My Life With IT

I was rather tempted to post something about having the best job but I realise that in my hunt for it, I have never landed in one, so this post shall be someting about tech. What I have though is my hunt for the best job, I have encountered people who have sometimes made my day while there are others who did not. With that, I shall post this to participate in Engtech’s Contest the winner gets 15 Wordpress credits. Woohoo!

I never started out in programming. I started out doing IT support, the irony was that I only knew how to turn on the computer and make use of whatever software that it comes with. I learnt how to use the scanner, save as RTF file, design web pages, make use of JavaScript (actually, copy after asking for help in forums and dump the chunk of code and pray it works was more like it), assemble computer, differentiate the types of RAMs available (praying that the computer won’t blow up, unfortunately, it did, I mean the capacitor), sending out emails as confirmation, and many other things not related to IT too.

The most request is for more email space. I’m sure any administrator will tell you that 100MB of mailbox size is actually enough, provided that you delete those friendly emails from friends to your office mailbox account. It would be better if Yahoo!, Hotmail or GMail is used. At least 1GB of space, who can complain? I’m sure my mailbox will increase in mail accumulated size when it’s more than a year. I don’t understand why the mails don’t get deleted. It’s the law of email, once you delete that email, you will need to find it again 3 weeks or less after the deletion. I could have tore my hair out of my head if not for the fact that I have thin covering of hair. I don’t want to scare anyone with my bald head either. I still want hair.

Upgrades are the next commonly encountered. Every software has an upgrade and Domino and Microsoft are the most commonly upgraded versions. In my case anyway since I deal with both software. I have used Lotus Notes R4.6, R5, R6, R6.5 and R7. I’ve also used DOS (you know, that black screen with white text), Windows 95, 98, 2000 and XP. I’ve used Office 95, 97, 2000, 2002 and 2003 (otherwise known as XP). It doesn’t make me the expert because I have never used them for more than 2 years. I have never fully explored the software to discover any quirks until I receive them in emails that I can do something in Excel and a flight simulation will appear or was it in Word? That said, I have never known that there were bugs in the old versions because I have never needed to use the so-called functions that had bugs.

Sometimes I wonder if I will ever be the expert on something. In this case, I have progressed from just IT support to Domino Developer. I shall have to progress to be able to analyse besides being able to develop. It is such a value-add because I would be able to develop better systems with time. With so many programmes being released, there is no need for me to start from scratch. I just have to make use of the current model and modify according to the needs. It’s so much faster that the method has always been in used, it’s called Prototyping.

Even though IT has integrated into our lives, it’s the human touch that still needs to be there. You can’t negotiate a deal with the customer if you don’t know what the customer need in the system. You can’t clinch the deal if you don’t know the customer’s boss (ah, the powers of networking). Even blogging needs some human touch, you have to have your unique voice in it. Humour, it seems, is still needed, even here.