First Post!

Hello to anyone that wants to listen! This is my first blog post and I'm going to talk about what I do for a living. My business card says that I am an IT Network Administrator, but really I do much more than just network administration. My company, Physical Electronics USA (http://www.phi.com) is pretty small with only about 100 employees. As such we have a pretty small IT staff: myself and one other individual, Jay. So really we are a one stop shop for anything technology related for the company. So, my day to day duties span across our email system, doing web work (intranet and public), file and print server administration, workstation troubleshooting, backup administration, antivirus administration, firewall security, VPN link monitoring, network maintenance and monitoring, database administration and design, and of course dealing with dumb questions from clueless users. Ive got stories upon stories related to that last one, but I digress.

For the most part I am my own manager. I report directly to the CFO but she doesnt really have a clue of what I do. Nothing against her by any means, its just that she doesnt understand my technical mumbo jumbo just as I dont understand her financial/accounting mumbo jumbo. IT people and accounting people really do speak differnt languages.

I love my job! I am SO lucky to be in this position with this company. I started as a contract helpdesk person 7 years ago and have worked my way up to the position I am in now. I love that I get to work with and learn all sorts of differnt technologies and Im not stuck with the monotony of dealing with only one specific piece. My job does require constant monitoring of the network so if I get an automated page that a server is down I do have to ensure that it comes back up in a timely fashion in order to minimize the impact on the rest of the employees. So, if Im woken up at 3am with a message that states "critical_server" I best not ignore it.

As you can see to the left, my workspace kind of looks like the bridge of the starship enterprise. Surprisingly, I do make good use out of all the monitors that you see. In fact I have a workbench directly behind me that has even more monitors on it. I am kind of messy but belive it or not I know where most everything is that need. I once heavily cleaned and organized my workspace about a year ago and for the next month I couldnt find anything. I work much better with what I like to call "organized clutter".

Anyway, thats my job in a nutshell.