berifox

[berifox]

Week 9 - Post Internship Reflections

Overall I have really enjoyed working with this team. The work was varied and interesting. My skills were stretched, and I got to learn and do some really cool things. I think the most important takeaway from this whole experience, however, was the look into what a tech office culture might look like. Obviously every team won't be the same, but it gives me a good baseline for approaching things in the future. That said, learning a bit more about micro repairs has already helped me fix a couple of problems I've run into on my own and my spouse's devices, so that's no small thing.

I'm going to miss the team, but I'm excited to take what I've learned moving forward in my education and future career.

[berifox]

One Day More

Guess we're forgetting to post on the correct day one last time. Honestly, not much happened yesterday. We had pizza, which was nice, and we had our Site Visit, which went well. Reflections to be posted after a couple hours. Last shift, here we go!

[berifox]

The Upsell

Due to it being the end of season for the place I'm interning for, there's really not as much for me to do. I did take some time today, however, to observe one of the team members fixing a problem one of our users was having. Turned out he was disconnected from the domain. While he was here, he was reminded that he needs to upgrade to Windows 11 soon. He's fairly reluctant about it. One of the team members pointed out to him that the problem he's having would be mitigated by the upgrade, and that, additionally, he won't need to worry about a BitLocker login.

It's good to be patient when you can be. Being aggressive about these needed changes will often get you more pushback, so when you can, I'd say try to point out the benefits you users will get.

9 hours to go...

[berifox]

Week 8 reflections - 12.5 hours remain

This week was a little different overall. I feel like, in general I've been getting to do a variety of things throughout this internship. I've really enjoyed putting my hand to new things over the past couple months. This week was overall slower though. I had some unique opportunities due to a shifting of priorities with this season at the office. It's important to be comfortable with changes in the needs of your work.

Wow... just three more days from here. The time has really flown.

[berifox]

Measure of Class

This morning had me run a keyboard and mouse to someone who had left their wireless dongle at home, but the more interesting thing I got to do was sit in on some upgrade negotiations. We're putting some new and better devices in one of the buildings and it required some discussion with the people who would be using it as to what their needs were and what would work best.

[berifox]

It's the Little Things

Pretty slow day today. Most interesting thing I did was take apart some laptops we need to use for parts. I can now point out the hard drive, and wireless cards on them!

[berifox]

Internet Comes in a Little Glass Wire

Got to do something pretty exciting today. We needed to test a fiber connection in another building and I got to help! Honestly I've kind of wanted a good look at fiber cables since learning about them and, yeah, they're about as cool as I thought they were.

Other than that I delivered some more dead batteries for recycling and did some additional research on video editors. Turns out I'd overlooked OpenShot, which if the laptops in question have the ram for it, is actually a pretty good choice. It remind me of Vegas Studio from back in the day.

[berifox]

Week 7 Reflections - 32.5 hours remain

Today I got to help with some proper networking! Nothing huge, we just needed to enter some MAC addresses into PFSense so the laptops of some visiting exam proctors could get into the network without too much trouble. Still far more than I would've had any idea of how to do before starting this program though.

We ran into a small hurdle in that their policy didn't allow for certain interactions with the laptop, but we got it all sorted in the end.

In addition I helped do some more research, this time regarding a free movie editor for beginners. That might sound simple, but, having done some video editing myself, I was already aware of some of the pitfalls there going in. Basically it amounts to the fact that most open source video editors have a really big learning curve, and most "free" software beyond that has things like watermarks and only being free for a very short amount of time.

I love that there's so much variety in this work. I get to do and learn so many different things.

Just a couple weeks to go. Man how time flies!

[berifox]

Sounds a Little Flat

This morning was sort of a "trash" day. Broke down some boxes and took them to the recycling, threw away some styrofoam, and delivered swollen batteries to be recycled.

