The end is nigh

Well today we just an easy day overall. We had no more people scheduled to come by to test programs so we all just started to think about things we wanted on our presentation. We got a good portion of it done and we set up a time to meet on Sunday to work on it more. It was the first time that all of us were in our cubicle at one time as well.

Finally

Today we had people who actually came by to help us. When I arrived I found the CS Gold disc and got that installed on all 4 of the computers. Later on Jason came by and put two of our computers on the domain and added the Image Now program to them. We had Scott come by and drop off some information on the TMO program and Odyssey. Bruce came by for several hours and showed us around the CS Gold program and Image Now. So overall this was by far our most productive day yet and hopefully we have gotten enough information for our presentation.

People Are Annoying

Well it has been a week since we first tried to get in contact with people to come by to help us with the program testing, and a big whopping none of them have been able to give us an actual time they can come by, and only about a third of them even sent a reply email.

I ended up doing my normal update of anything the computers needed, then I checked out Excel sheet to see where we were with programs and updated that as needed.

I also ended up emailing everybody again, this time with a more professional email and using things like saying there was a presentation for the CIO. We ended up getting a reply back pretty quickly and that contact gave us some new contacts which she felt would be better for some of the progams.

Those of us on Thursday decided that we will likely need to actually go to the offices of the people who are our contacts since other methods of asking for their help is looking futile.

All in all I emailed all the people, got one reply, tried to set up a time for the one reply, and never heard back, fun times are ahead.

Again with the Intern thing

Today was the first day that I was actualy able to do some of the work needed. We got our list of the programs we need to test, where as in the past we were just guessing on the programs that needed to be tested. Before I could start on the programs I made sure all of the computers were updated and then I put a copy of all the programs needed on the computers. Once I looked at the list I found that it was not exactly what I was thinking it would be. Yes it tells the programs needed to use, but the vast majority of them require us to have another person come over to test them since we do not have the ability to do the testing. So the rest of my time was pretty much taken up with trying to get ahold of the people, which is not going well so far. It was lunch time for most people by this time, so most people were not at their desks, so we took to just emailing everybody for the help, and so far we have only had 2 people email us back, so fun times are ahead.

Not Gonna Do It

I ended up not going to my time for work today since I pulled a muscle in my left shoulder. I was contemplating going, but seeing as how a slight movement could send a sharp shooting pain along my neck, arm, shoulder, etc., I decided that I did not want to see how fun that would be while driving. So I stayed in bed staring at the ceiling trying my best to move as little as possible for the day, how fun.

Another Day......

I started my day simply making sure that all of the computers were updated, since it was the week of "Patch Tuesday". I got all of the computers updated and I was looking at our Excel sheets to see what needed to be done, but before I could get to anything Mike came and got me and needed me to look at some faculty and student computers. There were three in total. The first was a laptop which would not keep the correct time, and it seemed like it was resetting itself as well. I concluded that the BIOS battery needed to be replaced, but I was not allowed to open the laptop to get to it, nor did I have a multimeter to confirm my conclusion. The next computer was a students Dell tower, which had some new parts come in. I am not sure why, but there was a lot of parts that came in, such as 2 sticks of RAM, a videocard, and a soundcard. Of all of those parts, only one of the original sticks of RAM was bad, so I am assuming somebody ordered all the new parts they thought could be bad. The last computer was another student tower and it was having a backup done of all the files. The drive in the students computer was too big for the drives in the room, so Mike gave me an external drive to put the files on. According to one of the sheets with the computer there were viruses as well, but my time was done before the backup was complete so I could search for them.

Day 5

This post was really supposed to have been done on the 25th of Feb, but seeing as how I forgot to do it then I will do it now.

For this day we finally had all 4 of our computers, one of them had pretty much only Win 7 64 installed, so I went and installed the rest of the programs onto it that we needed and got all the updates. When two other members of the group arrived about an hour later we ran the rest of the CAT5 cables so we could get onto the Internet with all 4 computers. I ended up getting more programs installed on one of the other computers that did not have all of them on, and then all of us ran Sophos checks on the computers.

