michael schurter

On Nov 1st 2006, I left my position as the lead Developer at Synthesys Solutions to become a lowly assistant Computer Technician at Tremont School District #702.

While there are a number of reasons for the switch, the #1 reason was I wasn’t happy coding all day. I never wanted to be a code monkey, and working from home only made the position more isolating and dull.

In my first two days of employment at Tremont I’ve had the satisfaction of fixing 2 printers, 1 sound card, improving e-mail for 3 users, installing new software for over half a dozen users, fixing a long standing issue with the antivirus server, and probably some other tasks I’m forgetting.

While watching installation progress bars isn’t exactly a party, the gratification from making someone’s life easier with 10 minutes of work is incredibly satisfying. As a programmer, I could spend days hacking up an ugly solution to a difficult problem and never have time to do things right. Removing spyware may be boring and kind of suck, but the user’s reaction when their computer runs 100x faster makes it all worth it.

To be honest this new job isn’t entirely a demotion. I would never have taken it if I thought all of my days would be spent running Windows Update and upgrading Office. Hopefully in the near future you’ll see me blogging about:

• A Linux Gateway/Firewall/VPN solution
• Replacing Exchange with anything else!
• Migrating from Internet Explorer to Firefox
• Using Linux file servers
• Setting up some Linux workstations

And my ultimate goal:
Migrating 500 computers from Windows to Linux.

I’ll keep you posted.

I’ve accepted a new job and it looks like Oct. 31st will be my last day at Synthesys. I’m going to move my blog to a personal web site, and I’ll post more details then.
It’s going to be an extremely busy month!

Update: I’ve moved my blog to a personal site!

Sam and I are finally getting settled in our new house in Peoria. We’ve had plenty of fun experiences like:

• Fixing a leak in our water main (thanks Dwayne Gibbs!)
• Fixing our stove’s electrical outlet (thanks Josh Stuber!)
• Rewiring all 3 phone jacks (I don’t know how they ever could have worked… tons of wires were switched and/or cut.)
• Spending 4 hours on the phone with SBC/at&t to sign up for phone/DSL, find out they lost my DSL order, and try to sign up for free dial-up while I wait for DSL. Moral of the story: I hate SBC/att.
• Called the police because two people were fighting in a huge SUV in front of our house late at night.
• Visited Tremont Turkey Festival for about 30 minutes. Just as boring and expensive as I remember it.

Sam and I have also found a few great restaraunts already: Haddad’s, One World (of course), Taste of Thai, and a couple of Mexican and Chinese take-out places I can’t remember.
Now I’m trying to get back to work. I’m working from home and using dial-up until DSL gets here. I can see why Google is interested in getting people broadband connections. Using the Internet is frustrating and nearly pointless with a dialup connection.

I’m still sorting through lots of e-mail, but I’m eager to get back to work.