Fishing on the lake at our southwestern Michigan vacation home takes on greater importance with each passing year. We never seem to have a problem catching the little ones, but the big bass we’ve seen caught by other boats continue to elude us. While I change rods, baits and boat position in a frenzy, my daughter is asking when we can head back to the dock and her Nintendo DS.
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When asked by the SDM editors to write a column highlighting “green” concepts, it started me thinking about environmental impact. The more we as an industry can reuse existing cabling the less earthly resources are needed, not to mention that dealers can provide clients with upgraded systems at very competitive costs. What about those millions of feet of coax we have collectively installed in the past 40 years?
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For whatever reason — perhaps from growing up during the social revolution of the 1960s — I am a fairly consistent user of the seven words you can’t say on network TV. Whenever I’m cut off in traffic or a piece of equipment fails to perform exactly right, out comes a virtual waterfall of curse words.
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As technology marches on, one of the “new normal” rules of the game is that while a product/device/software set might be cool today, pretty soon it is either obsolete or has died.
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In some ways, things were better in the old days. Once I was young, working on the Illinois Tollway for $6 an hour (in 1972 that was really good money), gas was $0.39 a gallon, and I received retroactive back pay as a loyal member of Teamsters Local #705.
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Late in the summer season and after extensive lobbying from my lovely wife, we purchased a small above-ground swimming pool for our backyard. The idea was to provide a safe place for our daughter to enjoy water sports with her friends.
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I suspect that everyone knows by now that the business traveling life isn’t glamorous. On a recent trip to San Juan, as the clouds rolled in for the daily afternoon deluge that is typical for a Puerto Rican summer, I realized that the only real beauty in air travel is watching the clouds as the plane descends into the greater Chicagoland area, and I’m almost home.
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After a recent trip to southwestern Michigan I accidentally discovered three important facts: First, the lake my house is on actually has no bottom, which I found out when I slipped off the wet dock and sunk up to my wallet in oozing muck. The second discovery was that carrying my trusty old Nokia cell phone in my cargo pocket wasn’t a great idea, as the water and muck killed the device. And third, after obtaining a new phone from my provider, I found out that I didn’t like the new phone and I am still struggling with its features and functionality.

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In church one Sunday, my mind wandered during the assistant pastor’s sermon on the Seven Deadly Sins. I realized a couple of key issues: first, that I might be guilty of sloth (whatever that is), and also that there are a number of mistakes that can be made in connecting IP devices to clients’ networks that can cause serious problems for their network communications. So let’s take a look at the Seven Deadly IP Programming and Installation Sins that can render our customers’ networks and/or our IP security devices hors de combat.
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As part of my duties it is necessary to actually plug in and program various IP-enabled security devices to see how they work and what makes them valuable. One of the problems of living in a big city is that living space is at a premium, particularly if you’re lucky enough to have a single-family home. So what my daughter thinks is her desk is actually a product test bench.

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