Day 4

Today was the first day for me of actually working on my project. I am on the Windows 7 team and I started by simply finding our cubicle and seeing what we had. After that I tried to find out what we had to do, but Mike was no around or answering his phone so I called Chris, who is our group leader. He let me know that we still needed to get the 64 bit version of Windows onto one of our computers. After a failed search to find a disc to use I decided to just download my copy of it from MSDNAA. After I got that downloaded and burned I started its install. Two more people from my group showed up about an hour after I left and shortly after that Mike did too and he was able to give us the serials for Windows to use. We also had to update the serial on the 32 bit versions since the ones used were incorrect and would not activate. After that was all done each of us took a computer and started to install some programs for testing. We put on OpenOffice, Firefox, XP Mode, and Office 2007. I also put on SIW on the PC I was on in case it comes in handy. I also made an Excel sheet to track was was being done on that PC and the other two people did the same for theirs. I did a little testing of OpenOffice with the Excel sheet I made and it all worked out. Last thing I was working on was getting all of the updates put onto the PC I was on.

Day Three

Technically due to the power outage this day did not occur, but I did hang around in the ITS area for a while. My first class was cancelled since we could not take our BB test with no power, so I headed to the ITS offices. Once there I was suprised to see that there was no backup lighting and that was because the generator for the building was not working due to bad batteries on it. So that showed me that the school is not very well prepared for a power outage, or that the generators need to be checked more often.

I ended up hanging around downstairs though for about 2 hours anyway just listening to everybody joking around. It was decided that ITS would be blamed for the outage, probably due to the rollout of the new mail server. Eventually the main campus power switch was drawn on a dry erase board and set to off so that there would be no doubt who was indeed at fault.

Day Two

It has been almost a week since I did all of this but my second day was more interesting than the first. I worked with John and we had to take a cart of PC's and go redeploy them around the campus. Our first stop was to go to the VC and near the area where you can rent things like a basketball and the stairs to go to the second area we had to setup the two kiosk PC's there. It took a while to get them back onto the right domain for the school, but eventually both worked. After that we headed back down near the campus server rooms. In the back of the server room area with the tape backups and the huge UPS's, was an office and the owner of that computer was having an issue with viruses and malware. We found that whatever is on it was keeping Sophos from installing so it was decided that that PC would have to be pulled and a loaner given. In another area near the server room we had a computer that was to go back to its owner and we would take the loaner computer from them. We just had to swap the original HDD back into the original computer and take the loaner with us. The last thing we did before I left was to give somebody back their monitor, which was not needed since all the people had dual 24 inch setups, but for the purpose of the Tangent systems on loan they had to be complete.

Day 1 Of Intern

By the time I got to do the internship it seemed like everybody before me had gotten a good portion of the work done, which was to figure out what was wrong with the computers we would be using for our projects.

It took a while to get settled into the room since it is very cluttered, but after a while it is easy to figure out where things are.

I ended up working on the ghost server first and found it had a bad hdd, I confirmed it by putting it into a known good and the drive would not even show up.

It was hard to figure out what computers were what for the rest of ours, so instead of trying to figure it out I just decided to test them all. Most had accurate errors listed on the paper taped to them, but a few, like one claiming the USB would not work and the mouse needed drivers was not, so I fixed it by removing the BIOS battery to clear it out and setting things properly.

In the second half of my time the next guy came in and helped out with checking the computers. In the end we got through them all, which was 10 total. We had 6 that needed a part, mostly new HDD's or a new PSU, and those were placed in a neat pile and we made up a list of the parts needed and PC serial numbers. 3 of our work PC's were good which we placed on a cart, and then there was the ghost server which also works, but just needs a new secondary HDD.

Awesome

I just made a blog here so I am posting something to make sure that it works.