Long time, no see

Journal smartfart's Journal: Long time, no see

Journal by smartfart on Friday May 20, 2005 @12:50PM

I guess I'm not a very good blogger. I'll try to do better, I really will.

So what's been happening?

I went out and got a business license about 18 months ago. I started from scratch (with maybe half a client), but gradually picked up business here and there. I'm just finishing a wiring job that will end up paying me over 7 grand (I've done 2 so far), and ride herd on quite a few company networks around the city.

I almost cut my left index finger off while working on the jobsite mentioned above. I had been using the back end of a hatchet to knock out pre-cut holes in a fabricated beam, and forgot the hachet on top of the ladder. When I pushed the ladder forward, the hatchet fell onto my hand. This was on a Saturday, and I was the only person on the property. Had it not been for my cellphone, I might not have survived the accident (I'm a ninny, and went into shock). The ambulance came about 10 minutes after I called 911 and bandaged me up, and I actually drove myself to a doctor, who used "steri-strips" to stabilize the cut and put me in a finger split for 10 days. Whoopie.

Ten days later, I broke a bone in my right foot. I stepped off a stack of sheetrock (drywall) at the jobsite, and onto a piece of styrofoam packing material. The styrofoam crumbled, and I went down, hard. One more trip to the doctor. They put me in a walking boot, which worked for about a week and a half. I switched to construction boots, which made getting around a lot easier.

I'm all healed up now, and $1200 poorer, thank you very much. I need to get insurance. Oh, and I had to use a lot more temporary laborers to complete the wire-pulling than I'd budgeted for. That's what LUG members are for, I guess. Thanks, guys :-)

I've started playing with Asterisk, the open-source PBX. I helped a fellow consultant on a 30-phone installation, and came home and got it working on my server, where I can tinker with it. One of my clients needs a few additional phones, along with voicemail for all employees, and I'm going to use Polycom SIP phones and Asterisk, tied into their existing Avaya PBX.