Week 10

On Monday, I got to shadow Joe. Before we began doing anything, he told me that there are so many things that he could not show or tell me because it’s a lot of confidential and password protected information. We began by him showing me the servers in the library and told me that they had so many because they each are for many different things. There were some for example that are specifically for Outlook, another is a web server, and another is just for the specific folders on the network such as public and mars. He also showed me how the room where the servers are is kept cool with air conditioner in order for them to not get hot since they must work continuously. He told me that checking the servers each morning is part of his daily routine to make sure that they are all working properly and also to make sure that the air conditioner is still working. He mentioned that sometimes the air conditioner would get ice, and so maintenance would have to come to fix it. After checking out the servers and making sure everything was fine, we headed back to his office. He told me that unfortunately there wasn’t anything else he could show or tell me because of what he had mentioned earlier, so he did some clerical work that he had, and I sat in his office until something would come up. Finally, he got an e-mail from Scott from the help desk telling him that there was a broken fan in one of the servers in Loyola. We headed over to check how bad it was. When he opened the door to where the servers are, we could hear the fan and even though it sounded really bad, he told me that it wasn’t that bad and he could leave it until that fan died. He explained to me that each switch has 4 fans, and when that one goes down, the other three can keep the switch working and cool enough. The switch would not be replaced until all fans went down and the switch could no longer be used. The reason for this is because it is not under warranty anymore, and because he would have to shut all of the switches above that one off so that he can put a new one in. After that, we went back to his office and he let me go early because there was nothing else we could do.

On Wednesday I was back at the Help Desk and working with Ryan. We worked a lot with Outlook again. First we went to help one of the sisters out with her e-mails. She was getting e-mails with a gray background and she wasn’t sure why that was happening. She wanted to have a white background again. We showed her that she had to go to tools, then options, and under the mail tab make sure that ‘none’ was selected for background. Ryan then sent her an e-mail to make sure the background was white again, but it didn’t work and was still coming up with a gray background. We looked at the options again and Ryan saw that at the top there was an option where we could choose if we wanted to receive the e-mails in an HTML format or rich text format. Ryan chose the rich text format and then sent an e-mail again. This time, she got the e-mail with a white background. He then told her that the e-mails that she had already gotten with the gray background were going to stay with the gray background because that was the way she received them. However, the e-mails that she would receive from that point on would have a white background. After that, we headed to the CLL offices to check on a printer. Someone was having a problem printing because every time she sent a document to the printer, it would show on her computer that it printed but nothing had printed out. When we got there, however, there wasn’t much we could do because she had not arrived to the office yet, and the computer that she uses is a laptop which she takes home with her. Ryan decided that we could still go to her office and see if we could see anything wrong with the printer. After checking it, we didn’t see anything wrong with it, but still checked that the connections were tight. Ryan left her a note so that she would call him when she got there to see if that did anything at all or if there was something wrong. After that, we headed to the Bruder Center. They have a new secretary and everyone at there wanted to share their calendar in Outlook with her. Ryan showed me how to go to the Calendar section in Outlook and from the person’s calendar put it to be shared to specific people. Then we had to go to the new secretary’s computer, and from there search the shared calendar and then add it. We then headed back to the Help Desk and it was time for me to go.

On Friday, Ryan showed me the inside of a computer again. He was taking out a hard drive from a computer so he could replace it with someone’s computer at the Registrar’s. The computer at the registrar is in good shape, but the sound card doesn’t work. Therefore, Ryan just replaced the computer and placed then let me put the hard drive from the registrar’s computer in the replacing computer. This computer is meant to be a temporary computer while gets a new motherboard to replace it with. The reason for this, he explained, is because her type of computer has a motherboard which has a sound card built in. he told me that he could just put a sound card in, but the problem with that is that the card is too big for that small computer box. We then headed back to the Help Desk and played around with the inside of the computer until 10 in the morning. Then I left because since there was no school, I had a meeting to go to.