Day 1: Introductions & Imaging

(Hours: 7:30am-3:00pm)

Today was my first real day of Senior Project, and it was great. I arrived at Colby Sawyer at 7:30 to open up the Library and Technology Department, as well as receive a quick tour of the building. After everything was all on and set up I spent some time at the Technology Help Desk learning the basics of some of the programs Colby-Sawyer uses to run its technology program. I learned a bit about their HelpSTAR program which is what they use to send, receive, and access technology problems, in the form of text tickets.

After learning about the HelpSTAR application I received a quick introduction to their Citrix program. It’s a server based computer system that keeps a local profile, and runs off of computers known as “Thin Clients”. It was a brief introduction, but I will learn more about Citrix and its uses as my senior project progresses.

I then took a tour of campus with my project sponsor David Levine, the “Technology Specialist.” We visited a few buildings, like the new Science Hall, where we accessed the large amounts of technology waste that needs to be taken care of. This waste includes, broken computers, broken lcds, old crt displays, and many other misc. junk. This technology waste is going to be picked up on Friday by a company that specializes in the removal of these items. I will be moving and organizing all of this later in the week.

Next I met other people I was going to be working with such as Art Grodan, the “Systems Administrator.” We chatted for a bit about possible jobs and things I could learn. He will be showing me some networking racks, and various other programs and things that help maintain Colby-Sawyers network. After meeting Art and various other members of Colby-Sawyer, David and I went over to the Theater. There we made sure the guest network was working, as well as a desktop computer that is going to be used by an incoming Theater Company that’s coming to Colby to perform a play.

After the theater computer and Internet was all set up we headed back. The final thing I worked on today was back down in David Levine’s office. I began creating an Image Computer. This image is going to be reproduced on many other machines and it will be filled with the standard software and drivers that’s needed. I began by installing a fresh copy of Windows, and many drivers. I wrote down everything I did in a Build Notes document that will be placed at the root of the drive, for later reference. I’m currently in the process of working on the Image and I will be finished with it hopefully tomorrow. Then I can start imaging machines and will see if my Image is working correctly. All though my day ended prematurely, (there was an all school meeting at 3:00 so that’s when I stopped working) a lot has happened. All in all It has been a good day, I’ve meet many new people, and I’m excited to be working here again tomorrow.

(Setting up Theater Internet)

Post time: 3:25pm est.