Vintage Mac Living

Working with Macs

- 2007.01.22

For years I've dreamed of working in the computer field, and I did for about four months in 2004 when I worked at a computer store in Denver.

I went into that job knowing that the store was going out of business. In the short time I was there, I sold many computers (both Macs and PCs), and I was the main Mac tech,so I was in charge of setting up Macs for sale and repairing machines under warranty (there weren't many of those).

Back in the fall of 2003, I spent some time volunteering in the computer lab at a local elementary school. This was the same school that I'd gone to as a kid, and I still know a number of teachers there. Until last year, we lived only three houses away from that school.

That was where I met a very important person in my life, Kevin Gallagher. He is the computer lab teacher and head Mac tech at the school. He'd just started working at the school when another teacher introduced us. When he saw my abilities, he decided to let me help him manage the school's computers.

In the time I worked with him, I was in charge of setting up all of the computers in the lab, giving them RAM upgrades, and upgrading them to OS X.

I was also in charge of inventorying all the computers in the school. That meant going to every classroom, getting the serial number of each computer, plugging every one in, checking how much memory it had and how big a hard drive, and so on.

I was also in charge of making "house calls" - when something went wrong with a machine, I went to the classroom and performed repairs.

And whenever I had a minute and was in the lab, I helped the kids learn how to use Mac OS X.

In doing all of this, I quickly became the school's "Assistant Macintosh Manager".

I worked fairly short hours when I did this, mainly from 1:30 p.m. to about 4:30 p.m. for about a month.

Unfortunately, as soon as I finished inventorying the school's computer equipment, the principal of the school decided that because I wasn't a student of Denver Public Schools, I couldn't volunteer for them any longer. (I was volunteering; I don't understand what difference it made whether I was enrolled with that school district or not.)

Kevin and I are still good friends to this day, and I'm still looking for a job in the computer field, hoping that someone will see my abilities and put me to work.

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Recent Vintage Mac Living articles

What a waste! Some schools would rather store old computers than put them to use, 2007.09.12. Denver Public Schools is one example of a school district so ready to buy new computers that it has tens of thousands of old, usable computers sitting in storage.
My incredible $110 Lombard and Power Mac G4 deal, 2007.07.11. Sometimes pawn shops can be a great source for older Macs, such as turning up a Lombard PowerBook and a very upgraded Power Mac G4 Digital Audio for just $110!
Too stressed to even think about computers, 2007.05.16. "I've been so preoccupied that I haven't been able to think about computers, much less write about them."
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