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light geekery
Feb. 9th, 2007 02:57 pmI'm considering applying for this computer support position with Central Services (third entity in the district, serves both campuses, hence the name): http://fhdafiles.fhda.edu/downloads/employment/07097.pdf
Although my resume doesn't include any other jobs similarly titled, I've had to do a lot of troubleshooting in the Media Lab, and even working in Technical Services I was often asked by co-worker and even supervisor to try to fix something on one of their machines. Judy has also used me to install various software to all the staff computers (it has not always been the case that we had a dedicated technician, and anyway in the case of Sirsi, it's easier to have someone who uses the software daily and understands what should be happening do the upgrades, rather than someone who barely touches the thing), mess around with the Java version of the client to see how bad it was before transitioning to it (it's so bad we still haven't done it. ha. but that was the case of the Sirsi tech support guy itself agreeing with my assessment of what was causing one particular problem, and assuring us they'd put a fix into the next patch for the client. go me.), etc etc. There was even one ETS guy who gave me passwords he probably shouldn't have done so that I could fix certain problems that required logging in as an administrator, because he knew I knew what to do and what not to do (I probably shouldn't mention that in a cover letter tho!). And of course there's the fact that we've been building up computers from scratch in my house since I was in high school.
I don't have all that much experience with Mac OS X, but I can fake it. The Macs here in the Media Lab have that so I have at least reasonable familiarity with it. The only thing I am really in the dark on is TCP/IP configuration and troubleshooting. I have almost zilch experience with that. I have never set up an intranet, for example. Getting the MetroFi wireless to work at my house has been somewhat instructive, but since the nature of Windows is to obscure what is really going on from the end-user, I don't really know anything except "clicky here to try to produce this result". I have no insight into the Network Nature.
So, the moral of this story is: Does anyone have any recommendations for a crash course in TCP/IP? I do not need deep esoteric knowledge - this is a support technician, not the Senior Network and Systems Programmer. But I should at least have a clue what all the terms mean (wtf ARE "subnet mask" and "default gateway", anyway? I have never grokked this, despite previous explanations), be able to diagnose problems from given symptoms, and know what actions to therefore attempt in various situations.
Although my resume doesn't include any other jobs similarly titled, I've had to do a lot of troubleshooting in the Media Lab, and even working in Technical Services I was often asked by co-worker and even supervisor to try to fix something on one of their machines. Judy has also used me to install various software to all the staff computers (it has not always been the case that we had a dedicated technician, and anyway in the case of Sirsi, it's easier to have someone who uses the software daily and understands what should be happening do the upgrades, rather than someone who barely touches the thing), mess around with the Java version of the client to see how bad it was before transitioning to it (it's so bad we still haven't done it. ha. but that was the case of the Sirsi tech support guy itself agreeing with my assessment of what was causing one particular problem, and assuring us they'd put a fix into the next patch for the client. go me.), etc etc. There was even one ETS guy who gave me passwords he probably shouldn't have done so that I could fix certain problems that required logging in as an administrator, because he knew I knew what to do and what not to do (I probably shouldn't mention that in a cover letter tho!). And of course there's the fact that we've been building up computers from scratch in my house since I was in high school.
I don't have all that much experience with Mac OS X, but I can fake it. The Macs here in the Media Lab have that so I have at least reasonable familiarity with it. The only thing I am really in the dark on is TCP/IP configuration and troubleshooting. I have almost zilch experience with that. I have never set up an intranet, for example. Getting the MetroFi wireless to work at my house has been somewhat instructive, but since the nature of Windows is to obscure what is really going on from the end-user, I don't really know anything except "clicky here to try to produce this result". I have no insight into the Network Nature.
So, the moral of this story is: Does anyone have any recommendations for a crash course in TCP/IP? I do not need deep esoteric knowledge - this is a support technician, not the Senior Network and Systems Programmer. But I should at least have a clue what all the terms mean (wtf ARE "subnet mask" and "default gateway", anyway? I have never grokked this, despite previous explanations), be able to diagnose problems from given symptoms, and know what actions to therefore attempt in various situations.