Q: You are responsible for the computer support in the department.
   What is your professional background?
A: In Germany I received an education comparable to a degree in Mathematics and Computer Science and I worked eight years in the computer center of the University of Mainz, for two of those years I led the systems group. I held a position very similar to the one I have now.

Q: But what did you prepare to do the work here and now?
A: First, I worked on advanced systems (Control Data etc.) and software back then and would have been sufficiently prepared, but, second, I got a MS in Computer Science from ASU mainly to bridge the time I wanted to spend with my family. Then, I started to work half-time.

Q: So, the work could be done with just a half-time effort?
A: This was only possible very early on when I was mainly responsible for a cluster of high-performance mini super computers.

Q: The work increased?
A: It exploded. We do not have these computers anymore but we have literally hundreds now and the number of users increased  to include virtually everyone in the department.

Q: How many people and computers are there?
A: There are over 100 faculty members alone and we have far over 300 computers in the department. We have two undergraduate labs for instructional use and several graduate labs. The computers range from old 486 PCs to high end Unix workstations. The operating systems are Solaris, HPUX, Digital Unix, Irix, Linux, Win 95/98, WinNT, Win 3.11, and MacOS. So it includes almost all the operating systems.

Q: How can this load be handled?
A: First, I work long hours. But that still would not be enough.  In recent years I have had 1-2 highly qualified assisting graduate students. We three together try to do our best.

Q: Is this then adequate personal?
A: In fact, not really. A recent informal survey among peer institutions indicated that one place had about the same personnel to work ratio but they were just planning a substantial increase and most others already had at least two permanent positions plus student assistance. I understand, our department is also asking for another line while smaller departments have already several people.

Q: What happens when you go on vacation?
A: I hope that I have students at the time to keep things somewhat running but I still take a notebook along and log in frequently.

Q: How is it to work in a department versus a computing center?
A: I love being so close to the users and to be responsible for absolutely everything, from ordering to installation, maintenance, trouble-shooting, systems/software/hardware, research/teaching, user instruction etc. This work would be distributed among a large number of people in a computing center. Our department is self-supportive and everything is done very efficiently.

Q: What do you mean by "self-supportive" and by "efficiently"?
A: We can do all the necessary work ourselves and we do. For example, in addition to things mentioned before we maintain our own e-mail server, our web-server, we provide several dial-in servers and maintain both office and home computers. Our efficiency also includes finding low-cost solutions. One can spend very much money on both hardware and software. We keep both costs down through a conservative acquisition policy and the use of free software such as the Linux operating system and GNU software.  We have a computer lab running Linux and several faculty have it on their office and home computers.

Q: What is the ratio of "routine" to challenging work?
A: The routine work is more or less done on the side. Daily there is something new and at least one major problem that needs to be solved. For example, we not only have one Linux version, but for certain reasons we have three different ones. Or, since many years, long before it was done anywhere else on campus, we have linked a number of our workstations with PVM as a parallel cluster used for both research and teaching. There is no time to attend expensive courses in order to learn these things. That's all done on the fly.

Q: Does the department have the computers it needs?
A: Barely.  Many of both the PC's and Unix workstations are very old.  Since we do not get any computer funds on a regular basis we use money for our operating budget and try to get some through grant  proposals.