| March 2007 |
| By Michael Hanzalik |
I work for a government contract company in Afghanistan as a Network Administrator. My day starts at about 6 a.m. when I hit the snooze button, and think “oh man” I have to get up and get moving. Not that it is a far walk to the office - about 35 seconds. I work from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. five days a week. We are a small and very close group. We work as a well-oiled machine because when something goes down, we all have a very short time to get the network back online, as lives depend on our network and time is not a luxury we have here.
Most of us have been working on networks for 10 years or more. We have all seen something a little different so we’re able to troubleshoot problems in record time.
Our shop is small and loud. We work in the same room as our equipment. One reason we can troubleshoot our gear in record time - it’s only a few feet from our heads.
I wear many hats here. I’m tech support for other network and system administrators all over Afghanistan. I do testing and acceptance of updates to insure they will work with our hardware and software, and not cause an outage. I am amazed at how many updates we push in a given week. We do outage analysis to insure what we did and how we did it, so it will not hinder our users’ ability to do their jobs.
We are constantly looking at the security of the network, waiting and watching for things that are out of the ordinary. Since most sites are satellite shots, there are some strange things we come across. Most of the time, we know a site is going down before the administrators on the other end do. We are proactive for the most part and when we have to be reactive, we move fast and make choices in seconds where most people would have to ask or get permission. The normal thing here is to do the job and get things running, then ask for forgiveness.
This job is fun and rewarding, even on days when everything seems to be going wrong. Most days we lose track of time and before we know it, the day is gone and it is time to head back to our closets (rooms), which are smaller than the closet in my bedroom back home.
I miss the amenities we have at home like a bathroom and shower in the same building, or a kitchen in the same house. Not a 15 minute walk in the snow or heat. And a store that sells more then one type of shampoo and soap. It makes you appreciate everything you have back home.
Most of my friends thought I was nuts to work with a company that was going to send me to a location where I could be killed. Something deep inside me told me I need to do this job. I had a talent that would benefit the military and to help keep the troops safe. I have met a bunch of nice people and built friendships that will last a lifetime. To coin an old military commercial, “It’s not a job, it’s an adventure.” I would not have it any other way. This has been the most rewarding and challenging job I have had in over 20 years of networking.
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