This looks like fun. I've only read through the first part, but it looks like it just keeps getting better.

This week has been busier. Basically prep for both my boss not being around for a while, and me not being around for a while. It's weird both not wanting to make major changes, but not wanting to get started in longer projects either. So it's sorta figure out what can be changed and then do a bunch of testing. Or do minor changes that have been pushed off because of priorities. Anyways, Dave was trained in the basics of how to poke at the email servers and other things, and a quick summary of how the ERP sync works. We didn't give him a test that was hinted at by hitting the EPO switches though (actually the network guy who's also gonna be gone started that rumor). It'll be nice to forget about all that stuff for a while though.

Google released the Google Maps API today. For those who haven't played with the maps already, how in the world did you miss it? Anyways, as an example of how it works... Most of you know how cell companies are always talking about their coverage maps, but nobody will give you a map of where the sites are actually located. I guess it's sorta notable as if you don't understand how the cellular system works, people would freak out at things like the layout of the MSP area sites. Anyways, the maps are usually available through the FCC (they're required to file maps, exact locations, antenna direction and HAAT, and measured strength in every direction which the FCC considers public data), but the quality is barely workable, and mapping it out by hand would definitely not be worth the effort. So anyways, now one can just take the list of coordinates and make a really cool version. Those of you who use Verizon Wireless in the Twin Cities may find that map interesting (it's also very similar to Cingular's TDMA and AMPS which are on Cellular Side A, but probably very different from their GSM which is on PCS). Now to think of what I'll make next... It'd be sorta cool to take a GPS with logging and use the polylines to make a map of travel that people could browse. Or dump in a package tracking number and have it show the rough path it took (I'll let someone else handle that one).

On a more fun note, check out Sysco's new VoIP-in-a-can. There's also the WiFi Speed Spray. Note that's for outdoor use only, and not to be used near electrical appliances. Anyways, that's enough for now.

Wednesday stuff happened. Don't remember much of what anymore, probably just routine stuff, and making sure people knew about that night. After work was fun though, with a bunch of people coming over for RotK. Nick's chili was a big hit and ended up gone before intermission. The movie was also great, and everyone seemed to enjoy it. Although I will say the conversation regarding the perceived relationships between characters went downhill towards the end of the movie.

Thursday was the ITS Christmas Party (for staff) with it's associated white elephant party. The swans ended up duplicated on standard letter-sized paper and included in many gifts, and the VP ended up unknowingly claiming "the real swans". It was a lot of fun, and the food was good too. Got more planning for the Christmas shutdown done, but nothing else too interesting. After work decided to poke around a bit with iTunes and rendezvous. I started tunneling 224.0.0.251 mdns traffic from Bethel to my house. It's coming across OK, but my iTunes has latched onto zeroconf addresses and not my public one, so it's not seeing the shares properly. Maybe I'll poke with that later. I don't really listen to anything other than my own music at work even, so not sure why I'm bothering. More of a "how hard is this" than anything. NoBong (a former roommate who stumbled on this site) also emailed me, and it was good to hear from him.

Friday was another skipping work day, so I slept in. Woke up sometime after 11, and looked at the ogo to see if anything interesting had happened. I started getting IMs right away, and also had a bunch of emails from my router complaining about the suspicious traffic (a whole ton of multicast mdns traffic being tunneled over from Bethel - I should probably turn that off). Apparently the thing's IDS isn't designed to handle multicast properly. I guess I can't complain too much for $20. After quite a while I realized I should probably actually get out of bed and get ready for the day. While getting ready and debating what to do for the day the shiny new phone in my office (which I found out about while chatting) came to mind. Yep, I'm a geek. A few minutes later the boss called asking some questions about the holiday outage, so I decided three reasons was good enough (the third being I was hungry and sick of pizza with not much else in the house) and headed for the car. Within 5 minutes of sitting down at my desk I had managed to lock the thing out of the system. After acquiring the appropriate passcodes to get the thing back into the phone system, I also got the appropriate DHCP server options and information about the firmware it downloads on boot. After scanning through the phone's menu and noting the options, I was ready. After a small meeting about the outages thing and chatting with some friends, the phone became unplugged from the network and UPS and managed to follow me home (hey, it was on my desk for "testing" :). Luckily the firmware loads into flash so I didn't actually need to set up TFTP and DHCP options. Without the settings though I did need to point it back at the call server. It actually connected quickly (after timing out trying to get TFTP since the firewall blocks that). Incoming audio didn't work, but that was a quick NAT change on my end to let it reach the phone. After a few test calls I have to say that it's amazingly stable even over the net. It was around 40ms jitter, which wasn't noticable. Of course I'm getting 50ms latency to work right now - I'll have to try this some other time when students are around and it jumps to the hundreds. I was able to sustain long calls without problems too. The speakerphone on this thing is amazing too - it sounds great on the local end, and apparently doesn't sound like a speakerphone on the remote end either. No luck getting a softphone working yet, as it's H.323 rather than SIP (and the only decent H.323 client I've found for OS X apparently doesn't like some of the messages the server sends). I'm gonna have to ask Telecomm about that one. It'd be cool if our gateway supported SIP too. OK, that's enough for now, I'm supposed to get up before noon tomorrow... :(