1983: Graduation -- Where Are The Jobs?

This is the second of my career posts, it focuses on my attempt to start my working career with a Bachelor of Science degree, double majoring in Mechanical Engineering and Engineering and Public Policy (I think they were having a two-fer on the word "and").

Setting the Stage

The job market back in 1983 was rough across the country, even worse in Western Pennsylvania with the coal and steel industries in collapse and layoffs everywhere.  I wanted to work near where I grew up, I liked the area, the people, and I wasn't a huge fan of change.

Fortunately, I thought, I had chosen a top-notch school, Carnegie-Mellon University, an in demand major, engineering. I had grades to be proud of, graduating with University Honors (meaning my GPA qualified me to complete an undergraduate research project with a mini and I mean mini thesis), and I had plenty of resume stuffers in the form of President of Fraternity, Buggy designer, sports (intramural though they were).  I even had some work experience.  I thought I had ticked all the boxes and my search should be productive.

1996: Taking America Off Line

This is the first, of what I expect will be many trips in the way back machine to some of my significant career experiences, things I did that worked out and likely some that didn't.  I'll try to address both what happened and what I was able to learn as a result.

This is based on my recollection of events.  I have almost certainly, unintentionally, edited events in my memory, I'm trying to be accurate, but memories can be shifty at time.  Ultimately, its my blog and my story, so I'll apologize ahead of time for any errors, but I'm not going to worry about it (much).

2014: July Health Crisis

This past Friday (7/25) my coughing jags and mild fever got to annoying for my very patient wife, she told me I needed to go the doctor.  While it didn't seem too serious to me, I certainly didn't feel well and if Linda wants someone to go the doctor, they certainly should.

First Doctor Visit, 7/25

Dr. Harding had picked this Friday to get an early start on his vacation, so I got a same day appointment with another doctor in the Town Center Family Medicine practice. As I ran down my symptoms, fatigue, no endurance, persistent headache (the kind where it seems someone is driving a nail ever deeper), fever (100-101.5°F), general aches, and joint pain in my hip, I realized I was describing the flu minus nausea, which according to WebMD is a good summary of the symptoms of walking pneumonia.

New House - Network, What Could Go Wrong?

What could possible be wrong with a network installed and dare I say "operated" by a lawyer?  Of course, the answer is just about anything.  When we saw the house, I was stunned to see the "wiring closet," a section of unfinished space where a spaghetti mess of UTP and COAX were tied, sometimes literally in knots with some terminated into female connectors, some with male connectors, some stripped back several inches, untrimmed ends pocking into other cables, and some undecipherable labels on a few cables.

My first step was to try to segregate the UTP (network and phone) cables from the multitude of COAX and trace them.  As each was traced it was labeled with a neat color coded tape label so I could skip the tracing next time.  When that was said and done, I was down to only about a dozen mystery cables.  The network cables were plugged into a switch that I literally zip tied on top of the box.  The coax cables went into a couple of bundles.

The result, definitely not pretty was an organized mess, something I could work to improve and I thought something that might help performance of the network.

Network Performance Failure

It was not long till my son tried to use his computer to play WoW and immediately discovered that the network was horrible, with disconnects and latency galore.  He fixed it by going to a wireless connection, bypassing some of the mess that is our wired network and let me know about it.  I thought I was retired, but I seem to have inherited another broken network.