Teach Me The Way

Posted: January 26th 2012 by Mike
Category: School
Tags: , ,

“I need to find a new place to live,” I’d tell myself during my early college years as I would awaken at 7:00 in the morning.  I’d stumble into the bathroom to take a shower, brush my teeth, put in my contacts, and once in a great while, shave.  I’d then get dressed, throw my backpack over my shoulder, and head down the stairs of my apartment building to begin the 50-minute drive up to school.

Deep down, I didn’t really mind the long commute when I weighed it against the long-term benefits it would bring.  Eager to free myself from the clutches of retail and land myself a “big boy job” in the IT field, I gave my classes the entirety of my efforts.  I enjoyed the things I learned, and actually didn’t even mind doing homework.  I’d often find that it would take great lengths of time to finish an assignment at home because I would get distracted by a particular topic contained in the textbook, and would spend hours researching and trying experiments on my own.

Although I truly enjoyed my early college experience, my attitude slowly began to deteriorate as I was forced to endure classes taught by less-than-qualified instructors.  There were numerous times that I would walk into a classroom, and the instructor would open with, “This isn’t really my area of expertise, but they needed someone to fill the slot, so I’m going to do the best I can here.  We’ll get through this.”  For the $70k price tag that was attached to my education, I expected much better than that.

I do remember one instructor, though, who stood out from all the rest.  Her name was Gwen.

I walked into my Microsoft Desktop Operating Systems class on the first day, and was bored to tears.  The instructor was a young guy with a soft monotone voice.  He was pleasant enough, and moderately knowledgeable, but he could put you to sleep in a matter of minutes.  It was one of the longest days ever, and I was dreading ten more weeks of the same.

It was later announced that there had been a shuffle in teaching staff, and there would be a brand new instructor taking over the class the following week.  No one really knew any details… other than it would be a woman.  This brought forth snickers from some of the guys in the class.

Men seem to primarily dominate the world of IT.  In my experience, it’s not often that you happen across a female systems or network engineer.  It’s also my experience, however, that when you do happen across a woman in one of these roles, she generally knows her shit.  Gwen certainly fit this description.

She was a smaller woman (much shorter than me) with long hair.  She stood at the front of the classroom when I walked through the door for round two the following week.  As soon as she opened her mouth, I knew things were going to be different.

Rather than just read random sentences from the book and skim over the topics, she actually engaged the class.  She was funny, and had us all cracking up within a matter of minutes.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but her little one-liners helped me remember a myriad of topics that likely would’ve faded from my memory otherwise.

I couldn’t believe all that I had learned by the time the class was over.  She had a way of explaining very in-depth technical subjects in a way that my grandmother could’ve understood them.  You could ask her anything, and she would have an answer for you.

I had the privilege of studying under her for three or four other courses during my first two years there.  I was so excited when I would look at my schedule and see her name next to one of the subjects.  She never failed to disappoint either.  Every time I walked into her class, I knew I was going to learn something new, and I was going to enjoy doing it.

As I’ve mentioned several times throughout my career as a blogger, my attitude toward my school soured in the later years.  Some of the fondest memories I have there, though, were in Gwen’s class.

There are a lot of teachers out there today.  There are some good ones.  I’d venture to say, though, that there are only a handful of truly great ones.  Gwen was one of the great ones.  She had a ton of knowledge and experience, and she loved to share it.  She was very good at it too.  I still remember some of her little jokes when I’m troubleshooting problems at work, and they still help me remember tricks that I would otherwise forget.

I still talk to Gwen every once in a great while.  We’re friends on LinkedIn, and she occasionally sends me a message asking how things are going, or inquires about openings with my employer, trying to help her students find good jobs just like I did.  I think it’s safe to say that those students are in good hands.

 

Did you ever have any great instructors who went out of their way to help you, or taught you something significant?  What made them stand out among the others?

