Day 3 @ NBN Co

Fairly quiet day, finally got intranet access and spent a few hours exploring and doing the dreaded e-learns.  There’s a lot less bullshit than at Telstra, but then again Telstra had years to stockpile it, and even immediately there are traces of administrivia borne of the inevitable HR droids and “experienced” management.  I suppose its inescapable.

 

Slowing ploughing through a 1,165 page (!) “high level” design document, fuck me.  (As an aside, why does Outlook not recognize “ploughing” as a word??) A lot of the Ethernet transport stuff is not anything I have ever had to look at before, aggregation switches to transport switches to fanout switches, all with AVC and CVC VLAN tagging to keep everything under control.  All in layer 2, with a (naturally) layer 3 OAM channel to control and trap the kit.

 

Some of the DWDM gear is spec’d to do 88 simultaneous 10Gbps channels via WDM on a SMOF pair, wow – big iron.

 

Found out yesterday afternoon we’ll also be doing quite a bit of network surveillance, down to and including permitting access seeker (ISP) staff into POI sites remotely and monitoring them.  ISP rep calls from site, is either buzzed in remotely or issued a one-time keypad code by us, then we monitor the whole time via IP cam.  Big brother lurks.

 

I have been dobbed in to train the whole team in GPON operations and assurance, as I’m the only person who has actually had their hands on the kit.  Other people have transmission, DWDM and mobiles assurance backgrounds so they are solid, but no actual FTTP dirty hands other than mine.

 

I’m getting white card training next Wednesday so I can go onto construction sites.  Apparently it’s a matter of not falling down anything open and not walking behind the big yellow things, especially when they are beeping?

 

Also off to Alcatel for two day Thursday and Friday next week for GPON training, I expect to be bored but hey – the bunged on lunch is well worth it.  :D

 

 

 

Day 1, NBN Co

Spent about an hour at the admin offices at Elizabeth St getting onboarded, and two prox cards issued.

Conduct self down to Docklands, site of the new NSOC.  It's currently under renovation (redoing 4 floors of an existing building), so at the moment it's very normal office space.  Parking onsite for the shifts workers, too!  (Me!  Me!)

Spent a couple of hours in induction and high level introduction where I could have taught the people more about optical networking than they did me.  The interesting news is that we are using the new Alcatel 7302 chassis with *16 port* line cards, fark - the highest density I have ever worked on is 4 port.  Combine with 32-way splitters (probably industry standard Corning gear) and that's a lot of customers off a blade.

Got toys issued, a very nice Toshie Portege R700 i3.  Win7 Enterprise 64-bit, 4GB, all the fruit and only 1100 grams - including optical drive.  Docking station and a couple of power packs, NextG wireless dongle arriving tomorrow.

Work (kind of) starts tomorrow, apparently we have a metric shirtload of documentation to read.

Woo hoo!

Shite and briny new NBN Co senior network engineer has started. :)

US congressman shot

A US congresswoman was shot along with up to 18 people at a political event in Tucson, Arizona, media reports say.

Initial reports said Ms Giffords had been killed, but the latest word from spokeswoman Darci Slaten is: "Miss Giffords is alive".

He said she was "shot through and through" with a bullet to the head.

However, as the congressman in question is a Democrat, the event is likely to be one of the rare occasions when getting shot in the head actually makes someone smarter.

http://www.news.com.au/world/us-congresswoman-gabrielle-giffords-and-six-others-shot-dead/story-e6frfkyi-1225984408228

Blogging, males versus females

Her blog:

 

He was in an odd mood when I got to the bar, I thought it might have been because I was a bit late but he didn't say anything much about it. The conversation was quite slow going so I thought we should go off somewhere more intimate so we could talk more privately. So we went to this restaurant and he's STILL acting a bit funny and I'm trying to cheer him up and start to wonder whether it's me or something else.

 

I ask him, and he says no. But you know I'm not really sure. So anyway, in the cab back to his house, I say that I love him and he just puts his arm around me. I don't know what the hell this means because you know he doesn't say it back or anything.  We finally get back to his place and I'm wondering if he's going to dump me!

 

So I try to ask him about it but he just switches on the TV. Reluctantly, I say I'm going to go to sleep. Then, after about 10 minutes, he joins me and we have sex. But, he still seemed really distracted, so afterwards I just wanted to leave. I dunno, I just don't know what he thinks anymore.  I mean, do you think he's met someone else?

 

 

His blog:

 

Lousy day at work. Tired. Got laid though.

A plan for the improvement of English spelling

In year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet.  The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later.

 

Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so the "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and lear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.

 

Jenerally then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with lear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and lears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants.  Bai lear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi  ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" - bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -tu riplais "ch", "sh" and "th" rispektivli.

 

Fainali xen, aafte sam 20 iears ov orxogrefl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.

Well, the day has come.

I am no longer a Telstra employee.  Yay!