scott

Fresh New Circuits

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We just got our new 3700 series Cisco router today. it will be used for our new 4.5 megabit internet connection we are getting for NYC. This replaces our 2 redundant T-1’s. this connection is basically 3 T-1’s plugged into 1 big router. less redundancy, but triple the bandwidth. We figured our corporate office can have some acceptable downtime. Since our uptime stats have been great on our current circuit it seemed like a good gamble. I hope that once this is done I can use my VOIP phone without getting terrible choppiness sometimes.

We hope the circuit goes live in about 1-2 weeks. Verizon will be out tomorrow (had to cancel for some reason today) to do the smartjacks. Like I always say, you cannot have enough bandwidth.

New Pillow

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I have been having a huge problem sleeping recently. I think that it is part of the reason why I have been getting head ache’s but I cannot be 100%. I just know I wake up in the middle of the night and cannot go back to sleep. I decided a few days ago to try and get a new pillow. I went to Bed Bath & Beyond and picked up what you can call an ergromatic pillow. it form fits to your head when you lie down on it. It was not cheap. I don’t want to say how much I spent, but lets just say I hope this thing emits vallume to get me sleeping well for what I paid.

When I opened it up from its packaging, I got a little card that read “you may notice a “newness scent” when you remove this item from the package”. Basically this may smell, but just leave it out for a while and it will be fine. I thought that was the funniest thing I read all day. So I am following the directions and it is airing out now. I hope to sleep like a baby tonight!

Build Out

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Our build out of our new downstairs space in our call center is progressing. I got the ok (or the if it was budgeted go buy it and don’t ask about it) to get supplies for the new space. We need new WIFI points, printers, etc. Phones and computers are already on the way.

The last major purchase is the UPS for our downstairs computer room. It does not have to be as big as the one we are deploying upstairs since all it has to support is a switch. Granted it is a huge mother f–king switch, but still.

Other work going on is a reboot of half of our smart jacks tonight. No idea why, but one of the LEC’s (Local Exchange Carrier for those who have no clue what I am saying) we use needs to upgrade some stuff so they need to reboot the smartjacks. Until they called I had no idea you could or would do that at all.

VOIP Rocks

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I haven’t said anything nice about Broadvoice recently. It still rocks. It’s $10 a month unlimited in state calls plan is the only reason why I have a home phone. It is only $1.50 in tax, vs $9 in tax for the $8 dial tone service Verizon offers. And that gives me just dial tone. My $10 gets me tons of crap. The only issue with the service is the customer service. it takes forever to get someone on the phone. They are growing so I will cut them some slack for now. Thankfully I only needed to call when I had to make changes to my account. No problems so far. Lets hope it stays that way. Why Vonage can’t or wont offer some of the services Broadvoice does I don’t know. Hey vonage you would have gotten my biz if you had more than 1 phone you can simultaneous ring on, and if I could use any VOIP phone, and not just your adapter. My Cisco 7940 rocks! Can you get the weather report off your home phone? Do you want to?

Other cool VOIP products I am playing with now is Skype. Just being able to make phone calls from a pocket PC got me interested. I have the free service setup, but I have not had a chance to use it. Gus and others rave about it. I am traveling on thursday and will give it a try then. Added bonus, Skype works on the Mac or Linux!

New Servers

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We got 3 new servers this week. G4 HP Proliant box’s. We got one 2U, and 2 1U. They will be for our Biztalk 2004 deployment. We have 1 box for QA and then the other two goto our data center. Jay was building and testing them earlier in the week. Due to issues with our original quote we are way behind schedule. I would like to thank HP for their great process for securing special pricing if you buy in volume. They even admit they have issues with it recently. We hope to finish the build out early next week.

Missed Appointments

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I was going to meet up with Gus last night for dinner. Then I wasn’t. Then I was, but I ended up canceling. I started getting a migraine (very common recently) around 1 or 2PM Friday so I decided to go home and head off the problem. I left G a VM saying I was out of it and canceling. I feel bad since I never see him anymore. Except of course for going to the Apple store with him on Thursday and then to lunch. That was sudden and unexpected. He finally got a MacMini. I got a Bluetooth USB adapter for my Mini at home. Miguel got an Airport Express for his apartment. Jay and Danny just came along for the trip.

Since we never see Gus much we went to lunch down in SOHO. We found a little italian resteraunt. it was good and cheap, until we all digested it. Then it was not so good:(

I will try to reschedule with the G man sometime next week or so. Seeing him I realize how much things have changed at work recently. It really is a different place to be for me without him. In some ways more stress full, and in others less.

Sprawl Mart

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Today I took a trek to Sprawl (Wal)Mart. For this trip we had Jay, Gretchen, & Danny. We all stocked up so much stuff that we had no more room in the truck and danny and I had to hold stuff in the back seat. This was on top of what I couldn’t get with my Freshdirect delivery on Thursday. I went from having no food last week to having a stocked fridge.