Seeing The World

Posted: January 22nd 2012 by Mike
Category: Travel
Tags: , ,

They say that when you get older, you often become like your parents. I’d like to hope that’s accurate in a lot of regards, as my parents both have a lot of admirable qualities. My dad is a sociable goofball, a hard worker, has a perpetual thirst for knowledge, and will try anything twice. My mom is a very loving, sweet, practical lady who works her butt off, is exceptionally intelligent, and puts her family above all else. Why would I not want both sets of qualities?

I can tell you that one set of genes that I did inherit from my mother is the set related to her travel habits.  Mom has always been one to remain in the comforts of her own territory.  She prefers to be home in familiar surroundings with her loved ones.  I almost fainted when she made the 90-minute trip up here to see our new house.

I’ve never been much of a traveler.  In fact, mine and Julia’s two-week honeymoon was the longest I’d been away from home since… well… ever.  Even though I do enjoy seeing new places, there’s just something about sleeping in my own bed that appeals to me.

I’ve been asked, “If you could take a trip anywhere in the world for a week, with all expenses paid, where would you go?”

Although not an excursionist, I had an almost immediate response:  “Italy.”

Italy is full of cool things I’d like to see.  There’s the Colosseum, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Pantheon, Rome, Florence, Venice… the list goes on.  There is one thing, though, that stands out above all of these things:  the food.

The wife unit can attest to the fact that I can put away some food at the local Olive Garden.  Their foods are often based around chicken, pasta, marinara sauce, and cheese – all of which are gifts directly from Heaven.  I’ve always loved Italian food, but as with most ethnic cuisine, I’ve mostly experienced the “Americanized” version.

Every time I read blogs written by De-I about his fancy Italian dishes that he whips up from time to time, my mouth starts watering.  If I ever had an opportunity to visit “the motherland,” I think I would be extremely happy.  If this were an all-expenses paid trip (including meals), chances are, I’d probably gorge myself until I couldn’t move.

So there you have it.  If anyone happens to win a free trip to Italy, and you feel compelled to drag me along with you, I likely won’t complain.  Hopefully, I’d be able to make it back.  As I understand it, planes do have a weight limit.

 

Thanks to Julia for suggesting that I write about where I would go if I could take an all-expenses paid trip anywhere.
Have something you’d like to see?  Make a suggestion!

Yep Yep Yep Yep Yep Yep!

Posted: January 20th 2012 by Mike
Category: Awesomeness
Tags: ,

You don’t always appreciate things when you are younger.  As far as TV was concerned, I was reared on Sesame Street marathons.  I loved that show, although I never really found a lot of humor in it as a child.

That has since changed.  There are only a few things I remember about it, but these guys were always my favorites.  I randomly found them on YouTube the other day, and if I’m having a crappy day, I just watch this video and I find myself cracking up.

 


 

How can you not love a creature that hides behind its lower lip?  Thank you, Sesame Street Martians, for brightening what was otherwise an extraordinarily shitty day.

Ice Cream and Cacti

Posted: January 15th 2012 by Mike
Category: Purchases
Tags: , ,

I sat alone in the darkness of my office, staring at monster.com.  I’d been in a pissy mood all day, stressing over my dislike for my new job and what I was going to do about it… if anything.  I’m generally a pretty upbeat person, but the knowledge of my impending return to work on Tuesday was already sapping my joy.

Yesterday, when Julia and I were moving our rooms around, she had mentioned to me that I needed some foliage to liven up my office.  I gave her my sideways look and replied, “You do realize that any plant I touch is destined for death, right?”

“Well, we’ll just have to find one that you won’t kill.”

I responded, “It would either have to be made out of plastic… or a cactus.”

Today, as I was wallowing in my self-induced misery, Julia came in to try to cheer me up.  She trotted over to where I was sitting, gave me a big smile, and said, “What can I do to make you feel better?”

I mumbled something along the lines of, “I dunno.”

“You want some ice cream?” she asked me in a way that one might ask a five-year-old.

