My status

Thursday, January 31, 2008

Promises & Progress

As much as I wanted to maintain my promise of updating this blog to myself on a more regular basis, nearly another month of my life has transpired since my last post. So, what in the world is going on in Andy's world?

Work on the network is in full swing now for 2008 and my department is actively managing a tremendous amount of activity, projects and deadlines. I only see this increasing as the year goes forward. Our short lived repreive in late December was just a mild tincap speedbump against this runaway data train. New technology, new designs, new projects... change is not only guaranteed, it is the norm.

One interesting project is our VoIP initiative. While we are currently obligated to use the Mitel IP platform (3300s and 5224 phones), it has still been pretty exhausting getting everything working 100%. From a remote branch perspective, all dialtone services are traversing our traditional data MPLS network. Our voice & data networks are uniquely subnetted, so lots of planning for MVAP, VLANs, QoS, and DHCP setups had to be developed. Greek to some, music to my ears....but in any case, it had to work & work well! Most of this complex & unorthodox design was not readily simple to configure. In fact, we were told by Mitel that our design may not work, but I think that negatively was largely predicated by the lack of understanding by the Mitel engineers rather than an opinion based upon experience and/or empirical data. In the end, it works and works perfectly.

So, where does all of this place Andy now? In a situation to relocate of course! Isn't that logical? :P

In the midst of the recent "buyers market" for homes, I am contemplating the purchase of a home on the Northshore. The prices are quite depressed, the interest rates are low (5.25-5.75%) --- so instant equity is assured and that means with slight overpayment of the mortgage, that 30 year note will be quickly dissolved. (Not that I plan to live there for 30 years!) - It will be a good thing, slightly more expensive, longer commute, but much nicer area in terms of QOL...

The skies actually get dark enough to still see the stars quite well at night!
Amazing!

Until next time,
-Andy

Friday, January 4, 2008

You asked me what I want this year...

Better Days.