DeuceTech

My name is Stephen Cardoos (”Deuce” is a nickname from my Army days) and I spend my days working at a large public university where I am employed as what they call an “IT Consultant.” Before I took this job several years ago, I always thought “IT Consultant” was a title people gave themselves when they were between “real” tech jobs and would basically take on any small job that would pay them. Employers looking to fill full-time positions often look upon that title negatively when reviewing resumes and applications submitted by potential candidates. In fact, I even recall seeing some ads on large, online job sites that specifically stated that anyone with the word “consultant” in their job history “need not apply.”Be that as it may, I am stuck with this title which actually reveals very little about what I do every day. There are several subdivisions in our organization, but basically we provide and support most of the desktop and laptop computers used by the staff and faculty of the university. We also support a defined set of applications that we either preinstall on the computers or provide to the campus community. We also support an ever-growing number of wireless handheld devices such as BlackBerries and SmartPhones. So, we are talking about in excess of 4,000 computers running various versions of Windows and Mac OS X plus all of the associated peripherals, network printers, and basically everything else that connects to, runs on, or depends on these devices.We provide phone and on-site support for all of this plus other campus-wide systems that we have almost no responsibility for other than assisting end-users to be able to use them. We also operate our own “home-brew” ISP providing free dial-up access to faculty and staff. We provide training classes and prepare documentation for almost everything. We re-package software for custom installations and we build “images” which allow us to quickly copy a pre-installed, pre-configured system complete with all of the software applications onto a hard drive and be able to have it up and running in about 15 minutes instead of the hours it would require to build each installation from scratch.The point I want to make is that my job requires many skills in a range of areas from troubleshooting, networking, and programming to being able to physically move equipment around, install it, and deal with the idiosyncrasies of the diverse community that we serve. Sometimes it is difficult and other times it is the easiest job in the world. One constant is that I love my job and truly look forward to Monday morning so I can get back into the fun.This brings me to the “raison d’être” for this blog: I work with so many different areas of technology and deal with all of the problems that real people experience everyday, so I want to have a place where I can write about these topics and invite comments from and discussion by my readers. I expect to write anecdotally about my daily experiences, as well as letting you know about cool things I find in the world of tech. I work directly with thousands of people as they struggle to tame the tech in their lives and I also have numerous other co-workers who share many of the experiences I myself encounter, so I have an exceptionally rich source of topics with which to feed the blog monster.In addition to all of this, I also have a broad range of other interests and experiences that I may write about sometimes. These may include Linguistics, language learning, music, the Middle East, religion, food, travel, hookah pipes, and much more, but the main focus will always be on technology and how we use it.I hope you enjoy what you find here, that you will want to return regularly, and maybe even learn a few new things along the way; Even more though, I sincerely hope that you will contribute and participate and maybe teach me and the other readers some new things too!Thank you and welcome to DeuceTech!