Senor Engineer Pablo

Ahh yes, one of our valuable "Senior Engineers" completely avoids work once again by babbling some incoherent mutterings of crap which mean nothing in the long run and telling the guy under him to review a power point instead of answering the straightforward question he was asked.

Tech Haiku

COLLEGEGIRL pointed out I have not done Haiku in a while.



I'm eating my lunch
You come to ask me question
Let me eat in peace

Weather Thoughts

OK, I have a thought.

Why is it when bad weather strikes and tornadoes abound, mobile homes seem to suffer the wrath of nature?

I was pondering this during my ride to work with my good friend COLLEGEGIRL. I raised the question which would torment me for the remainder of the day...Does God HATE manufactured housing?

I mean really? There has to be some reason that Tornadoes hit trailer parks more often than Rosie O'Donnell hits a Golden Corral buffet. I don't know how often I have watched the news as a fine upstanding citizen without a shirt describes the tornado.

Hmmmm. Because I was curious I checked out www.godhatestrailers.comand no one has parked on that website. Perhaps I have stumbled onto something.

Anyone find anything in the Bible or Torah about this? Let me know.

IGGG UHHH!

OK. I say perform step 1 and then try step 2.

Tech says OK. It's not working.

OK. I say, so did anyone have problems performing step 1?

Tech says I don't know.

I say, have them preform step 1.

Tech says OK. I just did step 1.

(sigh)

Where Oh Where Has My Humor Gone

I am sorely lacking for funny right now. Not that I am depressed, I just can't get inspired to the ridiculous bounds I was a little while back. I guess I am in a slump.

I HAVE to get back in the swing of things. I finally have my church's website running, so I only have to update it. The rounds of Layoffs at work have stopped for now and we have committed to doubling our sales in the next three years.

So lets talk about that. It is a very encouraging thing to hear (especially after my last post where I was sitting in the dark) that we are looking to grow instead of break even. Our new boss is a charismatic person and says things I like. I wish I didn't have to be so skeptical about it (since we've heard it all before).

Basically I will know by Christmas whether I need to find a new job or not. We'll either begin to show signs of life, or it will be obvious the doors will close.

So I am thinking of going back to college to get a degree (instead of drinking). Trying to decide my major, Business Management of some sort maybe?

Ideas, suggestions?

Middle of the Night Musings

OK, so it's 4AM when I update this blog?

This is a great example of why I haven't been blogging lately. METRO has been ignored as well as this blog (and anything else I blog at) due to the fact work has completely all encompassed my life right now. I was a die hard work-a-holic but the company I work for had managed to just about break me from that by steadily increasing my work load while reducing my benefits. Their main defense being, "You should be happy you have a job."

I now have high blood pressure and am on medication to keep me from coming unglued every time something goes wrong and I think is it really worth it?

I am currently sitting in the dark because the company has ordered the lights (except for emergency lighting) to be shut off at a certain time at night. So if my wife hadn't bought me a desk lamp, i couldn't see to work. Nice. This is for cost savings.

The ironic thing is that I heard our X-President spent well over 2 and a half times my salary in a week during a promotion (yet I sit in the dark).

Another fine point is we have three entrances to our building and after a certain time at night, you can only use one of them to get in (any of them work to get out). This is ironic because it doesn't make us any more secure. We still have to have a badge to get in (automatic readers) and these badges keep track of any doors we open. Also we have cameras all through the building so security can track us. The only possible advantage is it makes security look at one screen instead of three to see when people come in. But once I get in, I could do whatever I wanted to.

OK, so it's now 4:30 or so. I am going back to my call where my two techs working on a site destroyed both copies of their backup and can't find another good one at all. I managed to scrap one together to get dial tone on the PBX, but their networking is gone.

AHA! The TRUTH Breaks Through

Why is it when someone is asking for tech support, when they get it they feel the need to argue and argue and argue instead of trying something.