Besides a hair cut today I did not much else besides the trip upstate to the walmart. I still haven’t been sleeping so I was up before 9-am today. I met up with jay and gretchen for breakfast before our trip.

I am in the process of trying to clean my place now, but I doubt I will finish up.

PS if you don’t know what I mean by Sprawl Mart, you are not watching enough Simpsons!

Jim’s Last Day

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Today was Jim C’s last day. Well big Jim C, since we have 2 of them at work. I missed his goodbye lunch but I ended up at Dukes for drinks after work. Several of us showed up. I had 1 drink (big macon jar of Jack and lemonade) since I am still recovering from my issues last week. Of course that 1 drink was dam strong. We had a good time.

It kind of sucks when someone you like actually leaves your company. There are plenty (well a few, not as many as before) of other people that I would rather see go. He is moving back down south so it is not like he is punking out and going somewhere else. He is moving so we all will miss him! Well I assume everyone will miss him, but I don’t know that for sure!

On the bright side I was wide awake enough and feeling up to actually going to a bar. That is a big step from how I was feeling all last week, and most of this month.

I need to go put away laundry and then hopefully do some more writing. Until then…

IPCC Is a Go

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After months of negotiating (and years of thinking and talking about it) my company finally decided to purchase Cisco’s IPCC software. Gus and I started looking into this stuff way back in December of 2002. It didn’t pan out. We ended up going to Cisco Call Manager 3.3.2 with our incumbent ACD Zeacom Smartconnect. Call Manager was a vast improvement over our Avaya Magix system we were using so we were sort of happy. Unfortunately Smartconnect has major problems integrating with Call Manager. We have uncovered several issues that have taken us months to overcome. Other issues are not correctable.

As we grow the need for a new contact center software became apparent. We looked at the major players, Cisco, Genisys, & Aspect. We were slightly limited with our options because we were already on Cisco’s Call Manager IP phone IP-PBX. That made us need to look at Genisys’s and Aspect’s IP based products. The problem with them was that either very few or no one was using them on Cisco’s Call Manager (CCM). To me that was one of the two killer problems for our situation. The other problem was integration. As we saw with Smartconnect the “hooks” that tied the Software to our IP-PBX was critical. Cisco was great at selling the integration between CCM and IPCC. Of course you assume there will be tight integration between the two, they are both Cisco products. The other two companies (in my opinion) had problems proving the tightness of their software to CCM. And for a major purchase such as this, I needed to be totally comfortable with the software we were buying. Because even if no one said it, if this integration fails peoples heads will be looking at me as to why.

There is allot to be said by having “one throat to choke” when dealing with hundreds of thousands of dollars of phone gear. The up hill battle for IPCC was proving to our business people that the ease of use and functionality of IPCC was on par with Genisys.

So my multiple trips to Boston, Philly, Kingston, etc, and endless conversations with sales guys and pre sales engineers have finally paid off. And if you know me, dealing with sales guys a fate worse than death (sometimes).

The next step is scheduling this massive upgrade to not interfere with our other major projects going on. Such as expanding into our new Call Center space downstairs, new Fulfillment system, and upgrades to our data center infrastructure.

As part of this upgrade we will also be upgrading our voice mail from smartconnect’s voice mail system to Cisco’s unity. We will also need/want to upgrade call manager to 4.x after we are done with the IPCC upgrade. This is because Smartconnect as of now does not support CCM 4.x, so that upgrade has to come after we move to IPCC.

This will be exciting but stressful.

Poker Night

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Saturday I went to play poker at Dan’s. Conventional wisdom said I should stay home and continue to rest. I should have, but I wanted to get out. We had a total of 8 players, many of them new to the group. Even though I was tired I figured a few hours of playing was ok. When I spoke to dan we both joked (but weren’t really kidding) that if I got tired I could just bet stupid and get out. That is exactly what I ended up doing. I was faring ok, and wanted to stay in until we broke jayson out of the game. Unfortunately I was getting tired and didn’t want to continue to concentrate. So I took a hand that I would normally never play and put a bunch of money in. Joe won. Then I did it again on the next hand with nothing and Joe won again. It gave him the ammunition (along with some other fantastic winnings from right before then) to come in second place. I kind of regret loosing, but I didn’t have the strength to continue, so I don’t feel that bad about getting out. Jenn eventually won the tournament. I have no idea how that happened, but congrats to her for doing it.

Other players included Joe, Dan (who even being tired I still managed to stay in longer than), Heather, Ed, Jayson, Jenn, myself and Dari’s cousin. Dari came by but didn’t play. I had a good time, but I should have left when I got out of the game instead of hanging out for a while afterward.