D-Dawgz Internship

Today, I started out by helping someone trade out their old laptop, which had Windows 10, for a laptop with Windows 11. Walked them through setting up their VPN and logging into it. Then, downloaded Creative Cloud and Avaya Office. After that, I had a meeting with Greg, Jake, and my supervisor, Darcy, for our site visit. Then, to finish the day, I have been troubleshooting a laptop, trying to get into Intune. I do not know if it is corrupt drivers causing the issue, or incompatible hardware via the Driver DMA Violation error. I will be working on it tomorrow when I arrive at work.

Today, I started by configuring NAT rules for a firewall that uses a VPN tunnel to remote sites, specifically for the firewall rules I set up last week. Then I attended a meeting discussing meters throughout the campus, mainly focusing on sharing thoughts and concerns about the ongoing construction. Then, to finish the day, we were figuring out which ports on a switch were hot, cold, and had nothing plugged into them. After determining these, we went to every cold port and verified that nothing was plugged into that jack, and if that was the case, we are going to pull it from the switch. Did ran into an issue, which was that some jack wall plates were mislabeled. This took a while to figure out, but it was figured out nonetheless.

Today, I started out by fixing a Mac printing issue. The fix was to update to the current OS version, which is Sequoia, because a driver conflict existed between the printer and the Mac. After all, it was outdated. Then I went to fix a classroom issue, which was simply that a power supply over USB was unplugged from the monitor to the PC, preventing the keyboard and mouse from working. After plugging it in, functionality was restored. Then I spent the rest of the day organizing the workroom.

This week has been a great one. I got to work on some firewall configurations for a firewall going to a Head Start location in Burlington, which was a great experience in a live environment. I have noticed this week that the availability of our systems is key (which is obvious), but even when implementing a new system, that doesn't work, we take the mentality of if it isn't broke, don't fix it. Which kind of happened with setting up the failover firewall with a VPN tunnel to Oak Harbor Campus from Mount Vernon Campus, because we ended up reverting to the old configuration, because the new configurations for the failover firewall were not working. But on the other hand, this morning I had to replace a UPS with a UPS that would work because the front desk stations at the help desk weren't connected to the network. So this is a case for fixing something because it is broken (UPS had a puffed-out battery). A lot of the fixes and solutions in IT can feel very context-depende...

Today, I started out by finishing the reimages that were started yesterday. I then fixed an issue with our front desk not getting a connection to our network. The fix was to replace the UPS with a functioning one, which reestablished the connection to the network. Then I replaced the battery in the old UPS and tested it. Then spent the rest of the time organizing the work room and reimaging.

Today, I started out by helping someone use Respondus Lockdown Browser for a proctored test. The issue was solved by using a computer that already had it installed. I then set up an owl for a meeting, and picked it up at the end. Then, spent the rest of my day reimaging laptops.

Today, I started by sitting in on a meeting with Ednetics about a failover firewall with VPN tunnels in case one of our ISPs' connections between the main campus in Mount Vernon and Oak Harbor goes down. Then I was tasked with configuring firewall rules and access controls at a remote location for Head Start in Burlington. After that, I then left until 9:00 PM when we started testing the failover firewall. Unfortunately, we ran into issues before even conducting the failover tests. The issue was dropping the request due to an ACL configuration. The way it was fixed was by removing all the other tunnels for the VPN and just using the old primary firewall VPN tunnel. I didn't get to be able to see what was done after this because it was 2:30 AM and I have class and work tomorrow, so I told them I had to leave. I hope to hear more about this.

This week has been a good and chaotic week. Windows 11 rollouts have been going smoothly, but also kind of building the ship as we go, which feels very chaotic when trying to roll out this new version of Windows. For example, no one currently has local admin access, which right now is not an issue, but in a few weeks, when we have beta testers, this could cause an issue. Other than that, I think as an organization, we need to decide on what policies we want to enact within Intune for Windows 11. I hope to have another good week next week with a little bit less chaos.

Today, I was informed we are going to lose people from the Job Corps due to budget cuts. Then, I made a checklist for enrolling machines into Intune and printed it out because I spent a lot of the day enrolling new machines with help from colleagues. Then, to finish the day, I uploaded the SOP I made yesterday for importing and exporting bookmarks in Microsoft Edge.