A new Millennium

Our little IT world changed dramatically in the year 2000: The new annex to our school was completed and occupied, and the renovation work on the old school building was completed. This meant:

• 2 new CS labs

• 1 dedicated server room with three 19 inch racks, air conditioning and dedicated workstations

• Network cabling in all classrooms

• 2 Cisco Catalyst 4600 switches with fiber optic backbone

With this equipment we finally reached a professional level.

Fig. 50 Prof. Muska with students inspecting the construction site of the future extension, here in the future IT room

In the summer of 2000, my life changed significantly for me too: I graduated from high school and thus finished my training at my school — but not my work. I stayed connected to my school as a system administrator for another 2 years … and beyond.

Fig. 51 My desk as a system administrator in the early 2000s

Fig. 52 My big next step around the year 1999: A Pentium™ II: Alexander running Windows™ NT 4.0

Fig. 53 The setup was somewhat …

Fig. 54 … improvised.

Fig. 55 Alexander was subject to constant refits.

Fig. 56 In the early 2000s I started switching to Linux as my desktop OS …

Fig. 57 … running Gentoo

Fig. 58 Since back in the day computers used to be quite noisy and unpleasant in a living room I broke through the wall and funnelled the video and keyboard/mouse cables through the hole in the living room.

Fig. 59 Compaq™ iPaq™. A little ahead of its time I surely miss the high quality build and design.

Fig. 60 My second notebook: A cheap Gericom

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