My first entry (about me)

Okay, my first entry. The reason I am creating this blog is to keep track of some of the things that I have been doing at my job and in my free time. I plan on entering some little tidbits of things that I am learning and my daily experience. I hope to share these experiences with you as I mature in my career. Speaking of experience, I should start off with how I became a Windows Server Guy.

My Life from 2004 and on.

Country Insurance - It all started long ago in a land far far away (Bloomington, IL). I was going to Illinois State University studying Computer Science/Telecommunications Management because I thought that I wanted to work with networking components. In my junior year I applied for a 9 Month internship at Country Insurance & Financial Services. Although they weren't taking networking interns, I decide to go for a Server Admin internship. Low and behold I got it and the pay wasn't bad at all. So, I start my internship in April of 2004 because they wanted me to start training with the old intern (Mike). To make a long story short, I try to soak up as much of information that I could within the time I was there. Just my luck, the intern that was going to be replacing me found another job at the last minute and so they asked me if I wanted to stay on until August. I said sure and continued to learn more.

State Farm - After sadly leaving there I thought I was able to go to school full time and finish up my education. That is until I got a phone call from Teksystems to inform me that they had a server position open at State Farm. So I bit. I started there in October working on the Server Hands-On Team (SHOT). In a few months I increased my salary by half and was now working for the largest insurance firm. At first, I really enjoyed it there. They had a 3 floor Datacenter that each floor was as large as a football field. Thousands and thousands of servers on each floor! When a new project was started we would install the servers by the rack full. But, one thing that I couldn’t get used to was doing the same thing everyday and not working on problems that would require a high level of skill. The people were great and the job fit right into my school schedule. I would work Friday though Monday and then have the rest of the week off to attend classes. Then all of a sudden came the big surprise, my wife was pregnant.
During that time my wife was going to school to be a Dental Hygienist in the Chicago South Suburbs while I was finishing up my school and now my job at State Farm. So I graduated in May of 2006 and my son was born on June 30th. After that, I informed State Farm that I will not be renewing my contract in October in order to be with my wife and soon to be baby boy. So after October I started a new Job at Oce.

Oce North America - The beginning of November was a new beginning for me. I moved back home, moved my wife and baby in, kicked my parents out (they actually moved to Michigan), and started a new job at Oce. Oce produced and sold large office printers and wide-format plotters. They are based out of the Netherlands and the Chicago office was the North American head quarters. I was hired on as a Wintel Engineer and my compensation doubled my last salary. I was stoked! I thought I was going to be rich and retire by 40 but, that did not become true. See, with a wife and kid there is a need to buy a house, a minivan, and with these comes bills and more bills. So, I noticed that as soon as I made the money it was already being spent. Thankfully though, my wife is now able to stay home with my son. At Oce I improve my skills and brought in some new ones. Here I was able to learn new things like Exchange, SQL, Dell hardware, Blackberry Enterprise Server, and improve my skills in Active Directory. I was able to learn some much because there were only 2 other guys (Sam and Pete) to share the work with. I had to learn fast. Remember, I went from a huge corporation where I was a small fish in a big pond to a 250 server environment with about 3 thousand users which was a lot of work for 3 guys. I also mastered the skill of having children because now my wife was pregnant again!!!

McDonald's Corp - Even though I learned a lot of stuff there, the company was making some drastic changes and I was a part of it. I actually was a contractor for Veritude and was contracted to CGI, the largest consulting firm in Canada, which then contracted me to their Oce account in the U.S. Yes I know, that was confusing to me as well. CGI was planning to take over Oce’s Infrastructure and Help Desk. At first, I was looked upon as the devil for taking these peoples jobs away but I soon felt just like an Oce employee whose job was on the chopping block. During this time I was like the only CGI employee there. In October, things started changing faster. CGI had finalized the contract with Oce and my 3-6month contract was turning into a year. I wanted so much to be hired on in a permanent position because of my family was growing larger. So the stress of driving an hour to work and not wondering what was coming next had taken its toll. I was on the verge of finding a new position that was closer to home. So I, and I am sure a lot others, were secretly conducting interviews with other potential employers. I interviewed with about 10 different companies. Two interviews that caught my attention were FTD the floral company and McDonald's Corporation. FTD had a very relaxed atmosphere and was only about ½ hour from my house. McDonald's Corporation was another large corporation but was about 40 minutes from my house. The guys at FTD thought that I did not have the skill set that they were looking for. I then went on site interview with McDonald's and in a few weeks I was accepted. So now the big decision had to be made. I told the guys I worked with and then my boss at CGI. My boss said that he’ll get an offer for me right away to be hired on. He then came back with about $20,000 less than what I was making now. There would be no way that I could live comfortable and have my wife home with my kids for that. So I kindly passed on the offer and started at McDonald's as a consultant once again on January 7th.

I now work on the US Network team as a Server Engineer. The team manages the restaurant connectivity to the home office. We design solutions for all the restaurants in the US. I have been tasked to three projects. The main one is the Active Directory, then Restaurant Data Movement, and Restaurant Systems Management. RDM is using a custom built application to transfer data to and from the home office. RSM is incorporating SCCM and SCOM to manage the devices in the restaurants. You’ll hear my experiences with these projects and others as I continue my career path.

Enjoy!