First day of new job, last day of old
Feb. 13th, 2006 02:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thewayneMy contract with the State of Arizona is officially ovah. I fixed a program that got screwed up, touched up the documentation, and re-ran all of the programs that I'd written and fixed little syntactical bugs when I worked them over to support running multiple years more cleanly. My boss screwed up my previous check by not getting my timesheet faxed in to Atlanta early enough, and I screwed up by not emailing in said hours, so my previous pay check was shorted 20 hours. Which means my check this week will be +20 hours, so it will be quite pleasant.
The same day that I found out my State job was over, Friday, was my first day working as a Lab Tech at NMSU-A. Basic computer help desk sort of stuff. Yeah, right! I walk in Friday noon wearing one of my Cisco polo shirts and Dockers and find out that we're tearing a room apart and re-wiring the network! WHEEE! And we're also replacing all the computers! Double WHEEE! Which I guess would be WHEEE! WHEEE!
Friday was tear-down and building a parts list of what we need to redo everything, then a co-worker and I went off to Home Depot and bought $350 worth of conduit, wall jacks, surface-mount boxes, cable ties, drill bits, flex-line, and two extension cords. Also some screws and drill bits. You'll notice that the list does not include Cat-6 network cables or terminators, we already had that. We got the old cables pulled out (quite a job and a nasty one at that!), most of the cable pulled, and 9 of the 21 PCs set up. Saturday we terminated and tested all of the cables that we pulled and I got most of the PCs at least on the desks where they were going. Sunday we finished up everything!
I had to haul probably a good third of those computers from elsewhere in the building. All I can say is Praise Buddha for the invention of LCD monitors! I would be utterly dead right now if I'd had to shlep 21 CRT monitors! I emerged relatively unharmed: I used my photography knee pads today, so no more knee damage, but I did a heck of a number on my pinky Friday, I think I caught the nail's edge on a texture plaster surface and it looks like I'm going to have a nice blister under one corner of the nail. It hurt like a bitch to type with over the weekend, tonight it seems much better.
We had some weirdness with the new keyboards and mice: both are wireless, so it took a bit of button-pushing to get them synchronized. A few minor problems here and there, such is expected. I was quite pleased when I terminated four cables and they all tested clean first time! Unfortunately our tester only checks for proper wiring, it's not a full frequency-sweep tester, so we're cabled correctly for Cat-6, but we're not really certified. Still, it should be good for at least 100 mb/s.
One interesting thing was that these new PCs did not have any PS/2 ports for keyboard and mice – they required USB keyboard & mice! That's very nice for working in closed areas, there's only two ways to plug in USB, so it's easy to get right quickly when you're feeling for the back of the PC and can't see too well. With the PS/2 connectors which were round, you could end up turning those all around and still not get them in correctly.
I did not expect to get thrown in the deep end quite so quickly! This was the first time outside of a classroom that I've done what we did. I did well in the class that I took last spring on network cabling and wiring, so I had some apprehension going into this. I'm pleased with the results, I picked up a couple of tricks, and I learned how they do things here. Fortunately we don't have any other cabling jobs in the near-term. My work days went back and forth, the job announcement was Friday 12-8, Saturday 12-8, Sunday 12-4. Now it's Friday 3-8, Saturday 1-8, Sunday 12-8. That will work quite well this week as Russet and I (and Celeste) are going to Albuquerque Thursday for the day.
Well, I think that's enough boredom to inflict on people for now. ;-)
The same day that I found out my State job was over, Friday, was my first day working as a Lab Tech at NMSU-A. Basic computer help desk sort of stuff. Yeah, right! I walk in Friday noon wearing one of my Cisco polo shirts and Dockers and find out that we're tearing a room apart and re-wiring the network! WHEEE! And we're also replacing all the computers! Double WHEEE! Which I guess would be WHEEE! WHEEE!
Friday was tear-down and building a parts list of what we need to redo everything, then a co-worker and I went off to Home Depot and bought $350 worth of conduit, wall jacks, surface-mount boxes, cable ties, drill bits, flex-line, and two extension cords. Also some screws and drill bits. You'll notice that the list does not include Cat-6 network cables or terminators, we already had that. We got the old cables pulled out (quite a job and a nasty one at that!), most of the cable pulled, and 9 of the 21 PCs set up. Saturday we terminated and tested all of the cables that we pulled and I got most of the PCs at least on the desks where they were going. Sunday we finished up everything!
I had to haul probably a good third of those computers from elsewhere in the building. All I can say is Praise Buddha for the invention of LCD monitors! I would be utterly dead right now if I'd had to shlep 21 CRT monitors! I emerged relatively unharmed: I used my photography knee pads today, so no more knee damage, but I did a heck of a number on my pinky Friday, I think I caught the nail's edge on a texture plaster surface and it looks like I'm going to have a nice blister under one corner of the nail. It hurt like a bitch to type with over the weekend, tonight it seems much better.
We had some weirdness with the new keyboards and mice: both are wireless, so it took a bit of button-pushing to get them synchronized. A few minor problems here and there, such is expected. I was quite pleased when I terminated four cables and they all tested clean first time! Unfortunately our tester only checks for proper wiring, it's not a full frequency-sweep tester, so we're cabled correctly for Cat-6, but we're not really certified. Still, it should be good for at least 100 mb/s.
One interesting thing was that these new PCs did not have any PS/2 ports for keyboard and mice – they required USB keyboard & mice! That's very nice for working in closed areas, there's only two ways to plug in USB, so it's easy to get right quickly when you're feeling for the back of the PC and can't see too well. With the PS/2 connectors which were round, you could end up turning those all around and still not get them in correctly.
I did not expect to get thrown in the deep end quite so quickly! This was the first time outside of a classroom that I've done what we did. I did well in the class that I took last spring on network cabling and wiring, so I had some apprehension going into this. I'm pleased with the results, I picked up a couple of tricks, and I learned how they do things here. Fortunately we don't have any other cabling jobs in the near-term. My work days went back and forth, the job announcement was Friday 12-8, Saturday 12-8, Sunday 12-4. Now it's Friday 3-8, Saturday 1-8, Sunday 12-8. That will work quite well this week as Russet and I (and Celeste) are going to Albuquerque Thursday for the day.
Well, I think that's enough boredom to inflict on people for now. ;-)
