The Howerter Blog

Last weekend marked the end of the Whitetail deer season. Saturday morning while we were driving to our property, I had time to think about the whole experience.

I got up at 4:45 AM and put all my winter clothes on since it was 15 degrees. I then drove to the property trying to beat the sun from rising. In the fields and timber along the way I can see the lights in the distance of other hunters prepairing their gear and beginning the journey to their tree stand. I never seem to make it to my spot before the sun rises.

Once you get to your stand, the waiting game begins. With the dim light of early morning, you survey your surroundings, trying to get a bearing on where good shots would be. As the sunlight increases your perspective on the woods around you changes. Many times I have felt that woods seem to change in the light. You sit in your stand or on the ground and scan the woods looking for the slightest movement. Deer can be very elusive and you rarely hear them approaching. The whole time you are hoping that a deer will walk right into your kill zone so the waiting will be over.

I have hunted since I was about 12 and now at 26, I am enjoying it for the first time. I went all those years past just to spend time with my brother and dad. Now, the thrill of the hunt and the union with nature and the circle of life intrigue me.

This morning I looked at my thermometer and saw that it was -11 outside. It was definetly “take your breath away” cold.

Some of you may have noticed (probably not many) that my blog and other websites have been down since after New Years. I had to upgrade my servers to Windows Essential Business Server 2008. Like any major upgrade, it was difficult. Since I have never used this product before, there was a learning curve thrown in with all the other tasks I had to complete. I am glad that it is finally over.

I was listening yesterday to the news and they were talking about gas prices. They were saying that oil prices were dropping because of the bad economy and that gas prices being low were a bad thing. I kind of like the gas prices being low. Don’t you?

Some people from our church threw a Halloween party. I found a costume at the in-laws that I just had to wear. I hope you enjoy it.

I think this could be close to the definition of fear. The picture below was taken in Australia.

Yep. That is a spider eating a bird. The article says that the bird probably flew into the web and got caught.

Image courtesy of news.com.au

I can’t believe that this is on Fox News.

After an entire year of preparation, It was finally time to switch the incoming phone circuits to the new gateways. We made the switch on a Friday night so we could have the entire weekend to fix any problems that came up.

The physical switchover was pretty smooth. On Saturday morning, I started switching the paging system over and my coworkers began switching the analog phones and entry way phones to the new system. It took most of the day to complete and test everything.

That was it!!

Since the switch we have been dealing with little problems and specific configuration issues. All in all, it was a successful project.

When the infrastructure was complete we began issuing phones. First, we gave our department phones and trained them on all the features and what to tell the users. After that was done, we began rolling out the phones to users. We started with about 20 people at a time. We sent an extensive email out to every employee explaining what the procedure was and an interactive help system describing all the features. Many users didn’t give this email a second look. After we placed the phones we did another walk around to make sure they had no questions. There were many confused faces, since they didn’t bother to read the email. There were a handful of users that genuinely knew what was going on. They really didn’t need any help. Those users were a breath of fresh air. The majority of users didn’t have the time to train.

While the rest of my department was doing the rollout, I was finishing setting up hunt groups, writing out the scripts for the automated attendant so they could be recorded. This process was only scheduled to take about two weeks, but it ended up taking the better part of a month. Because of this, I had to postpone configuring our E911 system.

The state of Illinois requires businesses with multi-building campuses, and/or buildings with more than 40,000 square foot per floor to be compliant with E911. This means that each building or 40,000 square foot floor must provide the phone company with a unique phone number so that 911 can determine where the caller is located. Cisco has a product that determines the location of the phone by the switch port it is located in and then sends the correct information to the 911 operator. This project is still ongoing, but almost completed.

Anyway, back to the rollout. We finished the phone rollout in about three weeks. There was about a month between when the last phone was issued and when the switchover took place. At this point there were only a couple of things left to do…

I need to vent a little on this issue. Seeing as the state has been increasing the jail time and fines if you hit a construction worker, don’t you think they should be more careful as well? I don’t know how many times lately, I have been driving and some construction worker will casually walk out in front of my car. They will do the little hop-run for about 2 seconds and then just slowly walk the rest of the way, as if there isn’t a lane of speeding traffic barreling toward them. And they wonder why worker injuries are going up.