I grinned.  “Yeah.”

She went back in the other room to work on her sewing projects while I wrote a blog about my hatred for my new job.  It was surprisingly therapeutic to get it off my chest.  After hitting the “publish” button, I went into the bathroom to take a long, hot shower.  Few things in this world are better than that.

When I got out of the shower, I got dressed, sauntered into Julia’s sewing room, and tapped her on the shoulder.

“What’s up, buttercup?” she asked cheerfully.

“I want to go to Dairy Queen and get some ice cream,” I said in my little kid voice.  “Then, I want to get a cactus.”

We did exactly that.  Meet Eduardo.

Yes, he has a name.

He’s a “coral cactus,” which I’d never heard of before.  It took me a long time to pick him out.  Somehow, shopping for a cactus is like shopping for a pet.  Aside from trying to pick out the coolest-looking one, you have to read the labels and see what kind of care they need, how often they need to be watered, how big they get, etc.  Eduardo’s label said, “Care level: resilient.  Requires minimal attention.”

Sold.

He now sits proudly on top of my bookcase, where he should get decent light during the daytime hours.  I’m happy to report that he has been in my care for approximately one hour, and has not yet withered away.  It would seem that I’m making progress over my previous plant ownership experiences.

Regardless, you might want to say a prayer for ol’ Eduardo tonight.

Workplace Woes

Posted: January 15th 2012 by Mike
Category: Work
Tags:

I’m going to do something out of the norm here, but I want to solicit my blog audience for suggestions, because I’m kinda in a pickle.

Up until now, I’ve made it a point to not discuss details of my workplace on my blog.  You never know who might stumble across a post, so I’ve tried not to say anything that would be frowned upon.  I’m pretty sure I’ve never stated the name of the company for which I work, nor given any identifying information other than it’s a “hosting and network provider in my area,” of which there are many, so this ought to be ok.  Here it goes.

I hate my new job.

I’m somewhat frustrated about it too, because I feel like I was misled.  When the job was posted, it was posted as a Unix engineering position for my company’s top client.  Of course, there was your usual spiel about how networking skills would be required, there would be some off-hours work, yadda yadda yadda.  Whatever.  That’s going to be the case for pretty much any senior-level IT job anywhere.

What they didn’t tell me is that this job is about 90% networking and 10% Unix administration.

Let me be blunt.  I hate networking.  While, as I mentioned, there is some networking skill involved with every IT job, I don’t want to spend my day troubleshooting why some guy’s VPN connection in China is slow.  You want me to look at a server and troubleshoot that?  Fine.  Even troubleshoot why it can’t connect to something?  Fine.  But this whole business of working with circuit vendors and being responsible for the functionality of devices I don’t even have access to is for the birds.

While network engineering and systems engineering are closely related, they are two very different skillsets.  I chose to pursue the latter because that is what interests me.  The thought of having to learn in-depth network stuff makes me want to claw my eyes out.  It’s just sooooo boring.

Anyway, I’m completely unqualified for the position I have accepted.  And while I have been under the wing of the guy I’m replacing, he will be leaving in a couple of weeks, and I will be on my own with no idea what I am doing.  Every time I think about it, it makes me sick to my stomach.

So I appeal to you good people.  What do you think I should do?  I’ve been in this role for about three weeks now, and I keep telling myself that I just need to give it a chance, because three weeks isn’t enough time to make a decision about something like this.  On the other hand, it’s pretty apparent to me that the day-to-day aspects of the role aren’t going to change.

I felt completely lost and useless when I accepted my previous position a couple of years ago as well.  There was a difference there, though.  I was actually excited about learning the intricacies of the new role.  This time, though, I’m dreading it.

When people have been in similar situations, and have asked me for advice, I’ve always told them that life is too short to spend every day doing something you hate.  If you want it to change, you have to change it yourself, suck it up, and make it into what you want it to be.

