My work at the University of Waterloo for Engineering Computing is very diverse.
1My main focus is software deployment for the Faculty of Engineering.This includes common applications such as Microsoft Office, Google Chrome or Adobe Acrobat and many more, but also several engineering applications used within the different departments.
Because most of our engineering applications are very complex and substantial in disk size, we developed our own in-house web based distribution application.
2This brings me to my second focus: web applications. Beside working on the software distribution application, I also create several other web based tools.Depending on the need of the students, faculty and staff members, web applications are developed to alleviate the complex tasks which need to be performed.
Examples include: an audit system for computer resources, an AD Group List Manager, a lab usage information page, etcetera. 3My last major focus is the operating system integrity. This integrity goes well beyond security, antivirus or group policies forced on the several workstation. I maintain several tools and services which will run at set intervals on the workstations to maintain this integrity. These tools will not only try to keep the workstations secure, but also “clean and lean”. 4On top of these several tasks, I am involved at different times in faculty or campus wide projects. These projects are usually related to some part of my work. Examples are: Active Directory Consolidation Project, Waterloo CMS Project, amongst others. 5Of course there is also the day-to-day questions and issues which need to be resolved in a timely manner. These are usually related to software and operating systems.