Computer techs/IT/whateverFollow

Kao, Brownduck, gbaji....

There be more, cap'n, but I dena ken who the scallywags be. AAARRGGH!










I have no idea why i wrote that in piratespeak.

I'm a software engineer. I do Windows and Linux drivers, libraries, and applications for high-performance analog data acquisition and playback systems.

I'm currently a phone monkey, working my way up the ladder slowly.

Alright expect random panic induced questions at 5am before an assignment is due.

I just got turned into one of two main Server / Network administration people as my primary job at other job. Before that it was Primary on the workstation side of things, along with software compliance, programming, and everythign else. Now I do all that, but I kick routers and switches and sling fiberchannel cards around more often. Lots of hands on, lots of ordering of expensive toys, lots of document writing, lots of codeing, lots of computer building and rebuilding, and now server building and rebuilding. I make the OS images. I used to make all the statewide benchmarking and acceptance trial documents for new hardware. I personally saved a certain state government just under 1 million dollars last year during a certain software audit by a certain Adobe corporation, so I like to think I have job security for a few years.

Right now i'm alternating between updating some of our woefully out of date server applications, and creating useful documentation for the thingies that my predecessor never documented. We had multiple production frontline file servers that hadn't had a firmware update in 5 years. Things like that have been fun to deal with. But basically it keeps things interesting, there is always something to be done.

Ironically my degree isn't even in IT, it's in Security and Intellegence studies.

IT Major and I work as a pc/network tech.

I dunno about those electrical engineering people. Seem kinda odd.

I'm pretty much a unix/linux centric IT guy. I've done everything from system imaging, to network analysis, to fileserver administration, to database server administration, to remote site integration/configuration, to specialty hardware management. What I mostly do these days is process integration, automation, and optimization. Basically, I figure out how to make some new system/hardware work in our engineering environment and figure out how to improve existing methodologies, and then figure out how to automate such things as much as possible.

If you need help figuring out how to take a 400 line perl/python script requiring OS/version specific modules which someone spent a month writing and turn it into a 20 line ksh script that'll run on every unix/linux system in the world natively, I'm your guy.

I've enjoyed the linux end of my learning so far. But its only one class out of the 3 years that even mentions it.

I've rarely used unix for programming at school. I took a bad ese introducting to c course which didn't touch unix. A c/c++ course and 3xjava courses that only used unix for handing in homework. I'm taking Advanced Programming in Unix/C now where we program in unix and compile on multiple hosts, usually unix based.

But yeah it's not as common as it used to be. We used Eclipse for java and visual studios for c/c++. I think we could have used unix for java/c/c++ programming if we wanted to.. but honestly why would you want to torture yourself?

I say become friends with EE people because computer engineering is basically EE with a side order of programming. There's a reason you can't double major in eletrical engineering and computer engineering. (At stonybrook at least)

The EET's at my school seem like a bunch of meatheads compared to the insecure, magic playing ubernerds that make up the Comp. Eng. techs. I fall somewhere in between.

I'm learning to love coding.
Well trying to anyways. Wrapping my head around AND, OR, XOR. etc. and binary calculations is still difficult though.

That's just because you suck at it.