Since July of 1995, I have been employed as a system administrator by ITD Contract Services.  ITD is the Information Technology Division at the University of Michigan, and it provides a wide variety of services to the university community - from running the Ann Arbor campus' phone system, down to hired-gun systems administration, which is what my group does.  I felt extremely fortunate to find a job so quickly after I graduated,  and looking back, I realize just how lucky I am to have fallen in with this lot.

Contract Services primarily provides UNIX, Novell Netware, and Windows NT administration to departments in need - whether they're looking for someone to keep a server running while they are between staff members, or even if they're just looking for help with specific projects.  In 1997, we started offering a Desktop Support Service - providing desktop application and hardware support to departments at a lower cost than our System Administration service, and also allowing our sysadmins to focus more on system administration.. and less on Microsoft Office. I was one of the managers initially responsible for that project.

I primarily work with Sun Solaris and WinNT, but I've also done some Netware administration and a whole slew of Macintosh and Wintel service and support.  I am currently under contract to the School of Natural Resources and the Environment.

In 1998, I split my appointment between Contract Services and GPCC. GPCC stands for "General Purpose Computing Cycles" - the team was formed to create a UNIX environment that duplicated the terminal services that were previously available on the University mainframe system, MTS.

In the summer of 1999, I joined ITD's team of Webmasters in an effort to grow my perl skills. I currently answer a lot of email, maintain our server builds, evaluate new software and services for our environment, write the occasional perl script, and kill at the bidding of my liege, Kevin McGowan.
 

"Hi, this is Liam.  May I ask if you are faculty, staff, or Fabio?"

I've been working in computer support for a while now.  I started by supporting an office of TRS-80 that were acting as dumb terminals connected to another TRS-80 that was running XENIX.  That was back in high school.  I began working for ITD in the fall of 1992 - my sophomore year of college.  I spent the next three years answering questions in the campus computing sites, and for 4-HELP, the computing assistance hotline. 4-HELP was fairly high-pressure, but a quite a learning experience - at the time it was woefully understaffed, and I think, underappriciated.  I continued to work for 4-HELP until I got hired by Contract Services.  I have also done time as a "Healthcare Data Specialist" for the Medstat Group, and as computer support for the School of Social Work.
 

Contract Services is a good bunch of people.  We currently have about ten full time staffers and a few student temps in the SA group, and a bunch of students in our DSS group.  Aside from management staff, the two groups are largely separate.  As service providers, we work independently, and although we generally only see each other at our staff meetings, we have a great group dynamic.

And don't believe what anyone says... there are no ninjas.