Bitter Sweet Symphany

I always wondered how my time at Western Costume Company would come to an end. In the past 5 years, 7 months, 15 days; 177,552,000 seconds; 2,959,200 minutes; 49,320 hours; 293 weeks (rounded down) I have learned a lot. I have worked with incredible Costume Designers and their crew helping them get connected to the internet, send urgent emails, fixed malfunctioning printers, BlackBerry firmware upgrades, troubleshoot C/Plot Pro, scale down photos to email them to Directors that needed it yesterday, you name it I made sure that they were satisfied.

 Some of my happy Customers Costumers

I was first hired on as a Web Developer to build the now successful online Supply Store. I was 19 at the time and had my own private office. Some of my co-workers where not to happy and rightfully so. I was a teenage brat that thought I deserved respect right off the bat. That is when I learned respect is earned, not just given. So I was on a mission to earn the respect of my co-workers. I knew it would take time but anything worth anything takes time and sacrifice.

Shortly after I started things weren't going so good. I had recently moved in with a good friend of mine and as you can imagine I was not getting enough sleep at our new bachelor pad. I was late frequently and my boss & co-workers where not happy with me. To make matters worst, getting the Supply Store Online was not as easy as I thought it was going to be. I learned that not only did I have to design the website and make it e-commerce ready I had to take ALL of the pictures (888) and also input all the data. In my head daily I would say "WTF I wasn't told this was part of the job..." but it had to get done so what choice did I have? Fast forward a few months and I had officially hit BURN OUT mode. I was getting so depressed because I hadn't even entered in half of the products and I had not 1 but 2 head honchos breathing down my neck.

Then the IT gods came to save the day. I was paged by the operator to go to Office 1G and help "The Legend of Zorro" with a computer problem. When I got down there my boss was talking to one of the key costumers and when he saw me he said, "Justin, they need internet access and need to be able to backup some files to another laptop." I smiled and said "No Problem!" (anything to get me away from the Supply Store) As time went on the Supply Store slowly became less of a priority (at that particular time) and I was becoming the go-to geek that can fix computer issues which I loved to do (before and during my Employment I was a IT consultant for family friends and SMBs).

At the time Western had a IT Consultant that would come out and work on the file server (Intel Pentium III with 256mb of RAM and 40 GB SCSI Raid 5 running NT4), network & 10 or so workstations. In addition we had a DVR Surveillance System, DOS based Call accounting & Voicemail server. Now to get to these "servers" you would have to go to what my boss called "the bone yard" and climb over boxes filled with props and old costumes (no I'm not kidding, I wish I had a picture to share.) Not to mention there was absolutely NO Air Conditioning. I was applaud that an IT consultant would let this happen.  I immediately had a meeting with my boss and convinced him that I will be not only the web developer but the Jr. Systems Administrator (helping the consultant out). Here was my first plan:

1.   1. Replace our DSL line with a full T1
2.   2. Move our Email and web hosting to the Cloud (This is 2004, before Cloud was even considered a smart decision)
3.   3. Clean out the "bone yard" and make it a somewhat of a real Server Room.
4.   4. Consolidate the location of all of the so-called servers and make sure the room had air conditioning
5.   5. Make sure all of the Workstations were patched (upgraded some Windows 98 to 2000)

I had the OK and went to work. Once again I was excited about coming to work. It took about a month and a half to do but I got steps 1-4 out of the way. Number 5 well that's a whole other story.

When I started checking out the workstations I noticed some didn't have anti-virus software installed & the ones that did where expired (for a good 6 months). I took notes and presented them to my boss. My request to upgrade the Anti-Virus licenses where not denied just overlooked. That is until we got hit with the infamous w32.Blaster worm. I can go into detail about how we worked for 26 hours straight reformatting every workstation but I respectively decline. Lets just say after all of that I became Western's System Administrator, no more Jr.

I now ran the show. My respect level rose to an all time high, but still no where near where I wanted it to be. I was glad I still had harsh critics because I would stop at nothing to win them over. I started planing how I was going to completely change the technology infrastructure. Problem was I had no idea what to do. Please remember this is was 2004/2005 before web 2.0 truly hit the scene. Sure Google could help out a great deal but as far as Delicious (Social Bookmarking), Blogs/Communities (Dealing with Sysadmin), Twitter Search..., let's just say there was no real-time data as there is today. So I called my mentor, Ian McDougald and asked him what to do. He said if I really want to start and stay in this business you must subscribe to InformationWeek. After I hung up the phone I went to their website and signed up. I read every magazine front to back. My favorite sections of the magazine were CIO Profiles & "Start-up City" that featured a new IT related company (That is how I found about Spiceworks while they were in Beta. That is another story in it's self).  Many of the articles never really applied to me although from time to time they would publish one dealing with the SMB market.

