acidosmosis
Posts: 1,310 +0
You know, most people who work in IT don't really work "hard" I would say. Most IT jobs are pretty laid back, and the ones that aren't don't really require you to work THAT hard.
In the past week I've been working every day doing various IT tasks. I am worn slap out.
For example, Thursday I got up at 6:30am. When I wake up I realize I have a hell of a case of indigestion. Got ready and was at the office at 8:00am. I work for my cousin who owns an IT business doing mostly networking (and other things such as PC repair). I was in the office till about 8:30 waiting on a guy to come in who was going to help with laying some CAT5 cables under a floor, and installing a few data ports in two walls.
The customer we were doing this job for is a highly respected architect. The home we were working on cost $2 million. At 8:30, we split up and I went to the architects office which is about 15 miles from his home and worked on two computers. I discovered one problem we knew about, where a computer, when hooked up to the router would cause lots of heavy traffic, causing the router to crash randomly, every few minutes or so. Norton Antivirus would not even install (because the virus was preventing it from doing so apparently) so I had to figure out a way to manually remove the virus. After doing that I install NAV and did a scan. Then I did a test and hooked the PC back up to the router and everything was fine again.
Then I get a call from my cousin who needs me to run to the office and pickup a CD and wants me to run it to the architects house. This is about another 15 mile drive to our office. Then about 25 to the architects house.
I get there, hand over the CD and while I'm there I attempt a repair on a Windows 2000 Server installation for the main server for two sites operations. That does not fix the problem (server was rebooting at startup) so we have to completely reinstall W2K Server. Once that is done the network card was not automatically installed and we had to search for drivers, burn a cd, install those. Then resetup VPN, terminal services, accounts, etc.
Another PC there was having issues and I investigated and found that there were about 150 dns entries after running Hijackthis and ran SpyBot which also showed another 100 or so entries.
Then I leave back to the customers office and drive another 15 miles. I get there and for about 5-6 hours we are setting up, and testing several things such as VPN connections.
We were setting up a webcam/mic on the customers front office PC and his home office PC so that he could communicate back and forth with his secretary in the office without tying up a phone, and so that he could speak face to face with his secretary. We spent hours getting this working the way that they wanted.
A few hours before this is over the architect tells his secretary over the webcam to hand me a credit card and to go purchase PC speakers for that office... I'm holding this credit card and I know without a doubt there is most likely over $100,000 on this credit card and I almost piss myself. So then I run to Office Depot about 10 miles away and get the speakers and drive back another 10 miles and spend about 2 hours more in that office.
Not counting almost having heatstroke because it must have been 95 degrees outside, I haven't been this tired in 3 years. I didn't get home till 11pm.
Today, I get to the office at 9am and get a call from my cousin to drive to the Public Works in the next city. This is about 20 miles. I get there and transfer data (excel documents) from an old PC over to a new Dell, install a ZIP drive, floppy drive, Microsoft Office.
I spent about an hour trying to get the guy there to tell me what program it was that he used to do his work. He had no idea what it was called, what the program looked like, and couldnt even tell me where his files were located so that I would be able to figure that out on my own. I make a call to a lady at the Town Hall to ask her for that information and finally found out that they use Microsoft Excel. Oh and btw, the guy was looking around for an install disk after I told him about 20 times what an install disk was (he couldnt grasp the concept of having to install a program) and he trys to hand me a ZIP disk which says "backup 1 of 2" and tells me he "thinks" that is the install disk.
Knowing Dell and their lovely cases, I spent 10 minutes trying to figure out how to OPEN the Dell case so that I could even start working.
Not to mention it was about 85 degrees in this guys office (which was in a garage outside where Public Works work on school buses and other vehicles).
After install the new drives, the hard drive would no longer detect so I spent 45 minutes trying to get the jumper settings to work correctly. Literally switching jumpers back n forth for 45 minutes.
The guy was no help at all. I spent probably 30 minutes just trying to answer the guys questions and make sure he knew how to operate his brand new Dell and get to his documents. Then I encounter trouble with him on the new layout of Microsoft Office 2003 (compared to what he was using -- Office 97) and he can't even grasp the concept of minimizing a window or opening his Excel files.
That is only a percentage of each day. This guy who cant grasp a single concept of computers was a major headache. It was hot as hell all week and dayum I feel like I just went through a week of working in a factory for 12 hours a day.
