Ethernet cable...

[TheRabbi]

Ye gods, Geek King. May I never have to go to those lengths.

You and your boss can make things very clear to your execs with a few choice small words: "If we don't get this stuff, your business will fail soon. You will lose money and time and none of us will be able to work. And then we will need to buy it anyway."

There. 2 two-syllable words and 1 three-syllable word. That should get their attention.

[Geek King]

You and your boss can make things very clear to your execs with a few choice small words: "If we don't get this stuff, your business will fail soon. You will lose money and time and none of us will be able to work. And then we will need to buy it anyway."

My workplace is basically an oversight and distribution point for certain government programs. The Board is made up of mainly "community activists*" merrily paving the road downward with good intentions. There have been six different IT heads in the last decade, and the systems are a hodgepodge of various people's ideas of proper system management. My boss and I are slowly taming the mess, but its slow going without permission to use machetes and demo charges.

Stupid city ordinances.

The one good thing out of all this is that our lawyer** was reviewing the hiring contracts and job descriptions and discovered some of us, including myself, should be non-exempt slalary rather than exempt salary, by law***. Basically this means I get paid overtime for any weekend calls I have to do. Once we do get the equipment in, I'll get paid a pretty penny to mount hardware and move wires after hours.


*From what I can tell from our board, this means people who want to be on TV after their business fails. Even if its just the local public access.
**yes, we have a full time lawyer on staff. We have that many people try to sue my workplace when we cut them off for fraud and/or refusal to abide by the basic rules.
***Kinda cheesy, since I knew what I was getting into when I signed the contract. Boss made sure of that. Benifits were pretty nice too, for the local market. They wanted to retain whoever the hired for IT. I can't imagine why they were having trouble. But then, who am I to turn down good, easy overtime pay?

[wraiths_crono]

Heh I got a note from the customer lastnight: "I am telling my sales rep that you are the ONLY reason I did not attempt to breach contract early due to mishandling."

I think I will be scared, and I just found out that this customers server had a failed hdd, our daylight hours datacenter group wanted us to box up the server, ship to the customer, have him fix said drive then ship it back, rather than just do a swap of one of the new HDDs sitting in the spare parts section for this guy.... This just keeps getting more entertaining each day now!


PS I like the good education about Ethernet cabling, I think I will print some of it out and show our own people lol.

[Geek King]

Heh I got a note from the customer lastnight: "I am telling my sales rep that you are the ONLY reason I did not attempt to breach contract early due to mishandling."

Congratulations! It sounds like you really went above and beyond for that customer. Go treat yourself a bit after work.

Hold onto that for your next review. That kind of thing is pure gold for your file.

[technical.angel]

PS I like the good education about Ethernet cabling, I think I will print some of it out and show our own people lol.

When I went to the networking class, I got a wallet card with the color orders for different kinds of cables. If I can track it down AND get my scanner to work (or do it from home), I'll attach a piccy.

[TheRabbi]

My workplace is basically an oversight and distribution point for certain government programs.

Oh, government. You didn't say government.

Here, have a cookie. Have another cookie. And here's a bottle of good whiskey. And here's a pillow.

[Buffalo]

Long time lurker, first time poster

When I went to the networking class, I got a wallet card with the color orders for different kinds of cables. If I can track it down AND get my scanner to work (or do it from home), I'll attach a piccy.

I got one of those cards too. It's been in my wallet for about 4 years, so it's not in any condition to be scanned but it's come in handy many a time. Ethernet cables are infuriating at first, but after some practice they're pretty easy. Good tools help a lot, and those EZ-RJ45 connectors are freaking awesome.

Yeah, plus I can now honestly tell people I've kept this place's network and servers running with duct tape and twine.

That's about what some of my equipment looks like. It doesn't help that I have functionally no budget for infrastructure improvements. Instead of spending $200+ for a cable ladder to span between 2 server racks, I picked up a length of PVC rain gutter from the hardware store down the street. That's my cable tray. Before that there was just a mass of CAT-5 zip-tied together and strung across the room

[protege]

Yeah, plus I can now honestly tell people I've kept this place's network and servers running with duct tape and twine.

I'm surprised my company's latest server doesn't have duct tape somewhere on it. The old one had some interesting "repairs" that were made to keep it going. Such as, one of the heat sinks was actually held on with tape...after it fell off one too many times. Even better, was that one of the case fans was replaced with a smaller item that I'd scavenged from one of the scrap computers. Oh, and we do have a few Cat 5 cables that are held in place with tape. Boss wouldn't spring for a new cable