We turned an office into a server room and needed a raised floor. Since we couldn't exactly raise the ceiling we used floor panels that were about 3 inches deep, they snapped together and had troughs with covers for the cable runs.
They were easy to use, fairly cheap and fit our requirements for a SMALL computer room. The tiles were sturdy (we had 19in full height racks stuffed full sitting on them).
Unfortunately, I no longer work there and do not remember who manufactured them. Do a google search.
A similar question was asked a while back..Here is the answer I gave them.
Listen.. Organize.. Decide.. and most importantly lead. Listen to the members of your team as well as your customers (even if the cutomer is just your boss). Organize the work. Make sure the team knows what has to be done, who is doing it, what and when the milestones are. Make decisions. You are not in a democracy. Listen to your team, then make decisions, don't have votes. Once you make a decision, stick to it. There is nothing worse than a wishy washy leader who changes thier mind evrey day. Finally, lead. By action and by example. You are the person everyone should be going to. If you do not lead, your project will fail, or someone else will become the defacto leader. And, as a last thought..Share the credit, take the blame.
The only thing I can add..You asked what the hardest thing is. The hardest is sticking to a decision..Anybody can make a decision..But good leaders stick with thier decisions.
1. You are right, most people can create a web site, and few do it well. However, those that want a good web site are still willing to pay money to have it done professionally. Create a couple of demo sites to show prospective customers, everything from very flashy with bells and whistles, to the business web site. Also, make sure you explain how you can make thier web site rank high on some of the more populer search engines. A business web site should make money or provide some benefit to the business. Show your customer how you can make that happen.
2 and 3. There is still money to be made repairing PC's. People that tell you the only way to repair a Microsoft product is to wipe and re-install generally do not know what they are doing. If the first response I got from a consultant was wipe and re-install, I would look for another consultant. Most experianced techs can repair a Windows PC without wiping it.
4. Hardware issues can be fixed. Power supplies can be replaced. I have often replaced caps on a motherboard, or disabled a built in device on an expensive board then installed an add-on replacement. For example, we had a lightning strike in the area, lightning surged through an unprotected hub and took out 9 computers. On 8 of the computers I was able to disable the on board lan, install a NIC card and get them back on-line. The 9th PC and the hub was toast. I also find many hardware issues to simply be bad fans, faulty memory or such. Always troubleshoot. Customers appreciate it if you look at thier machines before you tell them they need to be replaced.
5. Ok, you're high school students. You will need to try harder and prove you have your stuff together. Dress neat, be well groomed, be polite, and act professional. First impression's count for a lot. If you give a bad first impression you probably will not get a chance to make any proposals.
Finally, the consultant is not supposed to be any particuler age, but should be a professional, who can help the customers bottom line.
Listen..
Organize..
Decide..
and most importantly lead.
Listen to the members of your team as well as your customers (even if the cutomer is just your boss).
Organize the work. Make sure the team knows what has to be done, who is doing it, what and when the milestones are.
Make decisions. You are not in a democracy. Listen to your team, then make decisions, don't have votes. Once you make a decision, stick to it. There is nothing worse than a wishy washy leader who changes thier mind evrey day.
Finally, lead. By action and by example. You are the person everyone should be going to. If you do not lead, your project willl fail, or someone else will become the defacto leader.
And, as a last thought..Share the credit, take the blame.
No..Not kidding. We set his computer up with Windows XP. Locked it down pretty hard so he couldn't screw it up. Put him some favorite web sites (candystand.com, cartoonnetwork.com, yahoo for kids, etc). Created an IM account with just family and a few of his older friends on it (most of the kids his age can't read and write as well as he can). Locked the IM so only messages from people on his buddy list can come through. I run a home mail server, with SPAM control, so he does not get penis enlargement ads. I think one of the reasons he reads and writes better then his age group is because his mother and I (and his older siblings) all worked with him, and he has had access to a computer with loads of educational/phonics type games that he enjoyed playing. He was also rewarded after reaching certain levels in each game.
