- Attend the Technology Committee Meeting
- Shadow the PC and Networking Specialist of the firehouse, learning how to extract desktop computer hard drives
- Conduct independent research on common technical issues experienced by PC users and incorporate "How To's" on how to solve these common errors in The Fireman's Hall Museum Technical Support Guide
- Get help on the organization chart I've been working on through Visio for the infrastructure of the firehouse
Accomplishments:
This week I achieved a total of 25 hours. I learned a lot more about what has been going on inside the museum including pressing issues faced by the staff, changes that need to take place, changes that have been attempted, new ideas, updates, maintenance, etc. Some of the things the committee is trying to work on are trying to get Stripe and PayPal set up for the gift shop, recruit a new gift shop manager because the current manager, Nancy, will be leaving by or even before the end of the summer, secure a webmaster for firemanshall.org, get the tax issue being faced in the gift shop resolved, accomplish search engine optimization for firemanshallstore.com, and replace the remaining two old computer systems with two new ones. I learned all of this through attending the Technology Committee Meeting and I had the opportunity to work with the PC and Networking Specialist of the Fireman's Hall Museum afterwards. She gave me two tasks to accomplish this week which were extracting the hard drives from the uninstalled, old PC desktop systems no longer being used by the firehouse as well as to conduct some research on some company or business that may be able to stop through and remove these systems from the museum to recycle. She showed and explained to me the importance of removing these hard drives. The hard drives needed to be removed because all of the data from the Fireman's Hall Museum exists on them and it is important for all their old information to be extracted and destroyed. I was able to remove all hard drives from about six PCs including one server. I boxed the hard drives and they will be shredded. There are two brand new PCs (Windows 7 Professional) that were brought in to replace the remaining two old computer systems (Windows XP). I will be shadowing and learning how to install these two new systems and connect them to the server hosting the local area network of the museum. I researched and called around to several different businesses to see if they would be willing to pick up the scraps of the old systems but unfortunately had no luck in finding someone that would be willing to recycle them at no cost to the museum. This is a task I will continue to try and get completed next week. This week I also conducted some independent research on common technical issues faced by PC users, found out ways to resolve them, and incorporated them into the technical support guide. Because we now have new technology in the museum, it is important that the staff know how to overcome any possible issues that may surface in working with them when there is no one on site to help troubleshoot the issue. Last but not least, I worked with the collection manager of the museum to get help on the organization chart for the infrastructure of the firehouse I have been working on. It is still a work in progress and will receive help from my supervisor next week and continue to make necessary changes through Visio. The chart will ultimately be incorporated into the technical support guide.
Opening up the old Windows XP systems and removing their hard drives
