Kelly

[00:00:00 ] Brett: [00:00:00 ] This week’s guest is Kelly Guimont, operations manager at Technolutionary in Washington, DC, as well as doing daily observations over at Mac observer, the incomparable with Don Melton and the after show with Mike Rose. How’s it going, Kelly?

[00:00:15 ] Kelly: [00:00:15 ] It’s going good, Brett, how about you?

[00:00:17 ] Brett: [00:00:17 ] Um, man, I’m having a rough day.

[00:00:20 ] Kelly: [00:00:20 ] I understand completely.

[00:00:22 ] Brett: [00:00:22 ] You you’re, you’re already privy to this. Having been through a rather chaotic pre-show with me. But things are not going my way today.

[00:00:32 ] Kelly: [00:00:32 ] Yeah. I know those days. I think we all do

[00:00:36 ] Brett: [00:00:36 ] I’m happy that this worked out though, that I actually have you in we’re we’re recording now. So, uh, you’re wait. I thought you were,

[00:00:46 ] Kelly: [00:00:46 ] So we better get to it while everything’s behaving.

[00:00:49 ] Brett: [00:00:49 ] I thought you lived in Portland.

[00:00:51 ] Kelly: [00:00:51 ] I do

[00:00:51 ] Brett: [00:00:51 ] How are you working in Washington, DC?

[00:00:54 ] Kelly: [00:00:54 ] remotely,

[00:00:56 ] Brett: [00:00:56 ] I suppose that’s the obvious answer.

[00:00:58 ] Kelly: [00:00:58 ] Uh, uh, well, [00:01:00 ] what happened was, uh, Tom bridge is one of the founders of tech Solutionary and is a friend of mine. And, uh, not that long ago in January, as a matter of fact, this year, um, he told me that he had had a conversation with the other founding partner and said, like, My friend, Kelly, we totally need someone like my friend Kelly, to just sort of like handle all this stuff so that we can be doing this.

[00:01:23 ] And then I happened to mention that I was in the market for a new, for, for new employment. And so we sat down and had a couple of conversations about it. And so they hired their first remote person. Cause all of theirs, um, three of them total who all live in Washington DC. And it’s it consulting. So like a small place that needs an it department.

[00:01:46 ] Or even just someplace that has somebody that mostly handles the day-to-day stuff and then calls in backup, you know, for something larger. Um, Uh, those are our clients. And so they’re all there. Like in-person hands-on and, uh, [00:02:00 ] in the, before times, the intent was for me to be able to schedule people and to keep track of a little bit of project management.

[00:02:08 ] Like, um, this place totally needs their network redone. So when we have, when we have two people with a free afternoon, we need to book that slot, you know, things like that. Um, it has been different than that right now. Um, But like, there’s, there’s still a lot of people who are going into the office.

[00:02:28 ] There’s still people like hiring, you know, there’s lots of hiring happening. Uh, we spent most of March and April helping people with VPNs and things like that. So, um, Yeah. And I’m learning a ton because I didn’t know a whole lot of like nuts and bolts, networking kinds of things. So I’ve been learning loads about that and doing lots of frontline support.

[00:02:48 ] So people who, um, sometimes, you know, the password screen is a trick question for some people. Uh, and so I help, uh, so I help those folks out, which used to be a thing that, uh, they had [00:03:00 ] to do, like in the car. Like I can return phone calls while I’m driving from. One client to another client and, you know, everybody kind of has to wait until I’m done, you know, in, in the car again, before I can actually try and help anyone.

[00:03:13 ] So, um, I ended up sort of being home-based for all.

[00:03:16 ] Brett: [00:03:16 ] Yeah, so I feel like operations manager is a job title. That probably means something entirely different depending on where you’re working. So it, in your case, it sounds like it has some aspects of project manager. What exactly would you say your, uh, kind of, what is the job title mean for you?

[00:03:37 ] Kelly: [00:03:37 ] Uh, well, for me, it’s sort of, at least initially again, uh, it was day-to-day operations, so it was where is everybody, if something happens, who’s going to be the available person that I can get to deploy to some sort of, you know, um, unplanned outage. Yeah, unscheduled outage, you know, that kind of thing.

[00:03:57 ] Yeah. So a little bit of dispatch, [00:04:00 ] um, a little bit of being able to route the right, the racing’s to the right people. So, um, I have a work phone and my work phone is part of a, I think it’s called a ring pool. So if somebody calls the main number at techno missionary, there’s a chance my phone will ring and I’ll pick it up and answer it.

[00:04:18 ] And you know, who is that person? What do they need? Um, Handling sort of incoming email and, uh, tickets that come from our automated system about, uh, something weird is going on with your hard drive or you haven’t backed up to, you know, crash plan or a time machine or Backblaze or something in whatever amount of time we’ve set, you know, for that particular organization, things like that.

[00:04:41 ] So,

[00:04:41 ] Brett: [00:04:41 ] so you’re also doing like actual text support too, then.

[00:04:45 ] Kelly: [00:04:45 ] I do. Yes. I do a lot of tech support and I do a lot of, um, like helping folks with projects. Like if somebody decides they want to migrate from their old email system to a new email system, you know, whether it’s to Microsoft [00:05:00 ] office or away from Microsoft office or get everybody upgraded from whatever version of Mac S they’re on is a project I’m in the midst of now and things like that.

[00:05:09 ] So,

[00:05:09 ] Brett: [00:05:09 ] yeah, you’re upgrading yourself right now.

[00:05:13 ] Kelly: [00:05:13 ] Uh, well, Mike, my own computer only just went to Catalina. I was on my hobby for a long time. Um, you mentioned I do a podcast with Don Melton and, uh, Don stance is Gramps don’t beta. And I think I might’ve caught a little bit of, uh, Gramps don’t beta from him.

[00:05:29 ] Brett: [00:05:29 ] Yeah,

[00:05:30 ] Kelly: [00:05:30 ] Uh,

[00:05:31 ] Brett: [00:05:31 ] Catalina hasn’t been in beta for a year.

[00:05:35 ] Kelly: [00:05:35 ] Well, they shipped it.

[00:05:38 ] Okay. But we know it was in beta to like Christmas, at least. And then after that, I just never got around to it. So, uh, it’s done now.

[00:05:46 ] Brett: [00:05:46 ] for the record, I am not running big Sur on my production machine yet,

[00:05:52 ] Kelly: [00:05:52 ] Oh yeah.

[00:05:53 ] Brett: [00:05:53 ] which is going to be a whole thing

[00:05:56 ] Kelly: [00:05:56 ] Oh, yes.

[00:05:57 ] Brett: [00:05:57 ] marked marked [00:06:00 ] my, my main source of income. My application marked, uh, it’s PDF export breaks on big Sur and the solution. Is to do a complete rewrite of marked that will then only work on big

[00:06:18 ] Kelly: [00:06:18 ] on big Sur.

[00:06:19 ] Brett: [00:06:19 ] So really I’m looking at D looking at developin