The actually cool thing I got to do today was research. Apparently we've been getting flat cat cables recently and I was asked to find out how much of a downgrade they'd be compared to round cables. The first thing I quickly discovered is that people on Reddit seem to be embroiled in drama about this. While I think Reddit is a good place to guage what the average end user experience is, it obviously wasn't giving me any hard numbers, so I checked out some more legitimate sites.

It seems that, given we're not going any farther than 10ft with the cables, the difference between flat and round for our needs is negligible.

All right, all right, call me a nerd, but I just really like research, okay?

[berifox]

Makeup Work again

Yeah, I forgot to post yesterday after the shift. Sorry about that. Posting now though!

There wasn't a whole lot to do as it was a faculty in-service day, but I did get to work on some data entry. They needed tag numbers coallated for loaned out devices, and I'm just the girl for the job! Hopefully my efforts get all our devices back in their proper places. That said, I also know how these things tend to go, so I won't hold my breath on absolute perfection.

[berifox]

Week 6 - 48.5 hours remain

Got to take apart some drive trays today. They were incredibly dusty. No matter how slow it might be, there's usually something to do. Things get disorganized and out of place. New stuff comes in which means the old stuff has to go out.

It is satisfying work and I find myself often leaving for the day with a feeling of accomplishment. Wow, just three weeks to go. Time really flies! Let's try to stick the landing!

[berifox]

Model Student!

Today we tested Quizizz a bit further. My direct supervisor made a teacher account and had myself and one of the employees take a couple tests. While not important to the actual testing, I did get the highest score on the tests, lol.

We've discovered what might be a bit of a hiccup regarding FERPA. Hopefully it rounds out okay in the end because, honestly, I think Quizizz is a great site. Guess we'll see!

[berifox]

As the Days Go By

I just realized I completely forgot to post yesterday! (whoops) The days keep flying by here. Yesterday involved a lot of organizing. We're apparently getting some new stuff in, so we need to figure out what old stuff we can get rid of. There was a LOT of audio equipment, but there's something kind of theraputic about untangling and properly storing cords. That and organization in general. It's going to be more accesibility work today! I'll be sure to report back after my shift.

[berifox]

Quick Start Guides are Not Quick to Make

Today was mostly spent on making a Quick-Start guide for using Quizizz. I enjoy this kind of writing, but man if it didn't take actual hours to write what hopefully will be able to be read in 10 minutes. It didn't help that I had to go back and forth over the web app to double check things and take screenshots. It got done. It's not my prettiest job, but it should be useable at least.

Other than that, finished the Cat5's (Yipee!) For the first time in about a week I am caught up on all internship projects, so I'll be interested to see what they have for me next.

[berifox]

Week Five Reflections: 68.5 hrs remain

This week felt like a lot more successes than failures, which is nice. I'm getting better at threading cat 5's, which I thought would never happen, and I feel like I was able to make a difference through research. The work in this position is varied, but while that is somewhat to be expected of an internship, that also seems to be the case for everyone here. Deliveries, orders, repairs, troubleshooting and even research, we take care of things as they're needed. It's important to have the humility in your work such that the smaller things don't get passed over, eventually causing bigger issues in the long run. Past the halfway mark now. I look forward to seeing where we go from here.

[berifox]

Quizizz Be Quizzin

While I did get to terminate some more cat 5's, a lot of the day was actually dedicated to figuring out an accessible solution to creating tests online. After a lot of research I happened upon Quizizz which is actually surprisingly good. They really need to up the ante with alt test and having their read-aloud feature actually read out equations instead of skipping over them, but compared to some of the others I saw, it's definitely a good pick. Still not sure why NVDA won't activate MathCat, which is a problem I've been having for a good while. Hopefully some more research on that subject will provide answers.

[berifox]

Sometimes You Do Get Better

Unfortunately the laptop issue went nowhere today. The TPM is borked and alas, there was no saving her. I did do more cords today and surprised myself by managing to do surprisingly well with them. I'm not about to enter a race or anything, but it was certainly smoother than yesterday. Sometimes you do improve with just a little practice.