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My first week at GRN AU

David Miller - Saturday 19 April 2008

Katrina and I have just completed our first official week at the Sydney GRN offices as staff. We've actually cheated a bit and been around a bit longer. In fact I've been working on IT systems for GRN Australia and USA for a few years, but its a bit different as staff!

Probably one of the most obvious differences for me is that I'm working in an office, rather than from home as I was as a mission IT consultant for Crosscape Technology. That means we need to commute to the office. While it's not the longest drive, it is still 30 mins by car, or 1.5 hours by train and bus (and foot).

Another change is the amount of prayer. At GRN AU we have a prayer time every day from 12:00-12:30, as well as a longer time on Wednesday's from 10:00-12:30. Buts is was bonus time this Tuesday with another hour in the afternoon for the corporation prayer meeting before the board meeting. We pray because we are dependent on God for our work. we pray because we are involved in a spiritual battle. But it sure is easy to think "But I need to get something done rather than pray!"

As with any new job there is a settling in period. I am still working out my role, as is Katrina. She is only there a couple of days a week, and then not all of the day.

My background is as a Unix System Administrator, and I've been consulting with missions for 11 years as an IT consultant. So I know Linux well. As well as a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science I have a Masters in Information Systems. My passion is that missions will make strategic use of Information Systems.

This week I've been tackling a system to automatically install Windows workstations. We have a couple of different types: office workstations and audio workstations, which have special needs. We also build and ship audio workstations for recordists overseas, so we want to streamline that operation. I am familiar with a system called Unattended, built on Linux, but I've experienced problems with it and SATA drives, so I'm trying a German developed tool called OPSI. Problem is - it is in German, and while I have learnt some German, it has been a while. There is English documentation and translation, but it isn't always understandable!

Another of my tasks is providing support for synchronising the audio archives between Australia and the US. This is making progress as the two organisations come to a common understanding and processes. It's not quite a process of just making sure the files are the same using rsync. This week I worked on a script that will automate the transfer of new copy masters between the centres. Copy Masters are the files that are in the format for the media for copying (eg CD WAV files or mp3s), ie, the final product.