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Oct 10Just One Port
by in Feature Articles on 2010-11-23
By day, Jeff is an IT Administrator and, by night, a volunteer fire fighter. Both positions occasionally involve fighting fires, but Jeff’s duties and the training he receives while at the fire station are a complete 180 from what he does for a living and, in fact, is exactly why he enjoys it so much. However, on occasion, both worlds collide, especially when the fire department needs some IT expertise – such as when the doors and locks were to be upgraded to use keycards for access.
Over the course of several evenings, Jeff reviewed several vendors, determined which doors needed to be fitted with the new locks, calculated total cost of ownership - basically, all the due diligence he would normally do at his day job when someone would request the purchase of a new piece of computer hardware. Prior to the installation date, Jeff asked Tom, a fairly technically-minded colleague who specialized in smoke alarm and sprinkler systems, to act as the go-to guy for the installer when he arrived by answering any questions that might arise.
Katie’s start at Ace Software Solutions was fairly unremarkable. Hired as a technical “Jane of all trades,” she helped users by fielding MS Office questions, setting up hardware, upgrading drivers, uninstalling malware, and any other problems as they arose. Overall, the users at Ace were pleasant to work with and her manager Jennifer was a great person to work under. During busy times, she was willing and able to get her hands dirty, as she called it, in the daily support work as well.