Unique

Today was quite unique. Since Begy was late (as usual) I followed Lyudmil to his first task. I haven’t gone with Lyudmil before to do anything, so this was a different experience for me. Our task was to fix a floppy drive in a computer that was recently installed.

We brought a new floppy over to Lennon and got to work on installing the new floppy drive. Although it was somewhat difficult to maneuver around in the computer, we managed to install the new floppy. However, for some reason it didn’t work. We analyzed the problem for a little while, and managed to figure out that one of the pins was bent on the floppy drive. Once the pin was unbent, the drive worked perfectly.

As we walked back, Lyudmil shared an interesting thought. He likes working on hardware because there’s only so much that can be wrong with it, so it’s easier to troubleshoot. With software, it could be incorrect settings, conflicting settings, or something completely random. On hardware, you plug it in and make sure it looks like it’s supposed to, and if it still doesn’t work, it’s probably not fixable.

Later today, Emily and myself went over to Tuttle to fix a printer problem. I’m not quite sure what fixed it, as she was moving around between two rooms a lot, but from what I can tell, the fact that one of the computers was left on for too long messed up something, and so rebooting that computer fixed the printer problem.

SPSS Licensing

Today has so far been a pretty easy and dull day. I’ve had two tasks so far: to relicense SPSS 13, and to gut a few computers of their hard drives and RAM.

The first task was the SPSS licensing. This turned out to be a long process, though it was an easy one. We had to install a couple of small registry changes to the laptop SPSS needed to be relicensed on (otherwise techserv couldn’t be accessed) and then do the actual relicensing. Since 14 is the newest version and we did not have any licenses for 13, we ended up installing 14 instead of just relicensing 13. A long process, but we didn’t have to do that much.

My second task was to gut the three computers. One of them ended up being empty, but the other two had retrievable pieces: a 40GB and 20GB hard drive, and one stick of RAM each. I then put the computers in the surplus pile.

3 Part Problem

Today we only had one major problem to deal with. A professor’s computer had three separate, yet equally annoying, problems with her computer. Her keyboard wouldn’t work right, her computer wouldn’t boot up, and her printer was broken. All of the solutions for us were pretty easy. We began by loading the BIOS to fix the computer problem. It turned out that the time on the system had reset, and so the computer was not working properly. Once the time was fixed, the computer booted up fine. (However, Steve believes that the problem may be a little deeper: that the battery on the system is actually dead, so power to the computer must always be on.) For the keyboard issue, we simply got a new keyboard from Edwards and brought it back to her. The last problem, the one with the printer, was not an easy fix. However, our printer guy is Gary, so all we had to do was refer the problem to him, and our work was done.

Most of the work I’m experiencing now is pretty easy. I may actually be able to go out on my own sometime before the end of the year.

Buffet

Our main problem of the day was attempting to fix that USB problem mentioned previously. I loaded the drivers needed onto My Scratch, and went over to the problem computer with Steve. However, our attempts were still futile. No matter what we do, it doesn’t seem to fix the problem, even if it should.  I also Googled more information today, but found nothing more than what we tried already. We may need to replace the computer.

On the bright side, I got to experience a little  more of the college life today. I was taken to a buffet type meal in Brockway. After eating there, I can understand why so many people have problems with the “Freshman 15″.

Clones

Today was not a very busy day due to Spring Break. For the first hour I came in, nobody was there. I sat down at the computer and waited for someone to show up.

When Emily and Tanasee finally came back, we ate lunch (turkey sandwich for me). I then got to work on a couple of small tasks: cloning (which is a piece of cake) and adding a couple computers to the surplus pile in the room (which I have never done before). I was mainly used for muscle for the surplus area, there was nothing that really required thought. I had to find the work number (“W######”), write it on a pad, and then leave the computer on the table.

While I cloned I watched the first couple episodes of Scrubs, which was playing on the computer next to the cloning machine. I suppose this job does have its perks, such as being able to do whatever you want in private while working, as long as you get the job done. Since there’s a lot of waiting time involved with everything, it leaves plenty of time to do other things.

Did not attend Internship due to Spring Break on the college campus.

USB Connectivity

We encountered a very strange error (at least strange to me) today while on the job.

Our main task of the day was to fix a computer with a faulty USB port. When we arrived on the site of the faulty computer, we started a simple test: we plugged a USB printer into several of the hubs and test printed pages. The printer successfully printed, however, I suggested we should try a USB storage device (a flash drive). Since I happened to have one on me, I popped it into a hub, and oddly enough it didn’t work, even though the printer worked through that same hub.