January 31st, 2003 yoshers
OK, so I updated my February advisory in January. If you have a problem with that, then too bad.
Anyways, I guess the theme of the moment is what is going on at my work. I am currently working with the Technology Transfer Program (TTP) of the Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS) at UC Berkeley. Once again, I am the Systems Administrator here, even if not by my actual title (we get these weird titles like “Computer Resource Specialist and Programmer Analysts). Historically, ITS has been providing technical support and services to TTP, but as the budget crisis loom and as TTP develops our own programs, it has been decided that it would be best to bring all technical services in-house. As such, I have been hired to setup everything computer related, from desktop support to spec-ing out a server setup for our department.
Since my hiring in November, we have been working on getting the funding for the purchase of the servers. Finally, after weeks of struggle, we have secured the funding and we were able to proceed with the purchase. I found out from our sales rep that the cost for the servers is at a high discount if we are able to make the purchases by this Friday (today) and so we had to expedite everything. Fortunately, I had a good idea of what we were buying beforehand and had reviewed much of it with our supervisor; in addition, the sales rep was on top of things and was able to get me quotes with the discounts as that we can move on this. All in all, everything was completed yesterday and the order was made by the campus resellers (yes, more people to deal with, but they are pretty good with their service) on time.
So yay, we are getting new servers, now the fun begins with setting up the servers and building the applications that we want. Not to mention the fact that we will not have to rely on ITS for our computing needs = less people involved in general.
