MavEtJu's Distorted View of the World - Happniness
Moving on from BarNet, to...
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Moving on from BarNet, to...
Posted on 2008-07-08 12:00:00
Tags: Happniness
The rumours are true, it is official: I have quit my job at BarNet.
For the last seven years I've worked in a couple of great projects,
learned a lot more about networks, systems and people than I already
knew.
A couple of highlights and learned lessons:
- Over time, the network got replaced from simple central router
plus remote FreeBSD based routers to a partly meshed network
(still with a lot of FreeBSD based routers) with dynamic routing,
a proper serverfarm and failover where possible.
- I've learned a lot about radio links (which can be tricky due
to the density of other radio links in the city) and laser links.
- Over the years, we went from FreeBSD version 4.x to 6.3 now,
with all changed in their technology and capabilities.
- I learned a lot about the accessing of data in databases,
database administration and realtime replication of database.
- For in-house developed applications, it is good to have a
framework which generates a consistent look-and-feel, plus gives
easy access to often used datasources (databases, XML feeds).
- VoIP Telephony and legacy systems integration... certainly a
nice job, but not as something which is an add-on project, but
as a full-time job. It will help you to find of some
before-this-unknown problems in your network.
And some learned lessons:
- Content Management Systems for webhosting is important to have
done correctly, but none fits all. Programmers/system administrators
are not a replacement for graphical designers. Are there any
graphical designers which are capable of producing maintainable
HTML, or does xmlindent(1) have to be used on everybodies output?
- If you have a document storage application, and a issue tracking
application, and a customer relation application, then it's a
good thing to make sure you keep using the same names for the
same topics: Use them consistent, don't invent different names
for the same thing in every new application.
Of course, I could bitch and moan about the bad things which have
shown up in the last year but let's keep it positive.
Now I'm in the handover phase... Which of course totally doesn't
go as I had hoped for. We had two months time for it, in which we
could do one month for handover, then two or three weeks for the
last items which were missing or not clear or where the new people
needed their hands to be held. But it was decided that it all should
happen in the last two weeks...
Next step? Nothing set in stone yet, just talking. Want to talk to me?
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