I have a marketable skillset, and admittedly, I’ve been browsing around today on monster.com, looking for something else.  I really don’t want to leave my present employer, as I’ve been there for five and a half years.  While that’s not an eon, it’s not really something I want to just throw away either.  I should mention, though, that once you accept a new job at my company, you are stuck there for a year before they will let you move.

So… what are your thoughts?  Am I just being a baby, and should I give it a chance?  Or do you think it’s ok to start looking for something else?  Opinions are welcome.

NASA Relocated

Posted: January 14th 2012 by Mike
Category: House
Tags: , ,

Today, Julia and I were feeling ambitious, so we switched rooms.

Our house has three bedrooms.  We have our bedroom, I have my office, and Julia has her new sewing room.  She’s pretty proud of her sewing room, and she’s been making good use of it since getting her sewing machine for Christmas.  She’s posted several of her latest works at her blog.  I have a feeling she’s probably going to write a similar post about her sewing room, so I’ll just show you my “new” office.

The layout of this other room works better for my office.  I have one of those L-shaped desks.  Julia did have one until I hijacked half of it and added it onto mine.  The U-shape made for an awkward layout in the other room, though.  (For the record, I did offer the other half of her desk back to her for use in her sewing room, but she declined.)

This morning, as the wife was working on reorganizing her sewing room, she was pacing in frustration, trying to find a good layout.  I hadn’t spent much time in there up until now, but the more I looked at it, the more I liked it.  After some discussion, we decided to switch rooms.

I’m worn out, but I’m really happy with the way it turned out.  Since I’ll probably be spending quite a bit of time in here, that’s important.

Standing in the doorway, looking in

Standing in the doorway, looking in

Corner

Closet

Full NASA mode (five monitors and four computers)

Oh Packet, Where Art Thou?

Posted: January 14th 2012 by Mike
Category: Technology
Tags:

I promise this will be my last geek post for a while.  My previous post just made me think of something that was too funny not to share.

Life is filled with many truths.  On a clear day, the sky will be blue.  If you jump into a swimming pool, you will get wet.  If you try to eat something straight from the oven, you will probably burn your mouth.

And… if you don’t know what you’re talking about, it’s better to keep your mouth shut than to pretend like you know it all.

I have a family member who supposedly messes around with computers.  He’s a self-proclaimed hacker (although he spells it “hack3r,” because it clearly makes him appear more knowledgeable and dangerous to the unsuspecting Internet community).  This is the same person who once gave me the most hilarious and utterly wrong explanation of the Linux operating system that I’ve ever heard.

Yeah, man. I mess around with computers myself here and there. The other day, I was actually thinking about installing Linux on my computer at home. You know Linux is way better because it has more RAM and stuff. I’m not really good at remembering all the commands, though, so that’s why I run it on Windows. You just have to click on it, and it does its thing.

As my career of choice revolves heavily around the aforementioned operating system, all I could do was stare at him blankly.  I was speechless.  Completely without speech.

Take my blog buddy, De-I, for instance.  Mr. D. has grown a successful, national business consulting firm.  The guy knows a lot about what it takes to run a successful business.  I, on the other hand, feel my eyes glaze over when I hear people talk about gross margins, capital expenditures, and equity partnerships.  (In fact, I just had to go Google “business terms” in order to write that sentence!)

If I were to approach De-I and start bragging to him about my business know-how, rattling off random terms that might not even make sense, I’d look like an utter fool to him.

In my previous post, I illustrated to you how routing works over networks.  Computers and network devices keep lists of “places to send people when they want something.”  In my picture, I showed how a packet of information hops from router to router until it reaches its destination.

There is actually a tool you can use called “traceroute” if you ever have a hankering to see the path your traffic is taking across the World Wide Web.  It looks something like this.

Some IP and host information has been obscured for privacy's sake.

