Network Ops

This summer my family and I spent a week in Panama City, Panama. [Beware: there’s a Panama City in Florida, which is not the same as Panama City in the country of Panama – I came close to making an embarrassing mistake when booking tickets…] The highlight of our vacation (at least for the kids)… Continue Reading

Most of the time, I enjoy troubleshooting. It’s a logic puzzle where you gather evidence, test your theories, and hopefully reach a satisfying solution that leaves everyone happy. But it’s not always like that. Sometimes people get in the way. My least favorite experiences are typically where you end up with representatives from multiple different… Continue Reading

I recently watched highlights of a soccer game between the US Men’s National Team (USMNT) and Mexico where the contest became a little heated, resulting in 4 red cards – which left both teams playing with two fewer men by the end of the game. It’s a pretty ugly sight – some hot tempers and… Continue Reading

Award Consulting is a remote team. Very remote. Since I started the company in 2016 the only team member I had seen in person was Stephen Denny. That’s one person (5 years ago) out of a team of eight people. That’s… not great. But that all changed on May 18 when (almost) the entire team… Continue Reading

If I’ve learned one thing in my 18 years of working in telecoms, it’s that people don’t like outages. And they especially don’t like outages that impact 911 service. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened for subscribers in four counties in West Virginia, for a 16 day period in April 2022. Apparently the local ILEC, Shenandoah… Continue Reading