Cory Nettnin's New Visions Blog

Universally Accepted

Cory — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 01:11:39 +0000

Today was a busy day for once! We had three different issues to work on today. The first problem was a computer in Lathrop. The user had spilled maple syrup on it (I decided to not ask how or why it happened) and said that the computer was moving slow. We showed up and checked out the computer, but it didn’t seem like the maple syrup had affected anything. We stopped a couple of processes and lef.tThe other two were both hardware installs: one regular printer and one copier/printer. As usual, the copier/printer combination was much more difficult. We managed to do both successfully in a short amount of time.

5/3/07

Cory — Fri, 25 May 2007 21:59:36 +0000

Today was interesting. I had to install XP clean onto two separate laptops, which was an interesting challenge. It wasn’t too hard, but there was a lot of steps to follow. It became somewhat difficult to keep track of which computer was at what point, especially when one messed up and the other didn’t.

5/8/07

Cory — Fri, 25 May 2007 21:30:23 +0000

Today’s problem actually led me to mess with my own computer, and improve it slightly. A professor called about disabling a button on his laptop. Whenever he was typing, he would hit the button on accident and lose pages of work at a time.

In order to fix this, Steve downloaded a program called Sharpkeys. This program is a registry hack that allows you to set any key on your keyboard as any other key, or disable it entirely. Steve disabled the problem key and we left.

When I got home, I reset three of my own keys. I turned my “Clipboard” key into a “Pause/Play” for Windows Media Player, and the two Windows buttons were turned into volume up and down.

5/15/07

Cory — Fri, 25 May 2007 21:09:14 +0000

Today was a day without much accomplished. There wasn’t much to do, so I went with Tanasee to install SPSS on a computer. She wanted to me to try to do it on my own, so I installed it… but incorrectly of course. While I was working on that computer, they asked to have it on another computer as well. While I installed it on that computer (correctly) Tanasee fixed the other computer.

However, it was all for naught. We installed SPSS 15 and apparently the servers were not set up for an install like that yet, so the program ended up not working anyway.

5/17/07

Cory — Fri, 25 May 2007 21:02:34 +0000

Today was a very good day for me. I felt I actually accomplished the one thing I needed to do before I left, which is good because we don’t have much time left.

I started off the day by cloning a couple of new laptops for a professor. This was quite a bit easier than the other laptops I had to install, because much of the process was completed with cloning. However, I was still unable to complete the task by the end of the day for a couple of reasons, mainly my other tasks.

The new computers arrived on campus, and I helped bring the monitors into Media Services and the actual computers into our room in Edwards. This didn’t take too long, but it was good exercise.

Near the end of the day, while I was unpacking some of these computers, Tyler called Colin for some help. He didn’t know how to access techserv if typing in the IP didn’t work… and I did. I offered to go over to Tyler and show him how to do it so that Colin could continue with his own work.

Finally knowing something another IT professional doesn’t know, and being able to explain it to them… that made my day. It was the kind of experience I’ve been trying to achieve for at least half of a year.

5/22/07

Cory — Fri, 25 May 2007 20:47:21 +0000

Today was a pretty dull day. Tanasee and the rest of the crew were out doing installations of the new computers we received, and so I was left with little to do. I ended up helping Shaun carry stuff to the surplus box in the loading bay, and then had a hamburger and pasta salad courtesy of Tanasee.

5/24/07

Cory — Fri, 25 May 2007 20:44:41 +0000

Missed internship due to illness.

Nothing of Importance

Cory — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 15:14:58 +0000

Unique

Cory — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 15:07:36 +0000

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

Cory — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 15:20:40 +0000

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.