It’s been nearly six months, so time for another blog post! I’m in my second semester at Pitt now, and did better than expected last fall. Grad school classes are easily the hardest ones I’ve ever taken. That’s partly due to the lack of programming classes in my undergraduate degree. I had to learn C last semester and this semester I’m taking a class that uses Java and another that uses some horrible language called CLIPS (it’s a psychology class). Surprisingly I’ve been picking up the languages pretty well, except for CLIPS which I think is entirely stupid.
In January I finished my first year at my job, including the 5 months I spent as a contractor. It’s a fun job, and I’ve learned a lot…mostly on my own while I’m trying to figure something out. Some of the things I’ve completed or initiated include upgrading our VMWare infrastructure from ESX 3.5 to 4.0, rebuilding our Altiris Deployment server and PXE boot services, developing a script for Vista that renames a computer based on it’s location in Active Directory, upgrading SCCM, implementing operating system deployment in SCCM that is replacing the Altiris server, setting up an Apple Xserve to work with Active Directory, getting the Mac labs set up to authenticate with AD and the Xserve, and cleaning up a number of problems with our software distribution in SCCM.
Wow…that’s a lot of stuff…
Before I started here I had never used SCCM or VMWare ESX, and don’t think I would have been able to program that renaming script. My biggest fear now is that I’ve set too high expectations. 
I’ve also taken advantage of a free Microsoft Technet account and set up an Active Directory running in ESXi at home to play around in.
In non-geek stuff, Teresa and I are doing great in Pittsburgh. We are going to celebrate 10 years of dating as well as Teresa’s birthday next month by going to a Bon Jovi concert. It’s hard to believe that we’ve been together that long. She’s definitely brought out the best in me over these 10 years.
So that’s about it for now. Here’s hoping my next post will be less than 5 months away!
Uncategorized jobs, life, Pittsburgh, school
So about that New Years resolution…yeah, I’m not doing too good on the regular blogging thing. Maybe if I post once a year, I can consider that a regular schedule. Who am I kidding, I’ll probably put that off as well.
In the 80 days since my last post, I did indeed apply for grad school. Last week I found out that I was accepted to the MSIS Program at Pitt. Orientation is all day Friday and school starts Monday. Hopefully I’ll be able to handle everything. I’m still working full time, and will be going to school at night.
We made it through the summer at work, deploying over 400 desktops and 300 laptops. My former co-workers at the UofM would appreciate the effort required for a deployment of that size. Apparently it didn’t go so good last year, and I pulled together some random scripts from across the web, figured out some other stuff, and created a system that renamed the computers with a consistent naming scheme and joined the computers to our domain. Thus one of my other resolutions has been completed. With the grad school stuff, I’m sure I’ll be learning how to program in more than vbscript, but it’s a start.
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I decided the other day to get a Masters degree.
Let that sink in for another few minutes.
Maybe I’m not remembering all the bad parts of school, but my last few years finishing up my bachelors degree was leaps and bounds better than my first 6 or 7. It was tough, working full time and going to class until 10:00 or 10:30 at night, but rewarding when it was all finished. I also now know what to expect if I have to do it again and am ready for the challenge.
Carnegie Mellon has a good Masters in IT Management degree that I would like to get. If not that, then Pitt and Robert Morris have similar degree programs. I’m applying to all three, but the CMU one really interests me because it requires having real-world experience in addition to the academic requirements. I think that this would help me do more than just systems administration work. I enjoy what I’m doing, but I’m looking forward to more exciting work (and more rewarding pay) down the line.
If I get into CMU, I’d likely continue to work. The classes are mainly at night, and it’d work out well with our schedules. With Pitt, I might end up going full time and try and finish up within a year or so. It would depend on costs, student loans, and how our bank account feels about that though.
Uncategorized jobs, school
I was taking some pictures of the fog this morning and spotted some movement on the path. This bunny just sat there for a couple of seconds, long enough to get this shot, then hopped into the brush on the other side of the fence.
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That’s about all the snow we got in the April blizzard from yesterday. It was pretty, but I’m ready to get back to my spring weather.
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I took this when playing with the macro mode of our new camera. I really like the D60 more every time I use it.
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I’m going to try and redo this and get the exposures more even, but this was a quick merge in Photoshop. On the whole, I’m pretty happy with how it came out.
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Our sprinkler started leaking some time this morning, and had to have the head replaced. They’re supposed to fill in the hole next week some time.
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Most of my work day Friday was spent watching screens like these. Both computers are running ImageX to create images of the hard drives. I then re-applied the images, found something I missed, then repeated the process.
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The duck on the bottom was quacking at a constant rate and we decided he was saying “stroke! stroke!” to the other duck.
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