When I graduate I’ll be looking forward to a more normal schedule again. I was spoiled this summer because there were no classes I could take. We are looking at another large step in our lives, but with both of our work schedules and my late night classes, we just don’t have the time right now that is required for the responsibility that is change will require.

Pets can be a lot of hard work. I really want a puppy, but it isn’t fair to keep it locked up all the time with our hours. Teresa has also never had a pet, so it is a big step for her. There are a lot of good dog rescue organizations around Pittsburgh, so I’m confident we will get a good dog when the time comes.

I have set up a store at yakk0dotorg.ImageKind.com/photos with some of my recent pictures.

A post-supermoon shot. I tried to get some cool clouds that were in front of the moon but they had disappeared by the time I got the camera in place.

Playing with long exposures, I took this shot of a car going through a curve in the street.

I took this Saturday night during the “supermoon” frenzy. I need to work on my night photography, but I thought this was a pretty good shot.

I learned a lot of good stuff there. I knew nothing about SCCM and the enterprise VMWare stuff before I worked there. Now, thanks to a Technet subscription, at home I’ve got SCCM running in a virtual machine running on VMWare’s free ESXi server. I got some experience working with enterprise SAN and backup systems, Microsoft Exchange, and rebuilt the district’s imaging system from the ground up.

I also learned how lucky I was working at the University of Memphis. There, I had the benefit of some excellent management that stood up for the people under them and didn’t micromanage us. Unfortunately the IT director at the district is wearing too many other hats. They really need someone in that position that is focused on the department alone. The morale in the department right now is horrible because there are so many complaints about the management. This is sad because there’s a lot of really good people working in IT there. I really hope it improves, but unfortunately I don’t see it happening any time soon.

Tomorrow I start in the technology group at the University of Pittsburgh’s College of Engineering. I’m really excited. I’ll be doing technical project management and license management. I’ve got nothing but good vibes from the conversations I’ve had with my new boss. It seems like things are being done the right way, and that I’ll be working on a lot of really interesting projects. The things surrounding the job rock too. My commute will be about 30 minutes shorter, my wife works just down the street, and I’ll be able to walk to class (I’m around halfway through a Masters degree at Pitt).

So there’s a lot of good things on the horizon. I’m hoping that I can really crush it in this new job and further advance toward my career goals.

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!

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.

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.

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.