My Prayer Language

During my college days, I used to swim regularly. Coincidentally, it was during that time that I felt what I considered God's calling (for priesthood). I was a Computer Engineering student, and mixing computer and religion for me was quite too tough a thing to do at that time. It was confusing. And then it was during one of my swimming sessions that I decided to swim myself to complete exhaustion. It was night and was raining hard. The resort was almost empty. I was all by myself. The idea was to put myself in a situation that if somethings goes wrong, there will be no one to rely on but God alone; to eliminate other wordly thoughts, but only of God and His Words. It was like a simulation of a real life problem. I wanted to prove to God that as I would strive to keep myself afloat despite fatigue and fight the threat of drowning, I would stick or cling to Him no matter what. It was terribly difficult because when it's time to raise my head above water to breath, rainwater would fill my face making the chances to breath more difficult. But as I went on, I noticed something terribly amazing that surprised me - in the middle of it all, I noticed that it was easier under water than above it. I felt I didn't have to worry too much about moving briskly to stay afloat simply because I was enjoying more being under water. And I noticed I wanted to stay under water longer than staying over. While the rain was still pouring wildly on the surface, I found peace under the splashes. I felt a unique kind of peacefulness that in a way I really felt I had successfully made my message across to God. I felt I was really able to make God belive in me, and that I love Him. I was counting the laps I was doing because I was also trying to say Hail Mary and Our Father. It came to a point that I was like in a middle of the ocean, far from land and all I could see was water, but I did not stop until I was really almost out of air. Guess what, I never realized that I had set a record for myself in swimming, having swam almost 20 laps (at least). I made it.... survived it.... I dared the dangerous and God saw me through.... I was thankful because there was really no real serious problem in my life or in my family, so I made one serious situation for me. It was like an act, so I could talk to God the way the "beaten but heroic people" had done. Then finally, I personally confirmed an old thought that as the bouyance power of the water is often so hardly believable, so is God's power sometimes. But in all eternity - God is there. We simply have to trust him just as we should the bouyancy of water. Well, I did not become a priest although I tried to enter a seminary. I am now an IT professional, happily married, and a father of one.

A Network Outage

Sirs,

Good evening.

We recently encountered again a network outage in the South Station LAN affecting the Drugstore and Bank ATM. As you are aware, we conducted troubleshooting a couple of weeks ago when the said LAN went up and down for a period lasting to 1 month. We cited several causes including bad in-house termination at the TTC, device port hang-ups, and unplugged RJ-45.

The most recent outage, which was restored only this afternoon, was found to be caused by unplugged RJ-45 connector again. The RJ-45 connector, which by design and purpose has a lock mechanism to keep it in place inside an RJ-45 port, might have been unplugged purposely or accidentally. We do not discount other possibilities, but the network was restored immediately upon inserting the said unplugged cable back to its place. The said outage lasted for 1 week.

In this connection, I’d like to seek help from your good office to kindly make inquiries or cascade information to ensure that the said cable is kept in place.

Thank you very much for the usual quick assistance and warm accommodation.


Yours truly,

Sanny

Bringing Order to an Existing Chaos

Team,

Let's systematize the installation of Karspersky. We are talking about hundreds of computers here, and so it is easy to get confused and miss.

Installation will be "one Engineer per branch" to avoid confusion as to which computer of which branch is already done by who. If you decide to take one branch, all computers in that branch are yours. On RT, you are to create "one RT ticket per branch", and the subject shall be "Karspersky AV Installation - ". All tickets shall be created under the Network::Projects queue. To know which branch is already taken, please ask Tina who will keep the master list (to be submitted to Martin). As to how you compute the Time Worked, just simply be honest. And don't dilly-dally, there is a way to be sure!

Thanks.

Sanny

Note: With the help of the software's own automated installation, the project progressed fairly fast. And the tracking of completed branches, were smooth and swift. The department was commended for being systematic.

Commending a Good Friend

Renz,

Brother, I'd like to greet you as an associate and fellow for bravely and firmly standing by the principles of honesty and for protecting the good of our department in the D-Link router issue, which caused broadcast of invalid IP Addresses at the Tower. It's a highly confidential issue therefore it is a high profile courage on your part.