The list of names and IPs you see above shows me every network device that exists between me and my beloved Google.  Hop number one (192.168.1.1) is my home router.  It says, “Go talk to the next guy (10.167.64.1), and he’ll tell you where to go next.  This continues on down the line until I reach my destination on hop number 13.  Pretty simple, right?

The numbers in the middle tell me how long (in milliseconds) it took for each device to respond to me with its information.  This tool sends out three packets, which is why you see three different response times from each device.

Why would anyone care about this?  Well, if someone calls me up and says, “Hey Mike.  I can’t reach such-and-such device,” I can do a traceroute to it and find the point where devices stop responding.  This gives me a good idea of where to begin my search to find the problem.

Now that you are an expert on the traceroute utility, you can enjoy this video along with me.  Someone at work forwarded it to me one day, and I about peed my pants laughing.

LOL @ “tracer-T”
LOL @ “There are ten people looking at Google right now.”
LOL @ “Some people’s connection rises really good.”
LOL @ “That’s obviously a shared server.”
LOL @ “The last digit stands for ‘IP server connection number.’”
LOL @ “I can’t view it because my connection’s not as good as theirs.”

You all had better watch out for this guy!  You might get HaXX0r3d by him if you aren’t careful.  (It’s undetermined whether this guy posted this as a joke, or whether he was actually serious, but either way, I laughed until I had tears running down my face the first time I watched it.)

This guy and my relative would probably get along well.

 

Enjoy your weekend, everyone!  And I promise… no more geek posts for a while.  :)

Are You Smarter Than A Senior Engineer?

Posted: January 10th 2012 by Mike
Category: Technology
Tags: , ,

Nothing makes you feel quite as incompetent as being the new guy.  I’ve been in my new role for a couple of weeks now, and to put it mildly, I’ve felt pretty overwhelmed on many occasions.  There is so much to learn about my client’s setup, and there are many times that I don’t even know where to start.

That being said, nothing makes you feel better about yourself than trying to help a complete fool.

I have the ability to communicate with my client’s employees (all hundred-bajillion of them) over their IM system.  Today, I had the pleasure of dealing with a guy whom we will call “Splat.”

I talked to Splat for a bit before I started helping him with his problems.  He seemed like a pleasant enough fellow.  His company had just purchased some new servers, and we had set up accounts for everyone to use.  He told me he didn’t really care much about getting his set up, because as he proudly gloated, “he is a fourth-tier support guy, so chances are, he will rarely have to touch them.”

“Great,” I thought to myself.  “I’m a fourth-tier support guy as well.  This guy and I are going to bond.”

My regard for his range of knowledge was short-lived, though.  After about ten minutes or so, my messenger dinged again.  Splat was having some problems.

Pull up a chair, take out your notebooks, and get ready for a crash course in systems administration and TCP/IP networking.

 

Lesson One:  DNS

Every computer on the Internet has an IP address.  Yours… mine… Google’s… Facebook’s… etc.  Think of all the many websites you might visit in a day.  Each of them has a unique IP address that identifies them, just like your house has an address to tell the postal service where to deliver your stuff.  For example, Google’s IP address is:

74.125.225.116

That means that if you pull up a web browser, and type in http://74.125.225.116, Google will come up.  (Go ahead – try it!)

This is all well and good, but how in the world are we ever to remember all of the addresses for the hundreds of websites that we might visit?  [Fanfare] Enter DNS!

DNS (Domain Name Service) is the phone book of the Internet.  Say, for example, you want to call your great Aunt Mildred to thank her for the fruitcake she sent you for Christmas, but you don’t know her phone number off the top of your head.  You would whip out the ol’ phone book, look up her number, and call her.

Same deal with DNS.  Say you wanted to browse on over to niceboobs.com.  (As of the time of this writing, this website doesn’t exist.  Don’t get too excited.)  You’d type “niceboobs.com” into your web browser.  In the background, your computer would go out and ask a DNS server, “Yo – do you know the IP address of niceboobs.com?”  The DNS server would reply with the address of the requested website, and you’d be on your merry way.

