Gah! How do we make all these things work together?

Since 2004, the two of us have been managing desktop and laptop computers at a small college with a large and varied hardware and software install base. Most of these computers are used solely by individual faculty or staff members as their primary work computers, some are part of one of our loaner pools, and a large number are lab computers that may have dozens of different users every day.

We do all sorts of endpoint management work, but our strengths include the integration of a diverse population of macOS, Windows and Linux endpoints into an equally diverse environment of services (primarily G Suite and Microsoft, but also LAMP, and Citrix, and FileMaker, and…), managing software distribution and licensing as necessary across all devices and platforms, and trying to maintain as consistent a user experience across platforms as is technically and logistically feasible.

To our continuing bemusement, a number of our friends, family and colleagues have also expressed interest in (as well as surprise at, disbelief of, occasional feelings of being terrified by, etc.) another aspect of our partnership: we have been a married couple since 2008, managing many hundreds of endpoints from the same office each day and managing a household of up to six people on nights and weekends. While it does pose some challenges — scheduling family vacations, the inevitable blurring of work/life balance issues, and so on — we think that the idea of the “mom and pop shop” works just as well in our enterprise of IT as it has historically in selling groceries or hardware. 

This site is designed to be a repository of our own musings on topics including (but not limited to) endpoint management, cross-platform integration, software licensing and distribution, the struggle to achieve a better work/life balance, and the challenges and rewards of both personal and professional partnership. Occasionally, somebody else may find parts of it to be interesting. Weird.

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