Guys is trying to get his system to work, he is talking to the guy he needs to and he is told the way his network is set up he has to use another command.

5 minutes later the guy is still arguing until finally the light bulb goes off and he sees the light.

Sigh... So tired.

BEHOLD THE MIGHTY TOT!

OK, so I FINALLY added an Icon to this blog.

One day I will stop being lazy and update this thing more, and write another 100 word story, and take more pictures...




Man, that sounds like so much WORK!




Never Mind. It looks good enough.

Get ALLular people! Good God you ALL!

Amazement Yet Again

I know you will be SHOCKED, SHOCKED, to hear it is Monday morning and we already have the amazing call of the day.

Tech calls in because he has our PBX connected to another via QSIG. We get in incoming ISDN call to a station in our PBX. We then transfer that call to the Avaya station over the QSIG link. When the Avaya answers the user sees the ANI of the transferring party not the original party.

My engineer asks me if this is normal. I say no and suggest he check the QSIG programming on our PBX and run a layer 3 trace if it looks good.

I hear him go through the programming with the guy. Turns out the link is programmed for NI2 protocol, not QSIG. My engineer tells him this handy tidbit to which the tech says, "Oh yeah, the Avaya can't run QSIG so we set up for NI2."

What?

WHAT?

So this tech called in, knwoing he isn't running QSIG, yet runs us through hoops to help him when he knows he isn't running what he says he is running. If he had told us that to begin with, the conversation would have lasted 30 seconds.

The Greatest Game Ever Played!

OK, so not only did my oldest son turn 16 yesterday, but I watched my second child play in the greatest baseball game ever played.

Chris comes up to bat, bottom of the second inning, man on third and I believe one out.

He takes a ball, then a strike. The coach signals for him to lay down a bunt and bring in the runner from third.

Chris squares up on the next pitch and lays down a beautiful bunt which drops six inches in front of the plates and lays there.

The catcher is in a panic because now he has to scramble to grab and cleanly field the ball while he has a man charging in from third. If he hold the ball the runner goes back to third and they miss the out. He grabs the ball, sizes his throw and fires the ball to first and...

OVERTHROWS THE FIRST BASEMAN!

We go wild, our runner scores from third and Chris is safe at first and being waved on to second.

meanwhile, the first baseman is scrambling to chase down the wild throw and the right fielder is coming over to help. For whatever reason (I'm sure it is because they are only 9 and 10 year olds) the right fielder wasn't backing up the first baseman on the play.

My poor, poor slow son (who is showing surprising speed at this point) hits second and is rounding for third.

"Oh lord," I think to myself, "My poor little Christopher is going to get a triple out of this."

At this point I see the third base coach waving him home. Chris rounds third and goes charging for home with his head down and arms pumping.

Now I am in a panic. Members of my family are not built for speed. Durability, perhaps. Comfort, perhaps. Speed, Never! Yet here is my flesh and blood charging from third trying to beat out the play at home plate.

By this time the first baseman and right fielder have recovered the ball and fired it in to home plate. The catcher has stepped over to the first base side to field the throw and Chris does an ungainly slide into the third base side to score his sacrifice bunt, in-the-park RBI Homerun.

Sure beats watching the Texas Rangers.

On the Rebound (HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANDREW!)

OK, so for those of you keeping score at home. We just finished a round of Layoffs (or Reduction In Force if you prefer). Fortunately I survived, but the flip side is we now have a smaller force to accomplish the same amount of work, so more work across the board.

My job now is mainly answering questions from my fellow engineers and shuffling paperwork. I am not a primary phone guy (unless we get backed up) so we'll see what else I run into.

On the home front (since it's been so long since I have provided anything of substance), baseball is starting up, so I'll throw some pictures of that up soon. The family is healthy and relatively happy

AND TODAY IS MY SON'S 16th BIRTHDAY. Happy birthday Andrew!

Otherwise, things are fairly quiet. Waiting to see how the new GM works out.