At work I have one assigned project this week and one I just sort of took on today for fun. The best part: they both involve Macs. I love Macs – they’re absolutely great computers. My next computer purchase will be some form of either a refurbished Mac Pro (the desktop Mac that has quad-core processors by default) or a 24-inch Brushed Metal iMac.
Friday I set to work installing VMWare Fusion on the iMacs in the call center, so that the Macs could run Windows Vista in a window within OS X. A VM (Virtual Machine) is basically a fake computer, simulated by software that lets you install an operating system (like XP or Vista or Linux) as though it were on a whole other computer. It has the ability to interact with the host operating system like another computer would. I got them setup and installed, and yesterday worked out how different people logged in to the iMac could share the same VM. I’ve still got to type up my process for the end users who will be working at those computers.
Today I was trying to get Hamachi, the “simple” VPN client, to install on my iMac at my desk. This was a very involved process, as I had to get XCode Developer Tools installed off the Leopard install disc, then get the TUN/TAP (open-source VPN drivers for Mac) installed, and then go back and install and setup Hamachi. Why did I do this? It will allow me to create a secure network connection between my iMac and any other computer on my VPN (virtual private network) regardless of network topology or geographical distance. For right now that means my other work computers and the laptop I sometimes take home after work.
ARGH – between the help desk e-mail, confusing requests from the boss for tasks that don’t make a lot of sense, and people ignoring our queue message letting them know that student email is down only to ask “Hey, my student e-mail is down. Can you help me get into it?”, I think I’m just going to go home and die. Also, we’re about to start the very arduous task of implementing (READ: Copy & Pasting and taking out formatting) our Help Desk wiki into the new Cherwell knowledgebase. Hooray. I guess I’ll get to plowing through that tomorrow.