The Howerter Blog

With the Presidential primary in full swing, I have started to check out the contenders. This year is going to be the year of the video campaign. I found a good tool for this in PolitiView. They are just getting started, but it looks like a very nice framework. I will have to suggest to my representatives to check it out.

I just realized that I hadn’t posted anything since April.

I finished the outside of the garage in August and I just connected the power to it last night. It has been a long journey. It has been overwhelming me. At least now I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. The goal is to finish it before it snows.

Anyway, just thought  I would post a small update. Catch you on the flip side.

Well, today was a beautiful day. It was gorgeous outside and I finally, with the help of some awesome friends, started building my garage. I received this brilliant idea to build a garage last October and, not surprisingly, couldn’t complete it before winter. As the days grew longer and warmer I was itching to get outside and start. There is still a lot of work to do, but you have to start if you are going to finish. Thanks a lot Mike, Bill, Joel, Dennis and Mike. I also couldn’t have done any of this without my lovely wife Kat.

I am ready for spring! I am ready to start and finish building my garage. I do like winter, but I have had my fill.

Bandwidth is always in short supply. If you have more than one location or need to access your resources remotely, more bandwidth would be beneficial. I am tired of the communication companies, even the new kids on the block (cable companies), continuing to give the same speed for higher prices or a “promotional price”. The cable companies do have the advantage of less regulation, but they don’t know how to work with complex businesses. While the big incumbent phone companies continue to sell the same 30 year old technology at 10x the price for 1/10 of the speed. These expensive circuits might have less packet loss of be up for 99.999% of the time, but users aren’t willing to trade speed for reliability.

The technological trend of our society is heading to acceptance of lower quality services as long as it is cheap or free. This trend may be fine for residential users, but it is difficult for the IT community. When you are told put in a cable or DSL Internet connection by management due to its lower price, they never remember your objections or your explanation that the connection may go down regularly. When it does go down, guess whose fault it is?

It is no wonder to me that America is trailing the rest of the world in connection speed. The telecommunications companies seem to be getting richer while not putting money into their infrastructure. They continue to advertise “higher” speeds, while the actual speeds stay around 50% of the advertised speed. It’s time for this to stop. Come on guys, give us some better options at reasonable prices. I would even be happy if they had to advertise their actual speeds.

It has been a couple of months since I installed Trixbox 2.6 in our house. I don’t know how I lived without it. Some VoIP providers offer some of the features that Trixbox gives me, but I like doing them myself. I love being able to blacklist numbers, record calls and have music on hold. I know it is because I am a nerd, but Katherine likes these things too. I even converted my parents when they moved. I have been looking at the PlugComputer project for a possible small energy efficient PBX solution. I would love to be able to have a PBX that is only as big as a power supply.

Today is the 66th anniversary of D-Day. I would just like to thank all the veterans and their families for their sacrifice and service to our country.

We said goodbye for now to Brandt and Angel and the boys last night. It was a sad day, but it is the start of a new chapter in their lives. We wish them blessings and a good journey. We love you guys.

Last week I completed my three year long journey toward Cisco certification. I started about three years ago, but work kept getting in the way. I am now a Cisco certified voice professional. If you don’t care, ignore this post.

We got a new dog yesterday, Sallee Anne. She is wonderful. She slept all through the night in the living room, since she wouldn’t go to the bedroom. She hasn’t explored the rest of the house yet, just the living room, dining room and kitchen. She is two and a half so all those puppy problems are pretty much gone. Come on over and see her sometime!

Sallee Anne