... and Walk-In Centre changes:

We kept running out of leg room and bench-space for new installations, trouble-shooting and custom machine (server) builds. So thanks to the assistance of the Cyber Construction team (thanks Ray and Mark) we've moved the back partition further down the shop and added more work, desk and bench space.

We've also added more staff members over the past 12 months as our subscriber base continues to grow and places more demands on available staff time and energies. Our people have to support and field internet and communications problems on a multiplicity of hardware and operating systems from windows 3.1, 95, 98, NT, OS/2, MacOS (in a number of flavours), unix/linux (and occasionally DOS!) on desktops, notebooks, palmtops and everything in between.

Meet our Staff:

On the Front Line are Ali and Nick:

Allison handles accounts enquires (so be nice to her), Walk-In Centre customers, assists Public Access Terminal users and general Help Desk calls. She has been with us now for over a year, battling both the accountants and the technology barrier, and we think she's conquered both! Allison can be contacted about accounts enquires between 9:00 and 3:30, Monday to Friday.
She does have a life away from the Internet and has confessed to attending football matches, night clubs, little athletics and swim squad with her daughter, and has been known to frequent the same gym as the webmaster.

Nick joined us mid year, coming to us from a computer support position with a local branch of a national accountant. Nick handles front line installs on PC's and Macs - desktop and notebooks, Windows 3.1, 95, 98, NT and is feeling his way around MacOS. His duties also include Help Desk and phone support, especially the more technical challenges. Nick also helps write support web pages for ALI's web site (which the webmaster appreciates), and is teaching himself the Linux OS (which the webmaster is also finding handy). Nick has 9 years experience with computers. You won't find Nick here Wednesdays, Saturday afternoons or Sundays. When Nick came to work for us we promised him it wouldn't be dull - frustrating sometimes, yes, but never dull.
Nick is also local, with family in the area, and also has a life away from the internet.

The second line of defence:

Helping with the overflow in both support and system administration is Josh. Yet another local (well we like local people) Josh's official position is assistant sysadmin. For those of you unfamiliar with internet network hierarchy, sysadmin is god on his (or her) network - assistant sysadmin is 2nd to god. So don't ruffle his feathers ;-) Josh prefers the late shift, and would probably be happier if the day started later. Josh prefers to work in a Unix environment (FreeBSD or BSDI) writing clever cgi's, some html, and runs a dual boot workstation with NT for windows development work. He has over 10 years experience in the computing industry.
Josh also has a life away from the internet, just ask his horses. He does admit his skiing needs more practice, and tries to frequent gyms occasionally.

In the trenches as it were, is Ross. Master of all he surveys, sysadmin. Ross is a founder, director and manager of ALI. His prime directive is to keep the network systems and servers alive and well. This includes battling Telstra for every bit of bandwidth and cost reduction we can get (it's like extracting teeth!); keep Telstra on their toes when their (internet) backbones have problems (brick walls can be more cooperative); exploring alternative technologies and bandwidth suppliers (microwave, satellite, Optus etc); writing clever cgi's and the accounting systems we use (so be REAL nice to him); and a myriad other tasks. Ross has worked in the computer industry for over 30 years (he started young!). His preferred operating system is Unix, and although he runs Windows 3.1 on his workstation, he usually has at least 12 or so separate telnet sessions to various FreeBSD or BSDI servers all over the local area and elsewhere (Cairns, the US and France) running vi, lynx or command line. Ross goes home to the other end of one of our 2Mb microwave links, and does not really have a life away from computers. He takes most out-of-work-hours support calls, eats, breathes and sleeps computers and dreams of DNS, SMTP mail rules and router tables.

Down the back in comparative peace and quiet is Kathy, our webmaster. Defiantly holding onto that title 'cause she doesn't like the alternative (webmistress). Kathy is also a founder, director and manager of ALI. Kathy works part of the time for ALI maintaining our web site, running the weekly basic training courses, creating training tutorials and editing our newsletters (which usually means writing most of it, browbeating other staff members for articles or pleading with subscribers for contributions). Kathy also independently creates commercial web pages and multimedia content locally, nationally and internationally; and is a member of the HTML Writers Guild, the Java Lobby and the IQTVRA. Kathy uses OS/2, MacOS and is experimenting with Linux. She has worked with photography and graphics since the late '70's, and with computers and computer graphics for the last 17 years.
Kathy does have a life away from the internet - an interest in photography (digital and conventional) and is a registered aviariculturalist breeding Australian native finches. She has also been known to frequent the gym.

A final plea from Help Desk support:

Talking to local users, there is a real need for personalised and face to face support that the big-guns (national providers) don't seem able to provide. There seems to be a genuine appreciation of the efforts of staff at all levels to assist subscribers with difficulties and explain the technology and perceived problems to newcomers.

At the same time, we also ask subscribers seeking help to adopt a pleasant attitude, even if their problem has them at their wits end. While the proportion of irrational and hostile help desk callers is very small ("my computer won't work and it's all your fault"), it does not help either the caller or the support person to resolve the problem. Your call may be the only one you've made, but the help desk may have been fielding calls all day from storm damage victims, people who forgot to turn their modems on, or put the wrong phone number in, or didn't read their instructions, or didn't follow their instructions, etc etc. We are people too, not machines.