out of state to attend college so I was never to check what I had during college). I came back from college about a month ago and just recently started to take a look of what I ended up buying.
 
These days I'm primarily a computer security consultant. I've been doing Windows Server administration, and OS/2 server administration before that, for about 12 years. I also have some Unix and Linux experience, but that's always been my secondary role, at most. I can do desktop support in an emergency. I've supported networks of up to 1,000 computers and up to 20,000 users.

I'm a published author, but haven't published anything computer related since 2001 or 2002. I published a book for O'Reilly in 2000 about tweaking Windows 95/98 for performance. But the timing was all wrong so it didn't sell very well. We really should have done that book about Windows 2000 instead, in retrospect, because the power users I was trying to reach moved in that direction really fast. I thought I did some pretty cool stuff in that book though. I showed how to edit INF files and repackage CABs and get Windows 95 to install in as little as 17 megs of disk space, with no MSN, no MS Mail client, and none of the other non-essential yet un-optional components.
 
I've really got two jobs. My "day" job is working for an educational consortium (BOCES) in New York State, and what we do is offer managed IT services to school districts. I've been directly or indirectly responsible for school system networks with as few as 10 machines up to a thousand machines. In the consortium we're a really big team, so we're not completely responsible end to end, just usually whatever is on the district side of the router. My night job is being the proprietor and president of a services company. We've done all sorts of things over the years, computers have been a baseline for all of it and we do consulting work for non-government & residential systems, but primary focus now on political activism.
 
If I had replied when this thread first started, the answer would have been "run a small on-site computer consulting company".

Now it's "work as lead support engineer at an enterprise software firm".
 
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