Day: 20 October 2004

Class Is A Bust, Well Sort Of

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After some thought I have finally came to my senses. I woke up and realized I am not 18 years old again and in college. I said to myself why in the world am I spending all this time on a volunteer class? I loved being an EMT. And I like the “idea” of being an EMT again. In practice I am killing myself to get to class 3 (sometimes 4) nights a week.

I want to volunteer. But I already have a stressful and time consuming job. Half of me thinks I am copping out. That half of me says if I don’t do this again now, I will never get to do it. The other half of me says I am crazy for wasting that much time outside of work on school. I should have a life, instead of going for something that I did 10 years ago. I may be over analyzing everything, but taking or not taking the course is a big decision. I don’t care about the money for the class. If I didn’t spend it on the class I would have blown it on something. I am more concerned about the time I wasted, or time I will waste taking the rest of the course.

My dad thought I was crazy. he said he didn’t even know why I was taking it in the first place. He thought (as I do somewhat) I have a busy enough job, and I should just relax when I don’t have to work. Now my dad is lazy so maybe I shouldn’t listen to his opinion, but he echo’s what I am thinking. Jayson and Cari also seemed to think I was making the right decision. Not sure if they were just agreeing with me to make me feel better, but the decision is final. I already missed class tonight. That would make 2 I missed. I could only miss 4 before I got booted. The class is not worth that much emotional strain till January. I am used to going to college and taking a class for 2 nights a week. This is allot more. To me work is allot more important to me right now. They keep giving me paychecks. And it is not like I am bored at work. I have more than enough to do to keep me busy.

Just to note I was doing excellent in the class. I had one of the 2 highest grades in the class. That may have been part of the problem. I didn’t crack the book at all, and I was so bored from the class. Maybe when I am not so crazy I can try this again? But deep down I know that

More VOIP Updates

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Several things finally came together on my VOIP odyssey this weekend. For one I solved a problem I have been having for some time. I also got off my ass and plugged in my new Linksys VPN Router. I started to setup static VPN tunnels to work. For one thing I proved I can setup a static IPSEC tunnel to a Pix with a cheap ($150 or cheaper) router. At first I still could not connect to one of our offices. I had the same problem with the Pix 501 I had. Or at first I thought it was the same problem. With the 501 I couldn’t connect to that office either. I was beginning to think it was not me but the Pix at that office. Turns out when I had my Pix 501 I had 1 issue. With the new Linksys VPN router the problem was a new one. Turns out the fail-over Pix we have at the office uses the IP address of 10.1.1.1. That is all nice and good, but that was what I used for my router at home. That didn’t work well. I had to give my router a new address and recreate the VPN tunnel. Everything started working then.

Now I have 2 tunnels (if and when I want them) to work. I don’t need VPN software. This is a good test since now I do not need VPN software on a computer in order to establish a VPN connection. What that means is I can plug in a VOIP phone and connect to my office’s call manager. I did just that. Now I have a 7940 phone connecting into our CCM (cisco call manager) system sitting on my desk at home. This is different to what I was trying to do with the 7940 and my BroadVoice connection. Now I can log into the phone at home and get my extension from work. I can prove that we can do this with remote agents if we choose to do so. We probably won’t but it is a nice technological feat to say we can. We want to go with the cheaper soft-phone option for remote agents, but having the ability to put a phone in someone’s house is nice to know you can. Have I mentioned that I have a cool job, or that VOIP is awesome???

In addition to the work phone I now have setup. I finally got my VOIP ATA adapter from the lovely folks at Broadvoice on Monday. I plugged it in after calling them and changing my account back to use that adapter. In minutes the adapter registered and I was off and running. I plugged in my new cordless phone and I had phone service. Did I mention it is only $10 a month? Now I was an early adopter of not having a home phone. I still use my cell as my main phone, but it is nice to not have to worry about the battery dying on a long call. Truth be told I want the VOIP service for the simultaneous ring option that I have. I am able to have calls ring on my home phone, my cell, blackberry, and work phone at the same time. I have a few kinks I am working out but otherwise that has been very cool.

Some problems I have to work out. I am back to using my old 802.11b wireless point. My 802.11g point was built into my old router. Now that I have a VPN router I can’t use that router. I need to buy a stand alone “g” point. I also need to break out a 5 port switch and daisy chain it off of my router. With the Wifi point, both my personal and work phones, plus my desktop and laptop, plus a tivo I have ran out of network ports on my 4 port router. Thankfully I think I have enough components to build 2 computers and extra network gear in my closet. He I don’t throw out very much stuff.

Ok, time for bed…