Date: October 17, 2008
To: Michael Green
From: Steve Rippl
Subject: Tech Dept. Executive Summary
Last month I talked about catching up, and we're still in the midst of that really. The guys have closed a lot of Helpdesk tickets since the start of the year, but they still keep coming in! It's not really that a lot of things are failing all the time, I think it's just that so many people within the District are now dependent on technology, every time something internal or external to us changes it affects something or someone and stuff has to be altered to compensate. It's an ongoing balancing act.
Our major changes to the network seem to have bedded in now. We're certainly observing a big improvement in how much noise the servers and switches are having to listen to, although I haven't heard if end users are noticing anything. It is also feeding into our security setup as we start to roll out guest wireless for the High School students. The one thorn in our side is a certain model of HP switch that we're reliant on in the Intermediate school and a few locations on the main campus, it simply does not behave as advertised! We have some work-a-rounds in place which are minimizing the problems, and Travis is in contact with HP trying to get to the bottom of it. It's a relatively new switch so hopefully they'll have further updates to it's firmware soon.
The Intermediate School thin client Lab is all in place physically, we're just now finishing up the final background configuration pieces. Because it's a new technology for us we're having to invent things a little as we go along, the price Chris has to pay for being a trail blazer, but he's been very understanding and patient to this point!
You and the Board have now had your first electronic meeting and it seems to have been enough of a success that everyone is comfortable to remove the paper version already, which is very satisfying. There are already a number of small alterations planned which will be in place for the next meeting, and then after that it will be a gradual evolution as things come up I presume.
So, still a time of catching up and staying on top of things!