Where In The World Is Sum1?

At Home, In Schaumburg

Locale: Bloomington Illinois & Schaumburg

Week of: 12/19 & 12/26.22

         These past three weeks I've been home for the most part.  The Director of North American Training sent us an e-mail telling us to relax as much as we can, maximize our time with family, and wind down as much as possible.  Yeah, right.  I have things that need to get done, this is about the only time to do that.  But I did maximize my time at home, I did spend time with family & friends, and even managed to have a nice, quiet, Christmas.  However, I still managed to get some work done every day.

         You might wonder why I wanted to get work done during this period.  The answer is quite simple really.  I have an upcoming class with the Kentucky Emergency Management System.  The customer has requested that this 3-day class also cover something called 'consoles' for this small system.  I don't teach consoles, so needed to buff up my knowledge a bit.  I studied, access our small (It's called a K Core) remotely to improve my knowledge.  The training materials for this course do not have sufficient slides, or hands-on activities for consoles in it, so I worked on improving those too.  Don't get me wrong, there are slides on configuring the consoles, but the slides are very dry, very 'sterile'.  I tried to improve that.  There's also some vital information missing from the slide deck, so I added those

         Now you're probably wondering why I had to do all this, why wasn't it done already?  Well, good question.  For the most part, our course materials are prepared by very good curriculum developers in Krakow, Poland.  They are writers though, not technicians.  They get their information from the Engineers who build and develop these systems.  Sometimes even the Engineers are wrong in their information (I've corrected them on several occasions), and I have to say that the manuals are missing information we really need.  Why?  There are two reasons really. First, the changing business model. Like most every company that deals with technology, there's a huge interest in providing services.  I'll let you figure out what that means.  Also, though, the Engineers forget that us 'peons' don't have the background and knowledge they do, and assume that what is provided in manuals is sufficient.  It's not.  So we dig for this needed information.

         I spent this past Tuesday and Wednesday in Schaumburg being cross-trained by my  co-worker Dan. I hadn't planned on being there Wednesday, but the boss said to satay the night, so I did, despite having nothing with me for that.  No toiletries, no clean underclothes, etc.  Yeah, I don't know it all, I never will know it all.  In our Networking classes, a new router (manufactured by Juniper) has replaced what we were using.  The command line interface is quite involved, the configuration file is immense;  there's just a lot to know/learn.  My co-worker Dan has been feverishly working on updating both the slides and hands-on activity guide for this class.  He and I are doing this networking classes for this customer.  The Training Department has over 30 weeks of training to deliver for them in 2023.  I'm still waiting on some of course material, and may not get it until after my class begins Monday.  It's okay, I know enough to deliver the class, having the new hands-on activity guide would be nice, but I can get things done without it.

In Closing

         I will be in Los Angeles next week, staying in the Montebello area and teaching class nearby.  I get a week home after that, then it's all travel, other than 2 weeks of vacation in late February!  Til next time, be good to yourselves and those you love, and WRITE!


Jim Dorrell