I have 3 children (16,10 and 5), they all have computers in thier rooms that have unfiltered Internet access. The only real hard and fast rules we have is that they are not allowed to talk to people on IM or e-mail that they do not know, never give out your e-mail address to people you don't know, and never agree to buy anything. The last one became necessary when my 10year old joined Columbia records and got 10 free CD's for a penny!!! Now the gotcha's. My kids know that I can see everywhere they go by checking my firewall logs. If I check my logs and and see anything I feel is worth discussing then I will. Nothing will stop a 16 year old from viewing porn like having to face dad for an open and frank discussion that starts out as "so son, notice you've been looking at a lot of sex pages..Do you think all women are like that?? I noticed you were spending most of your time on pages where the women were doing X. Why is that ?? " He would much rather I just yell at him and forbid it, but I refuse. Basically I am using shame as a weapon..Will probably have to pay for it via therapy for them later...Oh well.
Two options I can think of off hand (I have done both). Military: I served 20 years in the Air Force, nearly all of that as a Sysad. Got some great training, (not only in IT, but several other things also) was paid OK and did get to do a lot of travel. Even though I was often in places where I received combat pay, I never got shot at. The Air Force has a lot of state of the art (or close to it) systems, and if you get the right assignment you could be working on them right out of tech school.
The other option (slightly less dangerous in some areas) teaching. If you teach for an organization like Learning Tree or New Horizons then you could potentially do a lot of travel.
Here is how I run a mail server out of my home with port 25 blocked.
For incoming mail:
My domain will forward any number of e-mail addresses. I have different addresses forwarded to either my cox.net address, hotpop.com, or any of a number of other free POP3 services.
On my server, I have an application (free) called poproute that runs every 10 minutes and queries all the pop3 accounts and then sends the mail directly to my internal SMTP server. All the mail goes to the proper internal mailboxes. This gets me around port 25 incoming being blocked.
Outgoing Mail: Outgoing mail was very easy. I just set up my mail server to use a smart host and have my smtp server forward outgoing mail to the cox.net server. Cox.net will accept my mail because I am on the inside of thier network, and will then forward it on as if I sent the mail from any mail client.
Hope this helps..
Slashdot Mirror
This is not exactly what we had, but it is similar. http://cableorganizer.com/raised-floors/flooring.h tm/
We turned an office into a server room and needed a raised floor. Since we couldn't exactly raise the ceiling we used floor panels that were about 3 inches deep, they snapped together and had troughs with covers for the cable runs. They were easy to use, fairly cheap and fit our requirements for a SMALL computer room. The tiles were sturdy (we had 19in full height racks stuffed full sitting on them). Unfortunately, I no longer work there and do not remember who manufactured them. Do a google search.
A similar question was asked a while back..Here is the answer I gave them. Listen.. Organize.. Decide.. and most importantly lead. Listen to the members of your team as well as your customers (even if the cutomer is just your boss). Organize the work. Make sure the team knows what has to be done, who is doing it, what and when the milestones are. Make decisions. You are not in a democracy. Listen to your team, then make decisions, don't have votes. Once you make a decision, stick to it. There is nothing worse than a wishy washy leader who changes thier mind evrey day. Finally, lead. By action and by example. You are the person everyone should be going to. If you do not lead, your project will fail, or someone else will become the defacto leader. And, as a last thought..Share the credit, take the blame. The only thing I can add..You asked what the hardest thing is. The hardest is sticking to a decision..Anybody can make a decision..But good leaders stick with thier decisions.
I have read slashdot from tents in Kuwait and trailers in Saudi...
1. You are right, most people can create a web site, and few do it well. However, those that want a good web site are still willing to pay money to have it done professionally. Create a couple of demo sites to show prospective customers, everything from very flashy with bells and whistles, to the business web site. Also, make sure you explain how you can make thier web site rank high on some of the more populer search engines. A business web site should make money or provide some benefit to the business. Show your customer how you can make that happen.
2 and 3. There is still money to be made repairing PC's. People that tell you the only way to repair a Microsoft product is to wipe and re-install generally do not know what they are doing. If the first response I got from a consultant was wipe and re-install, I would look for another consultant. Most experianced techs can repair a Windows PC without wiping it.
