Diary of a Network Geek

Apparently, you can add telecom specialist to the list.
I’ve been avoiding talking about Hurricane Katrina because: a) everyone else is talking about it, b) there’s neither anything I can add or do, and c) I didn’t have any real news anyway. Well, after yesterday, I do. We have offices over there. Notice, I wrote “have” not “had”. The facility is still standing, as far as we can tell. So, when the rest of the city settles down, we’ll be able to resume business there. In the meantime, we’re more concerned with people. Not everyone from that facility has checked in yet. I’m not sure how many are missing, but, some are. Of those who have checked in, their families all seem to be okay, but many of them have lost everything they didn’t take with them. It’s like the recent tsunami in Asia, but with a lower, thankfully much lower, death toll. But, the damage to property and business is very similar.
So, how does that make me a telecom specialist all of a sudden? Simple, actually. Our regular phone guy in house is out on vacation, so when one of the boards on our phone switch died over the weekend, they came to the computer guy to get it straightened out. Phones, computers, same thing, right? Not hardly! Thankfully, I already have some experience with telecom and high-stress troubleshooting. About the time I settle down from that fracas Monday, I start getting questions about cell phones. How to get them fast, but still on our account. So, all day Tuesday, I ran around getting that straight and getting a local cell phone for the “senior partner”. But, wait, there’s more! Yesterday, I had to get more cell phones lined up and get two Iridium satellite phones ASAP. Oh, yes, they had to be Iridium phones, not just any sat phone. Why, you ask? Because the “senior partner” is getting a new plane and wants to be able to use one of these on the plane which, you guessed it, can take only certain models. If everything goes right, which I highly doubt, we should be getting the two Iridium phones Friday morning. So, any guesses who gets to figure them out and teach everyone how to use them?
Yeah, time to update the resume with all this high-end telecom stuff I’m doing. A little more chaos thrown my direction and I’ll be all ready to be the Director of IT somewhere bigger. Anyone looking for a guy like me to head your IT department? I’m willing to consider anywhere that’s not California, New York City, or prone to hurricanes. Blizzards and tornados I can handle just fine, but I’m really not liking this hurricane business.

The “orange” box….

Now, I have to admit that I really dig little computers. I mean, when I was a kid, all the science-fiction writer’s were just starting to explore tiny, but powerful, computers. Now, we’ve got all kinds of personal sized machines that are better than the servers I started out working with in my first IT job!
The latest of those is called T-Cube. It’s a little, orange box that runs its own OS. It’s not big, but they pack a lot into it. You can read more about it at I4U.

One of the things I think is cool about this is that it’s being developed in Asia for Asian markets. They’re building in support for Chinese, which is a major challenge for non-Chinese speakers to localize. It’s a small, affordable PC which made its debut at a Japanese computer show just this year. Who knows what that will mean to US manufacterers, but it’s an interesting trend in Asia.