So with the help of Google and InformationWeek I started to plan out my vision. Each day I would add more and more and more ideas to it but I didn't run it by anyone I just thought hey whatever I say now go's. Boy was I wrong again. This is when I learned about budgets.  With that said I realized that I couldn't execute half of my ideas and I would just have to deal with it. Here are some of my proudest accomplish in 5.7 years:

•    * Added 22 new workstations
•    * Secure WiFi (4 WAPs) for our Customers
•    * After 4 attempts finally got the Supply Store Online, SEOed and Profitable
•    * Upgraded our Network from 10/100T to 100/1000T
•    * Upgraded our Analog PBX (That looked like Refrigerators) to all Digital (Rack Mounted) with a PRI card for Caller ID
•    * Upgraded Voicemail to Email WAV/MP3 attachments
•    * Upgraded our DVR Surveillance system to support remote viewing (via IE/ActiveX, I know, you can laugh...but it's still remote)
•    * Upgraded our Alarm system to Esecure so we could remotely admin it via web & SMS (Logs used to print to a DOT Matrix Printer)
•    * Deployed Active Directory
•    * Implemented Off-Site cloud based backups (Mozy, saved the day 3 times)
•    * Removed NAV and Deployed Nod32 (One of the best decisions I made regarding security)
•    * Opened Facebook (Close to 500 fans) & Twitter (300+ Followers) accounts and wrote a Facebook app called: The Costumer's Job Board
•    * Wrote a letter to the FCC (Form 2000) and got our LEC (AT&T) to fix our phone lines once and for all!
•    * Kept our Ebay score @ 100% (No negative or netural feedback)
•    * Set up Exchange Server with BES for my boss and his secretary (2 users cost effectively)!
•    * Supported 17 Printers and always had ink in stock thanks to Spiceworks and CDW (Sometimes Staples & Fry's, Sorry Matt)
•    * Upgraded our call accounting software (Tapit) to print reports on the fly (Made Aning's job way easier)
•    * Moved WesternCostume.com from static HTML over to WordPress CMS and finally added our updated resume (Thanks Hilary)!
•    * Becoming a well respected contributor, and Product Adviser Spiceworks. At the first Spiceworks user conference I was recognized for my contributions with a "Spice Award". It was hands down one of the best moments in my professional life.

So now I am excited to announce to the world that I will be advancing my career in the IT industry. I am now officially Jr. Systems Engineer for Mahalo.com. You might think "dude you're a Jr again...How is that advancing?" Let me explain.  My  goal in the not so distant future is to become a CIO. It will be a dream come true when InformationWeek profiles me. In order to do that, I have realized I have to move on, and start at the bottom again. I always considered Western as my College, now I'm attending graduate school. This time I know from the get go how I will earn respect quicker. Lose the ego, work hard, make the sacrifices and everything else will fall into place.

I want to thank the following people who have helped me grow and learn during my time at Western (FYI the order of this list has no logic whatsoever so please don't over analyze it!):

•    * Eddie Marks
•    * Jeff Marks
•    * Ian McDougald
•    * Kevin Zanit
•    * Frank Allegro
•    * Monica Allegro
  
•    * Freddie Erada
•    * Xz Lim
•    * Aning Javelona
•    * Diane Roby (RIP)
•    * Carmen Lozano
•    * Raul Martinez
•    * Bobi Constantine
•    * Christina Munoz
•    * Dana Ludlow
•    * Stevie Sterman
•    * Orit Levy
•    * Alma Magana
•    * Nancy and Joel Marrow
•    * Amy Glenn
•    * Bett Adams
•    * Becky Rossitor
•    * Nicole L
•    * Natasha Leigh-Root
•    * Tanis Alexander
•    * Nick Scarno
•    * Jack Wright
•    * Jaqui S
•    * Hilary Perkins
•    * Bobi Garland
•    * Pie Lombardi
•    * Maurcio shoe
•    * Ashley Ellseorth-Fontana
•    * Dante Fontana
•    * Robair
•    * Dennis Estrada
•    * Betty Besio
•    * David, Victor and Rob at Respond Communications
•    * CDW
•       * Sarah Kahn
•       * Chris Thomas
•       * Andy Yen
•       * Jesse Peterson
•       * Matt Cipolla
•       * Joe Sartin
•       * Lauren McCadney
•       * Brian
•    * Susanna Sandke
•    * Athena Stamos
•    * Jack Kasbarian
•    * Victor Alamaraz
•    * Carol & David Slade
•    * Maureen Holland
•    * Greg Gerber
•    * Bill and Gail Dorfman (Mom and Dad)
•    * Loren Israel
•    * Spiceworks
•       * Jen Slaski
•       * Doug Brown
•       * Alex Reiss
•       * Scott Abel
•       * MyShell Anderson
•       * Tabrez Syed
•       * Shad Reynolds
•       * Grant Hutchins
•       * Jay Hallberg
•       * Kevin McKeown

If I left anyone out I am sorry. But no need to worry, the beauty of blogging is I can edit it at any time and say that you where included... ;)

My good bye cake