Taosers enjoy dynamic careers where every day presents new challenges to solve, new people to meet and engaging events to attend. See what a typical day in the life of a Taoser is like by reading about Mike's day below.

• 8:30 A.M. Headed into the office, traffic wasn't too bad. Excited to meet the new Taoser starting today. Angela, the Taos Engagement Manager, had given me the head's up at our last check-in meeting about Taos expanding its presence at this site.
• 8:50 A.M. Got in and met up with Angela and Blanca, the Taos Account Executive, who were here for the new consultant's first day. Angela and Blanca met with our client manager to review the engagement objectives with the new consultant. Afterwards, I was introduced to the new Taoser, Ted, and was asked to show him the ropes and make sure that he got settled in.
• 9:00 A.M. Introduced Ted to the team - turned out Ted had actually worked with one of our other senior sysadmins at a small startup a few years back.
• 9:15 A.M. The team rallied for our project team meeting. Our client manager shared the status of our project - we were ready for the implementation phase. However, priorities had shifted, and I was assigned a new task. I needed to configure the latest Juniper firewalls and have them ready to go by 8 A.M. tomorrow. Having worked with Juniper products in the past, I felt pretty good about getting my hands on their latest product.
• 10:45 A.M. After tinkering with the product for an hour, I still was not able to configure the firewall. Google had failed me and my team mates were busy working on their tasks. This would be a good question for the VTC forums. I posted my issue, "Has anyone configured the newest Juniper firewall? Need to have this up by 8am tomorrow."
• 11:00 A.M. Since the response time is usually really fast, I kept checking back on my post. While I was waiting, I couldn't help but read a question about BGP (one of my own specialty areas.) I posted my suggestions with links for easy reference to my fellow Taoser. Then I started working on other projects due the following week.
• 12:00 P.M. Lunch time! A few of the project team members and I headed to Specialty's to grab lunch.
• 1:00 P.M. Got back to my desk and checked the forums... nothing had been posted yet. I needed to get this done so my other teammate could complete his task. I called Angela to let her know what was going on. I knew I could depend on her to direct me to the right resource. A few minutes later, I received a call from Practice Management who asked me to restate the issue and explain the urgency and the resource needed.
• 2:00 P.M. The phone rang, and John L. was on the line. John's a networking and security Practice Leader - quite versed in firewalls, especially with Juniper firewalls. I answered a series of questions to make sure I hadn't overlooked a simple issue. Finally, John and I identified the root cause of the issue, and I implemented the solution. I posted the solution on the forums, answered a few other posts and saw something else that caught my eye - the BGP class. Angela had mentioned this was coming up. I knew this would be a popular class, but luckily, registration was still open so I was able to sign up.
• 5:00 P.M. Before heading out, I sent Angela the escalation support resolution and thanked her for the head's up about the BGP class. I checked in on Ted to see how his first day went and invited him to the Practice Leader Office Hours that night. The Practice Leaders would be talking about Dynamips.
• 6:00 P.M. Arrived at Taos headquarters and caught up with my fellow Taosers over hot pizza. Then I grabbed a seat just in time for the discussion.