Most of the positions I've worked, I've been able to work on some of my own time-saving projects during "down time." The following are some of those projects I've worked on.

NORWEST


Having many users, on varying operating systems using shared files on many different domains caused password changes to get a little confusing for most people, and this proved to be a time consuming task when having to walk people through the process of changing their password over the phone. This is why I quickly wrote a small web based CGI form which allows users to change all their passwords in one step from any operating system using a web browser.

Many of the questions asked by the clients tended to be simple proceedural ones, so one of my projects was to create a technical self-help support page where people could get answers to frequently asked questions and instructions on many basic tasks. You can visit this page if you like, but some of the links will not work because they may contain confidencial information, or be linked to other intranet sites not accessible from the internet.

JOSTENS


The scripted installation that was currently being used to install the "base software" on workstations would no longer work with the service release version of Windows 95. (OSR2) This meant that while the systems engineering department spent months re-writing a script that would be compatible with the newer version of windows the tech support was left to install everything manually. This process could take up to 3 or 4 hours depending on what software needed to be installed and any mistakes made while installing, or just random stubborness of Windows 95. I created a process of backing up a hard drive to the network and restoring it to a clean hard drive using simple DOS commands and utilities that come with Windows 95. Then I created a batch script and a boot disk that could effectively image the target computer in under 20 minutes with the base software already installed. This allowed each person to rollout 5 computers in one day instead of the 1 computer per day before.

With users not always being consistant in the place they stored their data files, replacing a workstation could mean over an hour in searching for and backing up various data files on the local hard drive. I wrote a batch script that searched for every type of data file used at Jostens and programmed it to back it up into a specified path, while preserving the directory structure so people could recognize their data, if they had more than one copy of a file with the same name. This process would only take about 20 minutes for a user with a lot of data stored locally and could be left to run unattended.

MINNESOTA MUTUAL


With a couple dozen print servers, each with several print queues on it, monitoring each queue was not practical through Windows 95. By the time the user noticed that a printer was not printing, the queue could have been backed up by more than 100 jobs. I created an application which would scan all the print queues for jobs that had stopped, cross reference the queue name with a text database about the printers, then cross reference the user id that printed the job, and output this information to a self-updating web page for the tech's to see. Displayed would be a list of printers with problems, how many jobs are waiting, how long the job was waiting, who printed the job, their phone number and department as well as what kind of printer was paused and where the printer was located. If all the queues were stuck, or a server was not responding, the application would issue a notify command to alert the tech's pro-actively. This helped reduce the high volume of printer related support calles that was being experienced.

MICRON ELECTRONICS

When people call up with a problem, and you tell them that the problem they're experiencing is a known bug and is being worked on, they want to know when it's fixed. At Micron, there was not a database of known issues or people that wanted a call back. I wrote a simple web based form that could store issues and caller's contact information which would generate a list of e-mails or fax numbers to respond to if the issue was ever resolved.