4. Hardware issues can be fixed. Power supplies can be replaced. I have often replaced caps on a motherboard, or disabled a built in device on an expensive board then installed an add-on replacement. For example, we had a lightning strike in the area, lightning surged through an unprotected hub and took out 9 computers. On 8 of the computers I was able to disable the on board lan, install a NIC card and get them back on-line. The 9th PC and the hub was toast. I also find many hardware issues to simply be bad fans, faulty memory or such. Always troubleshoot. Customers appreciate it if you look at thier machines before you tell them they need to be replaced.
5. Ok, you're high school students. You will need to try harder and prove you have your stuff together. Dress neat, be well groomed, be polite, and act professional. First impression's count for a lot. If you give a bad first impression you probably will not get a chance to make any proposals.
Finally, the consultant is not supposed to be any particuler age, but should be a professional, who can help the customers bottom line.
Listen.. Organize.. Decide.. and most importantly lead. Listen to the members of your team as well as your customers (even if the cutomer is just your boss). Organize the work. Make sure the team knows what has to be done, who is doing it, what and when the milestones are. Make decisions. You are not in a democracy. Listen to your team, then make decisions, don't have votes. Once you make a decision, stick to it. There is nothing worse than a wishy washy leader who changes thier mind evrey day. Finally, lead. By action and by example. You are the person everyone should be going to. If you do not lead, your project willl fail, or someone else will become the defacto leader. And, as a last thought..Share the credit, take the blame.
No..Not kidding. We set his computer up with Windows XP. Locked it down pretty hard so he couldn't screw it up. Put him some favorite web sites (candystand.com, cartoonnetwork.com, yahoo for kids, etc). Created an IM account with just family and a few of his older friends on it (most of the kids his age can't read and write as well as he can). Locked the IM so only messages from people on his buddy list can come through. I run a home mail server, with SPAM control, so he does not get penis enlargement ads. I think one of the reasons he reads and writes better then his age group is because his mother and I (and his older siblings) all worked with him, and he has had access to a computer with loads of educational/phonics type games that he enjoyed playing. He was also rewarded after reaching certain levels in each game.
I have 3 children (16,10 and 5), they all have computers in thier rooms that have unfiltered Internet access. The only real hard and fast rules we have is that they are not allowed to talk to people on IM or e-mail that they do not know, never give out your e-mail address to people you don't know, and never agree to buy anything. The last one became necessary when my 10year old joined Columbia records and got 10 free CD's for a penny!!! Now the gotcha's. My kids know that I can see everywhere they go by checking my firewall logs. If I check my logs and and see anything I feel is worth discussing then I will. Nothing will stop a 16 year old from viewing porn like having to face dad for an open and frank discussion that starts out as "so son, notice you've been looking at a lot of sex pages..Do you think all women are like that?? I noticed you were spending most of your time on pages where the women were doing X. Why is that ?? " He would much rather I just yell at him and forbid it, but I refuse. Basically I am using shame as a weapon..Will probably have to pay for it via therapy for them later...Oh well.
Two options I can think of off hand (I have done both). Military: I served 20 years in the Air Force, nearly all of that as a Sysad. Got some great training, (not only in IT, but several other things also) was paid OK and did get to do a lot of travel. Even though I was often in places where I received combat pay, I never got shot at. The Air Force has a lot of state of the art (or close to it) systems, and if you get the right assignment you could be working on them right out of tech school. The other option (slightly less dangerous in some areas) teaching. If you teach for an organization like Learning Tree or New Horizons then you could potentially do a lot of travel.
Here is how I run a mail server out of my home with port 25 blocked. For incoming mail: My domain will forward any number of e-mail addresses. I have different addresses forwarded to either my cox.net address, hotpop.com, or any of a number of other free POP3 services. On my server, I have an application (free) called poproute that runs every 10 minutes and queries all the pop3 accounts and then sends the mail directly to my internal SMTP server. All the mail goes to the proper internal mailboxes. This gets me around port 25 incoming being blocked. Outgoing Mail: Outgoing mail was very easy. I just set up my mail server to use a smart host and have my smtp server forward outgoing mail to the cox.net server. Cox.net will accept my mail because I am on the inside of thier network, and will then forward it on as if I sent the mail from any mail client. Hope this helps..