I drew you a picture to illustrate.

Have I lost you yet?  No?  Good.

With your understanding of DNS, logic would dictate you that when you tell your computer which DNS server(s) it should talk to, you have to give it the actual IP address of the DNS server… not the name.  It’s the whole chicken or the egg scenario.  In order to look up a name, you have first to tell it where to go to do those lookups.

If that statement makes sense to you, congratulations.  You now have a better understanding of the workings of the Internet than a tier-four hosting engineer from a prominent financial company.  He didn’t get it.

 

Lesson Two:  Routing

Servers have two things that tell them where to send traffic:  routes and a default gateway.

A route would look like this:

10.4.18.0  255.255.255.0  192.168.1.1

This looks like a lot of crap.  Essentially, it’s saying, “Hey, if you have something that’s supposed to go to 10.4.18.0/255.255.255.0, send it to the device with an IP address of 10.168.1.1, and it will know what to do with it.

Computers and network devices everywhere have lists of these things stored in them.  That’s how they know where to send you when you try to pull up websites.

See my drawing below, illustrating how a packet of information looking for boogers.com is able to find his destination by following routes.

That’s how routing works.

As I mentioned, you also have something called a “default gateway.”  Your default gateway is a catch-all.  It essentially says to your computer, “If you have something to send, and there’s not a route for it in your list, send it to the default gateway and it will know what to do with it.”

At home, your default gateway is usually your router.  That’s your “gateway” out to the Internet.

Anyway, the main point of this is that if you happen to decide that you don’t want any routes or a default gateway on your server, and you take it upon yourself to just delete all of them on a whim, you’re probably not going to be doing any Internet surfing anytime soon, because your server won’t know how to get anywhere.  If you understand this, you are smarter than a tier-four engineer at a prominent financial company who seemed to believe it was cool to do this.

 

Lesson Three:  Geographical Separation

If you’re sitting in an office in Chicago, and you remotely log into a server located in Santa Clara, and you decide it would be cool to shut it down, you are going to need to call someone in Santa Clara to go out and have them push the power button for you since you decided to turn it off like a dumbass.  This also means that your server will remain down until someone is able to go out and press said power button.

If you understand this, you are smarter than a senior engineer at a prominent financial company.

 

 

Maybe I’m better at this new job than I thought I was…

 

An Apology To My Readers

Posted: January 4th 2012 by Mike
Category: Technology
Tags: ,

My friends, I have failed you.

I’ve been blogging for a long time now. Although some of the stuff I posted from time to time was a bit “edgy,” I never meant to take it too far. I’ve always wanted my blog to be something that you feel comfortable reading at any time, regardless of where you might be. The last thing I want is for someone to lose their job because they happened to read my blog at work.

I really hope that I don’t lose my job either. I’ve worked really hard to get this far, and it would be a shame to lose it over a website. I just wanted to log in and read a few comments during my lunch break. Hopefully, my new boss doesn’t catch wind of my sketchy web browsing habits.

Anyway, if you happen to find all of the boobs, asses, and phalluses (phalli?) that supposedly inhabit my site, please let me know, because I’d like to see them.

Blocked

The Beginning of a Career – Part Two

Posted: January 3rd 2012 by Mike
Category: Reflections
Tags: , ,

I looked over my first report card and smiled to myself.  ‘A’s across the board.  I was proud of what I’d accomplished after my first quarter at ITT Tech.  I had worked really hard up to this point, studying and retyping notes almost every night after I would get off of work.  While the classes thus far were not exactly what I would call “challenging,” I still gave them 100% of my efforts.

As I was nearing the end of my first year as a technology student, I was made aware of a career fair that was being sponsored by the school.  All students were encouraged to attend.  I was skeptical at first, as I have a natural tendency to underestimate myself, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to make that leap yet.  I have a difficult time stepping out of my proverbial comfort zone.  Nevertheless, I put on a tie for maybe the third time in my life, and headed out the door with a stack of resumes on fancy paper.

