We are big on SLAs. Department directors have to sign off on an SLA before IT will support their stuff. Actually this is how IT gets it's budget.
For example, marketing comes to IT and asks for a service like sales tracking. After figuring out what they want we give them a quote with SLA and how much it will cost. After buildout there is a sign off and the service is available for use. To the users there is no concept of hardware of server. They just know if their stuff is working or not. I mean they are marketing people. Any problems that occur are tracked by our ticketing system, and its just a matter of tracking resolution time, incident severity and number of incidents. All of this is defined in the SLA. Resolution time usually comes into play when looking at service availability, and in the incident review process for high or critical outages.
For our team individual performance usually comes down to how well we contribute to the team. My review is not that much different from a kindergarden report card. "Plays well with others" is now "Maintains positive relationships with external partners"
Until an email is sent to the data center distro list asking if someone has seen one of the iron mountain containers that usually end up being found in a closet or something. But a lost box of tapes is easier to deal with then data sitting on a hard drive connected to the rest of the world.
To me a more realistic version of urban farming would be small gardens on the balconies of the sunny side of a high rise. Then the condo board could have a little farmers market in the lobby. This would depend on the willingness of the residents to work their little gardens. I guess you could get a break on HOA fees if you produce a good supply of fruits and vegetables.
While you are still in school you should take a few statistics classes. Data analysis tends to be a specialized thing, but I find it interesting. More and more things are being stored in databases. More companies are starting to use all the information they have on their customers to classify them into categories. For example, I recently found out that I was a low retention priority to Bank of America. Any time one of their customer service reps pulls up my account they will see what i mean to the bank and probably wont try that hard to keep me as a customer if I threaten to take my money elsewhere.
Just because your day job is Java development doesn't mean your second job has to be. To me the most ideal would be the IT guy for a few small businesses. In most cases they don't need and can't afford a full time employee. This also gives you the chance to network and make a lot of connections.
If you get to know their business, you can find opportunities to improve some of their processes. Maybe a simple webapp can allow their customers to do something on the web or a simple application will help them do something a little easier. This leads into support of the product you made.
I have worked for a cable company for 8 years. It is not Comcast, but I live in a Comcast area. In a meeting something was said about the possibility of us becoming a dumb pipe. I don't think this will happen, but that is how I look at Comcast.
I hate the buggy Comcast DVR, and their on demand service is lame. One day I broke down, and got a Tivo. After scrweing around with Comcast to get a cable card installed, I was good to go. This lets me keep HBO and Showtime and have decent HD video service. With an Internet connection Tivo can connect to Amazon.com to rent movies and download shows from places like Revision3. There are several devices that connect to Netflix. From my experience, Netflix looks the best on a 360. The other thing thats nice being able to remove the channels you don't watch from the lineup. I don't need Noggin and the local public access with the poor quality video of a preacher. My next step will probably be a media PC of some kind. Probably Windows:( for Bluray support.
You could do all this with Mtyth TV or whatever else you can dream up, but thats my TV viewing setup. A mix of content coming over the video pipe and IP pipe. If you can afford it, get a business Internet connection from your local cable company. They are usually unfiltered and you can get a static IP. In the case of Comcast there is no bytecap.
Most people in the US drive a car every day. They do not know how a engine works. There may be a basic knowledge that you put gas in the tank, and the engine gets hot because the gas is burning because some spark plugs involved. Other then that most people just call a mechanic when it breaks. Compuers are the same way. If my Internet doesnt work, I need to find a nerd.
I'm not saying the IT professional is the new mechanic. There is way more complexity, but to the rest of the world they see a piece of technology that works or doesnt. That piece of technology can be a phone, car or computer. When you get down to it thats all they really need to know. Knowing that your gas comes from a different country, and that its possible that somone can control what you see on the internet is important. It would be a waste of effort to set a high floor of base CS knowledge so that everyone can call Comcast blocking torrents layer 7 filtering. To me, it would be more efficient to make the technology easier to use and more reliable.
If you want to teach math and logic, teach math and logic. Use the computer as a tool not as the reason. There is no reason to have students go through auto shop to learn about Boyle's law.
There was a good product placement shot of Microsoft Surface in the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still. Obivously microsoft is wanting to sell a few of these things, and they may be popular in bars and other places where there would be social interaction of some sort. But try selecting a block of text or dragging on a vertical surface like a monitor while you are tying to do your everyday work. It just doesnt seem as precise as a mouse.
I have a simular setup with Comcast Business Class ring nn the Atlanta area. I'm charged $105.30 including tax for 14/2Mbps with a static IP. With a 3 year contract the insall fee was waived, and I'm locked into that rate for 3 years. I did have a few service issues related to the connection into my home, but a technician was always out the same day. Usually within 2 hours.
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We are big on SLAs. Department directors have to sign off on an SLA before IT will support their stuff. Actually this is how IT gets it's budget.
