So Much Has Changed…

Since my last post, there have been a lot of changes in my IT life.

Lets start at the beginning, shall we?

Hardware

My laptop, a Dell Inspiron 2650, dubbed “Miki-ni” was damaged on vacation. The laptop had been showing it’s age for a long time and was in dire need of some upgrades, and after the damage to the system (and since it was getting closer to needing a total system overhaul) I decided that it would just be a better move to replace the entire unit.

After shopping around, I decided that I wanted to go with a Mac. Apple was going to accept my student discount (Dell wouldn’t) and I have had very little opportunity to work with Macs, even at CyberMedics. So, the decision wasn’t all that difficult. I even got a free iPod out of the deal! (assuming that they will accept my rebate!)

Around that time, my Windows machines began to fall apart… Shortly before I ordered the MacBook, my Windows 2000 fileserver (which spends most of it’s day powered off now – damn energy bill) lost it’s primary storage drive: the E drive, at 250 GB! Fortunatly, it was just a damaged MFT index table that was easily repaired, although a few folders lost their names. Although, things could have gone much worse!

The same thing happened to my Inspiron shortly after I got my MacBook… Both were repaired by doing a check disk on the drive. Thankfully, I was able to use my CyberMedics resources for both computers when I needed them. My bosses even offered to assist me if it was something more serious.

Software

Needless to say, I’ve been experimenting with software of all types now that I’ve got the MacBook. I’ve been tinkering a little with Microsoft Office:mac 2004 and Front Row. I love Front Row, although I have yet to figure out how to start the application without using the Apple remote!

I’ve also started to go a little Mozilla crazy. I’ve got two versions of Firefox installed (versions 1.5 and 2.0rc), as well as SeaMonkey – I’m not much of a SeaMonkey fan though, it seems to be based on the old Mozilla Browser engine, and acts a lot like the old Mozilla browser, the pre-Firefox years. So, I haven’t been able to really warm up to it, but maybe one day I will.

Firefox 2.0 has been doing wonderful on my Mac so far. I haven’t tried it out on Windows (don’t have any Windows machines running), nor have I tried it out in Linux yet –Mac has the easiest software management!

Skills and Education

Other than that, my IT hardware support skills have been going up and up and up. CyberMedics usually gets mostly hardware support issues that I have to find solutions for, and after working there for five months now, two of which have been 25 to 50 hours per week, I have had a lot of time to spend figuring out things that I just have never ran across before.

This is a good place for me to be right now, since my classes are coming to an end and I really need to start getting that work experience going. I was really concerned about what kind of IT job I would be able to get after all those years of college, and having next to zero IT job skills, not to mention nearly having no work experience in general!

Well, aside from that, I think there isn’t much really to say about technical life in general. I’m still a big fan of Open Source Software and plan to stick with it for a long time, just because I have a Mac doesn’t mean that I’ll be using it for everything, also I do have a lot of things to experiment with at work for Linux solutions! I’m even trying to get the bosses to start pushing OSS a little more at work. We’ll have to see how that turns out in the end!