Thank $deity for edugeek!

[Koldov]

I was going to hijack someone's thread but it was probably a little too 'off-topic' and the post turned out a little longer than I planned so please forgive me if it's not worth creating a whole new thread (as I'm sure it's probably just me)... but last night I was struggling trying to work something out and I thought 'for $deity's sake, why is this so complicated for me?!'

 

It maybe that I'm not a 'true' geek as I came to it later in life, I was never the science/math/computer geek at school (actually about as opposite as you could get)... in my youth and actually into my 30s I was more of a gamer (only getting interested in hardware/PC building in order to enable me to play bigger and better games)...

 

Honestly, everyday is a struggle (which doesn't help my 'imposter syndrome')...

 

Last night I decided I needed to get my backups sorted as since I moved the SIMS server onto a VM I've been relying on a basic server backup... we have Redstor software to do an off-site backup and that sits on the host (doing some other backups of data on the host). There is a section that 'should' enable me to backup from the now remote 'VM' but try as I might I couldn't get it to connect, then when I actually found the way to make it 'connect' it failed to do the backup....

 

As a last resort and although I tried to resist it, after a few hours I gave up and thought I could put an agent on the VM and just upload to the Redstor account... after a few failed attempts to even get the correct agent on the VM, I worked out which one it should be, but even the install dialogue was like reading a foreign language, I honestly couldn't understand what it was asking me to do (even basic things like what the 'account' name was, or the error message that said there was 'no room in the group'), so I gave up... I had a similar experience with the SIMS move to a VM, even installing SQL had so many options I didn't fully understand, I ended up just pressing next, next, next...

 

I have also been 'forced' to install EntrySign (and Paxton Net2 onto the server - from an Admin machine where it was quite happy) and now everyday there is an issue where it won't open the door, which is now my problem as it's on the server... but looking through I can see services not started and doors not connected, but I've no idea why... of course as this affects everyone I get multiple comments about it which is annoying.... I 'think' I've narrowed it down to an error now about a service which has created an Event Log that cannot be read by the system, but I can't be sure because it's really helpful name is:

 

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\EventLog\${appsetting:name=AppName}\${appsetting:name=AppName}

 

Things like this and Veeam, Groupcall and a few others, have introduced errors on my server that I can never get to the bottom of and resolve...

 

To make matters worse after the windows Update on the Servers last night, half of them came back up on a 'Public' network (instead of 'Domain') which I thought I'd sorted until I realised that I actually needed to go into each VM and manually reset the disable/enable the NIC... So I've had 8 hours of no DCs....

 

We are also moving to Google Workspace (not my choice), which means I have got a vertical learning curve, having never really used it before and will now have pretty much the whole school knocking on my door if anything goes wrong...

 

I don't want to go through everything that's been dumped on me in the last 3 weeks, plus all the day to day (like laptops drenched in tea etc.) and I know there are a couple of other threads about this start of the year being bad for a few of us...

 

So I just wanted to thank the edugeek community who can usually help and without whom I probably wouldn't even have this job...

[StevieM]

Thank goodness it's not only me! I couldn't do this job without Edugeek.

 

There are so many things that we are just supposed to know all about, but rarely have the time to learn in any kind of depth. And even what we do manage to learn, you can guarantee that it will have changed by the time we come to do it again.

 

I feel like our job is like trying to be a translator for the United Nations, armed with just a collection of conversational phrase books.

[3s-gtech]

I've felt similar many times over the years, and I'm pretty stressed currently with getting kit back into stock, Apple profiles, lack of funding, bought in kit not working properly, a desk covered in broken old sh...hardware, etc.

 

What gets me through is the perspective of leaving work on time, then doing something with my time - not going home to dwell on it. Amazing how your brain will allow you to separate the important things in life.

 

Imposter syndrome is a feature of the job. If they want the best IT Manager in the world, they'd have to pay handsomely for it so just do the best you can and be content with that.

 

They definitely do not pay you to be stressed.