The scary part: I actually had fun
Edit: Oh yea... I also ate some bad food at Jack in the Box the other night so I've been having major stomach pains the last few days and yes... been running to the toilet quite often.
In the past week I've been working every day doing various IT tasks. I am worn slap out.
For example, Thursday I got up at 6:30am. When I wake up I realize I have a hell of a case of indigestion. Got ready and was at the office at 8:00am. I work for my cousin who owns an IT business doing mostly networking (and other things such as PC repair). I was in the office till about 8:30 waiting on a guy to come in who was going to help with laying some CAT5 cables under a floor, and installing a few data ports in two walls.
The customer we were doing this job for is a highly respected architect. The home we were working on cost $2 million. At 8:30, we split up and I went to the architects office which is about 15 miles from his home and worked on two computers. I discovered one problem we knew about, where a computer, when hooked up to the router would cause lots of heavy traffic, causing the router to crash randomly, every few minutes or so. Norton Antivirus would not even install (because the virus was preventing it from doing so apparently) so I had to figure out a way to manually remove the virus. After doing that I install NAV and did a scan. Then I did a test and hooked the PC back up to the router and everything was fine again.
Then I get a call from my cousin who needs me to run to the office and pickup a CD and wants me to run it to the architects house. This is about another 15 mile drive to our office. Then about 25 to the architects house.
I get there, hand over the CD and while I'm there I attempt a repair on a Windows 2000 Server installation for the main server for two sites operations. That does not fix the problem (server was rebooting at startup) so we have to completely reinstall W2K Server. Once that is done the network card was not automatically installed and we had to search for drivers, burn a cd, install those. Then resetup VPN, terminal services, accounts, etc.
Another PC there was having issues and I investigated and found that there were about 150 dns entries after running Hijackthis and ran SpyBot which also showed another 100 or so entries.
Then I leave back to the customers office and drive another 15 miles. I get there and for about 5-6 hours we are setting up, and testing several things such as VPN connections.
We were setting up a webcam/mic on the customers front office PC and his home office PC so that he could communicate back and forth with his secretary in the office without tying up a phone, and so that he could speak face to face with his secretary. We spent hours getting this working the way that they wanted.
A few hours before this is over the architect tells his secretary over the webcam to hand me a credit card and to go purchase PC speakers for that office... I'm holding this credit card and I know without a doubt there is most likely over $100,000 on this credit card and I almost piss myself. So then I run to Office Depot about 10 miles away and get the speakers and drive back another 10 miles and spend about 2 hours more in that office.
Not counting almost having heatstroke because it must have been 95 degrees outside, I haven't been this tired in 3 years. I didn't get home till 11pm.
Today, I get to the office at 9am and get a call from my cousin to drive to the Public Works in the next city. This is about 20 miles. I get there and transfer data (excel documents) from an old PC over to a new Dell, install a ZIP drive, floppy drive, Microsoft Office.
I spent about an hour trying to get the guy there to tell me what program it was that he used to do his work. He had no idea what it was called, what the program looked like, and couldnt even tell me where his files were located so that I would be able to figure that out on my own. I make a call to a lady at the Town Hall to ask her for that information and finally found out that they use Microsoft Excel. Oh and btw, the guy was looking around for an install disk after I told him about 20 times what an install disk was (he couldnt grasp the concept of having to install a program) and he trys to hand me a ZIP disk which says "backup 1 of 2" and tells me he "thinks" that is the install disk.
Knowing Dell and their lovely cases, I spent 10 minutes trying to figure out how to OPEN the Dell case so that I could even start working.
Not to mention it was about 85 degrees in this guys office (which was in a garage outside where Public Works work on school buses and other vehicles).
After install the new drives, the hard drive would no longer detect so I spent 45 minutes trying to get the jumper settings to work correctly. Literally switching jumpers back n forth for 45 minutes.
The guy was no help at all. I spent probably 30 minutes just trying to answer the guys questions and make sure he knew how to operate his brand new Dell and get to his documents. Then I encounter trouble with him on the new layout of Microsoft Office 2003 (compared to what he was using -- Office 97) and he can't even grasp the concept of minimizing a window or opening his Excel files.
That is only a percentage of each day. This guy who cant grasp a single concept of computers was a major headache. It was hot as hell all week and dayum I feel like I just went through a week of working in a factory for 12 hours a day.
The scary part: I actually had fun
Edit: Oh yea... I also ate some bad food at Jack in the Box the other night so I've been having major stomach pains the last few days and yes... been running to the toilet quite often.