The fair was held in a massive meeting hall at a hotel approximately 20 minutes or so from the school.  Upon arriving, I was greeted by a couple of my instructors who were meandering around the various tables and booths.  The air was filled with the mixed voices of various business professionals discussing job opportunities with the hundreds of prospects who were already there.  Unsure of where to go or what to do, I started at a booth at one end of the room and started working my way down the line.

There were quite a few companies who had come for the event.  As I made my way through the rows, I felt myself becoming more and more discouraged.  At every booth, they would tell me a little bit about their company, tell me that they were ideally looking for someone with a couple of years’ experience (i.e. “not me”), and would take my resume and stuff it into a large folder with about about a hundred others.

There were a lot of companies there that I’d never heard of.  There were a few with which I was familiar, and one in particular that sounded exactly like where I wanted to work.  I figured my hopes of getting on at any of these places were dismal at best.

One day, I got a random phone call.  Answering it, I realized it was the company in which I’d been most interested at the fair.  I was stunned, and needless to say, very nervous.

I’ve written about my interview process here before, so I won’t bore you by repeating it all again.  Long story short, I ended up getting a job there as a first-level help desk agent.

As I drove into work on the first day, I was unbelievably nervous.  It would be my first day at a real “big boy” job, and I had no idea what to expect.  I just knew that I didn’t want to blow it.  Walking up the stairs to the reception desk, I told the lady there who I was.  She called up to one of the managers, and he came down to get me.

Up to this point, I’d been studying like a madman – even more than usual.  I reviewed all of the material we had covered in all of my classes, hoping to retain at least some of it.  Within ten minutes of being there, I realized my efforts had been in vain.  I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, nor what any of the people around me were talking about.  What the hell was a loadbalancer?  You want what kind of DNS record?  There is an operating system called Solaris?  How am I supposed to open a ticket for these people if I don’t even know what half of these fields mean?

I’d jumped into the deep end, and my floaties were leaking.

I had been hired to work a 4 pm to midnight shift.  I was terrified to learn that the fellow training me worked a swing shift, and would be leaving at 8:00.  After he departed I tried to find someone else with whom to sit.  All of them were stuck on calls, and didn’t appear to be making themselves available anytime soon.

Rather than sit around and do nothing, I jumped on the company’s intranet website and started poking around, trying to find information relevant to my job.  Since I still had only a vague understanding of what my job was at this point, my success was minimal.

For the first month or so, I went home every night feeling sick to my stomach.  I had concluded that I was completely incompetent, and had no business being there.  Every day, I would come in to find emails from various co-workers explaining to me that I had screwed up something, or requesting a status on something I’d never even heard of.  I hated it.

My hatred was short-lived, though.  As time went on, I began to pick up more and more little things here and there.  I was learning how to manage my tickets, and learning who the various teams within the company were.  I was also starting to become more confident when dealing with clients, as some of the terms they used were beginning to become more familiar to me.

As my skills steadily improved, so did my reputation.  I was starting to overhear people on the morning shift say, “If you have something important, make sure you give it to Mike before you leave, because he’ll make sure it’s taken care of.”

Within a few months, I was offered an opportunity to come to the morning shift, which meant I was able to begin sleeping like a normal person.  As time went on, I started being promoted up through the ranks, learning more and more in each one.

Unfortunately, although things were going well at work, things were going downhill at school.  I found myself continually walking into classes on the first day and being told by the instructor, “This isn’t really my area of expertise, but they needed someone to fill the spot, so I’ll do my best to get through this with you.”  For the exorbitant amount of money they were charging me to be there, I expected much more from them.