For example, marketing comes to IT and asks for a service like sales tracking. After figuring out what they want we give them a quote with SLA and how much it will cost. After buildout there is a sign off and the service is available for use. To the users there is no concept of hardware of server. They just know if their stuff is working or not. I mean they are marketing people. Any problems that occur are tracked by our ticketing system, and its just a matter of tracking resolution time, incident severity and number of incidents. All of this is defined in the SLA. Resolution time usually comes into play when looking at service availability, and in the incident review process for high or critical outages.
For our team individual performance usually comes down to how well we contribute to the team. My review is not that much different from a kindergarden report card. "Plays well with others" is now "Maintains positive relationships with external partners"
Sounds like a multipass.
Until an email is sent to the data center distro list asking if someone has seen one of the iron mountain containers that usually end up being found in a closet or something. But a lost box of tapes is easier to deal with then data sitting on a hard drive connected to the rest of the world.
To me a more realistic version of urban farming would be small gardens on the balconies of the sunny side of a high rise. Then the condo board could have a little farmers market in the lobby. This would depend on the willingness of the residents to work their little gardens. I guess you could get a break on HOA fees if you produce a good supply of fruits and vegetables.
Just wondering. I always found the Linux lacking when compared to the premium graphics client under wine.
While you are still in school you should take a few statistics classes. Data analysis tends to be a specialized thing, but I find it interesting. More and more things are being stored in databases. More companies are starting to use all the information they have on their customers to classify them into categories. For example, I recently found out that I was a low retention priority to Bank of America. Any time one of their customer service reps pulls up my account they will see what i mean to the bank and probably wont try that hard to keep me as a customer if I threaten to take my money elsewhere.
Some links to point you in a direction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_mining
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioinformatics
Just because your day job is Java development doesn't mean your second job has to be. To me the most ideal would be the IT guy for a few small businesses. In most cases they don't need and can't afford a full time employee. This also gives you the chance to network and make a lot of connections.
If you get to know their business, you can find opportunities to improve some of their processes. Maybe a simple webapp can allow their customers to do something on the web or a simple application will help them do something a little easier. This leads into support of the product you made.
I have worked for a cable company for 8 years. It is not Comcast, but I live in a Comcast area. In a meeting something was said about the possibility of us becoming a dumb pipe. I don't think this will happen, but that is how I look at Comcast.
I hate the buggy Comcast DVR, and their on demand service is lame. One day I broke down, and got a Tivo. After scrweing around with Comcast to get a cable card installed, I was good to go. This lets me keep HBO and Showtime and have decent HD video service. With an Internet connection Tivo can connect to Amazon.com to rent movies and download shows from places like Revision3. There are several devices that connect to Netflix. From my experience, Netflix looks the best on a 360. The other thing thats nice being able to remove the channels you don't watch from the lineup. I don't need Noggin and the local public access with the poor quality video of a preacher. My next step will probably be a media PC of some kind. Probably Windows :( for Bluray support.
You could do all this with Mtyth TV or whatever else you can dream up, but thats my TV viewing setup. A mix of content coming over the video pipe and IP pipe. If you can afford it, get a business Internet connection from your local cable company. They are usually unfiltered and you can get a static IP. In the case of Comcast there is no bytecap.
Most people in the US drive a car every day. They do not know how a engine works. There may be a basic knowledge that you put gas in the tank, and the engine gets hot because the gas is burning because some spark plugs involved. Other then that most people just call a mechanic when it breaks. Compuers are the same way. If my Internet doesnt work, I need to find a nerd. I'm not saying the IT professional is the new mechanic. There is way more complexity, but to the rest of the world they see a piece of technology that works or doesnt. That piece of technology can be a phone, car or computer. When you get down to it thats all they really need to know. Knowing that your gas comes from a different country, and that its possible that somone can control what you see on the internet is important. It would be a waste of effort to set a high floor of base CS knowledge so that everyone can call Comcast blocking torrents layer 7 filtering. To me, it would be more efficient to make the technology easier to use and more reliable. If you want to teach math and logic, teach math and logic. Use the computer as a tool not as the reason. There is no reason to have students go through auto shop to learn about Boyle's law.
There was a good product placement shot of Microsoft Surface in the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still. Obivously microsoft is wanting to sell a few of these things, and they may be popular in bars and other places where there would be social interaction of some sort. But try selecting a block of text or dragging on a vertical surface like a monitor while you are tying to do your everyday work. It just doesnt seem as precise as a mouse.
I have a simular setup with Comcast Business Class ring nn the Atlanta area. I'm charged $105.30 including tax for 14/2Mbps with a static IP. With a 3 year contract the insall fee was waived, and I'm locked into that rate for 3 years. I did have a few service issues related to the connection into my home, but a technician was always out the same day. Usually within 2 hours.