April 19th, 2015 (Week 11)

This week was extremely hectic for me!!! I had a lab report, the mock final presentation for the internship, and an exam all this week. I’m glad I made it through in one piece!

Anyways, to start off the week I continued to carry out the duties at the Help Desk. I’m getting more comfortable with answering the phone. I can now talk calmly with out stuttering or stumbling over my words. I also remember to take down the callers information so that I can Footprint any issue. For me, it takes practice to get the hang of things. As for emails and chats, I am okay with answering and Footprinting them. For my shadowing hours at Main Library SINC Site, I am getting used to delegating tasks to student consultants. In the beginning, I felt weird telling people what to do because I prefer handling and helping users myself. However, I understand that as a Senior Consultant I need to man and help anyone that comes to the front desk and keep a look out for the consultants on SBConnect.

In the internship class this week, we visited the ECC Building, home of the DoIT Training Facility. This is where I met Gru’s doppelganger! Our tour guide was Behzad Barzideh, the DoIT Senior Architect. He took us through the top secret headquarters of the school’s networking system. Aside from looking like the real life version of Gru in the Despicable Me, Behzad has the same booming voice and accent as the cartoon character. Sadly, he doesn’t know who Gru is because he has never watched the movie. Just like Gru, he also knows a lot about technology. We were taken around and shown the different rooms that house the equipment that run the schools wireless network, TV, and phone systems. I never knew that it would require so much extra tech to keep the machines running. There are ventilation systems all around the rooms. Aside from the networking room, there are other rooms for supplying battery power and converting that power for use by the machines. Behzad also taught us how networks work. There are machines stationed at certain distances so that they can pass signals along. This applies to something called “access points”. I recognized the little white boxes around the residence halls. They help users connect to the network via WiFi and are given commands through one of the two central command systems.

I felt it the ECC tour was really interesting and fun. We got to see how the university runs such a large network to keep the SINC sites running. TLT’s services rely heavily on the condition of the systems in the ECC building. Therefore, I feel it is important to have at least a little background information and knowledge of how the SINC sites are maintained virtually. Overall, I really enjoyed the tour!

We also started on the boat for Roth Regatta this week!!! We are probably going to do a character from “Avatar: The Last Airbender”. I have not watched the movie but I’m sure the character choice was good! Jim, Jeff, Frank, David, Kristin, Jessica and I started waterproofing the boards. It was a great experience working together and bonding with the other consultants! I can’t wait till we finish the boat!