As is the experience with most people, I came to realize that I was going to learn far more at work than I would at school.  I began to form good relationships with the higher-ranking engineers at my company.  When I’d get tickets sent up to me that had me completely stumped, rather than just escalate them up to the next tier, I’d ask if they’d be willing to come down and show me what to do.  I found that many of them were more than happy to do so.  Quickly, I learned that these guys were a wealth of knowledge, and were quite eager to share that knowledge with people who wanted to learn.  I would start rolling down to sit by them when I could, attempting to glean whatever I could from them.

One of the engineers in particular was excited by my eagerness to learn, and decided to take me under his wing.  He had a love for the Linux operating system, and could usually be found with his nose in a Linux book of some sort.  Anytime he would learn something new, he would call me down and excitedly demonstrate his acquired skills.  Although I had no idea what he was talking about much of the time, I asked questions, and made an effort to form an understanding of whatever the subject at hand happened to be.

Most of the classes I’d taken at school revolved around the Windows operating system, so Linux was still relatively foreign to me at this point.  The Linux class I’d taken had been taught by a web developer who had “been brought in because they needed someone to fill the spot.”  Anytime something went wrong during the labs, he would tell us to reinstall the operating system and start over.  As you can imagine, few real-world companies will accept wiping their servers as a solution to a problem.

As I sat with the Linux guy more and more, I became increasingly interested in it.  I saw it as a new challenge, and started experimenting on my own.  I had an old computer at my apartment on which I installed Linux.  I would spend hours “breaking” it and finding ways to fix it.  The more I began to understand how everything worked, the more I liked it, and the less I liked Windows.  My job at the time required me to work on Windows, Linux, (and Solaris – now that I knew what it was), I would find myself grumbling more and more anytime I had to work a ticket involving a Windows machine.

Moving up again, my next job required me to work on the complete trio of operating systems again, but it was in a totally different environment.  Rather than working on the help desk, I was actually configuring machines for new customer orders.  As before, I was completely overwhelmed by the amount of knowledge required for the job.  I began to learn that we had a lot of clients who wanted very specific, customized stuff.

My boss in this new position, though, was absolutely phenomenal, and treated all of us like gold.  He also did an excellent job during the hiring process, because I was part of a very diverse team.  Each of us had a different interest or set of skills that we brought to the table.  Anytime something would come up, between the six of us, one of us could usually figure it out.

I was hired onto the team at the same time as another guy.  He and I quickly bonded, as we tried to come up to speed with the rest of the team.  I wasn’t sure about him at first, as he was almost my exact opposite.  Aside from loving Windows and greatly disliking Linux, he was very opinionated, and we held completely different views on just about every topic you can think of.  In spite of this, we got along well.  Even though we had different ways of looking at things, I enjoyed talking to him.  It’s no fun having discussions with someone who agrees with you all the time.  I liked hearing his perspective on a lot of things, and found that many of his views made sense.  He was a smart guy, and taught me quite a bit.

I also found that he was willing to trade server installation orders with me, which made me happy.  Frequently, I would give him a Windows order and take one of his Linux ones, and vice-versa.  We started becoming quite good at our operating system of choice, and helped each other out quite a bit.

One week, my employer offered to pay for me to attend a Red Hat Linux certification course, which I successfully completed, earning my RHCSA certificate.  I’m working on my second Linux certification as we speak.

Recently, I was offered a position as the dedicated UNIX/Linux engineer for our number-one client.  While hesitant to take it at first, I eventually accepted.  Last week was actually my first week on the job.  As before, I feel like I’ve been thrown in the deep end with an anvil tied around my ankles, but if history repeats itself, I’ll be up to speed soon enough.

And that, my friends, is how I went from being a customer service manager at the hometown Wal-Mart to being a UNIX engineer for the top client of a prominent global hosting and network corporation.  Looking back, I feel like I’ve come a long way, even though I’ve only hit the very tip of the iceberg with regard to learning.  Who knows what the years ahead hold in store?

 

Linux Shirt

My parents-in-law got me this shirt for Christmas. I love it.

 

 

Thanks to Julia for suggesting that I write about my experiences that led to my present career.
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