The procedures and tools you conducted, as primitive as what's available to us, were used very diligently that the dreaded further outbreak was prevented, saving IT and the Bank.

The same commendations also to all the people who helped you in this problem especially our Heads.

Magaling! Masipag! Indispensable! Inspiring!


Comrade,

Sanny

An Appointment

Sir,

Thanks. It was like a training session with you.

About the kind of leadership that you want all your people to learn, I commit to honesty, sincerity, and quality. I also commit, as well as pray to God, that I will neither be like a fly standing boastfully and comfortably on top of a cow nor seek to ride the back of a tiger and crazily end up inside.

My actions will remain objective rather than or rarely be subjective.

God bless our company.

Sanny


Note: The appointment as Department Head-in charge did not push through because the incumbent revoked his resignation.

Partners,

Below are the details of the result of the commissioning of new wireless antenna radios and the testing of Bellevue’s backup Internet connection via Plaza B, Northgate Cyberzone by the FITI Group.

The new wireless antennae, Ovislink AirLive, were successfully commissioned on the afternoon of January 17, 2008. The wireless link that connects Bellevue to Plaza B was restored at around 2pm by replacing the old radio antennae that were reported having intermittent wireless link a few months back.  The new Ovislink Airlive antenna registered a stable RSSI of –50dbm and the result of PING across the wireless link indicated a steady radio-to-radio link.

>From the 3Com hub at the Roof Deck, the testing of Internet was successful with our laptop connected to one if its ports. All PING to (1 & 2)Airlive radios, (3) Northgate router, (4) a test PC, and the Internet were all successful. Iperf were also conducted and registered a throughput of up to 10mbps. The testing was conducted twice (January 17 & 18) which lasted for almost 3 hours on each occasion and the link was observed to be stable based on the aforementioned diagnostics conducted. Attached herewith are all the snapshots taken during the testing for your reference.

The connection, however, encountered problem when we transferred the connection from our laptop to the BelleVue network via the 3Com hub and your LAN extender. While the link remained connected and stable at the RF level, our PING to each hop points timed out. During this time, we observed that all the IP addresses that we are PING-ing would register a MAC address in the ARP table of our router and our laptop that is not their own. All four IP addresses appeared on the ARP table with a single "unidentified MAC address". The PING would restore only when we remove it from the 3Com hub, at which time our devices will restore its original and correct respective MAC addresses.

To try to resolve this, we changed the IP address settings of our router and radios but resulted to the same problem. We suspect that the switch that your LAN extender is connected to a router  do not have proper VLAN configuration or there is a device or a PC that is causing this kind of malicious network activity.

This report is being provided to you to both inform you that the wireless link problem had been resolved, and to seek your attention about the problem above-mentioned.


Thank you very much.

Sanny Sison

Note:

The Bellevue link problem was finally resolved after months of speculations. The internal LAN problem at Bellevue, however, persisted, and shall be handled by their own IT people.

Date: November 16, 2006

To: Management

Cc: Officers

From: Sanny R. Sison

Subject: WIFI Services at F-Mall and W-Gate

______________________________________________________________________________________

Last week, we conducted an RF survey at F-Mall and W-Gate. The result of which provided us with a proof that numerous uncontrolled WIFI signals, identified to be from a variety of established Access Points (APs) and different WIFI devices (PC/laptop, phones, and PDAs), do exist. The reports generated by our instrument are attached herewith for your reference.

All these Access Points (APs) are individually administered by their owners and may not be centrally managed for our control. Most of them are privately protected by passwords intended to authenticate their expected customers, while some others are not secured and may be accessed by anyone inside or near the mall. It is estimated that those wireless services have been around for more than a year when WIFI devices became commercially available in many computer stores. With the fast proliferation of new and more sophisticated WIFI-certified products everywhere, the numbers are estimated to grow as more people are also learning to use it for both business and leisure.

The situation, in reality, indicates that a new medium to do business has arrived and benefiting those already using or serving it. However, without a qualified system to police this unauthorized WIFI services, we freely allow the public to do business in the two key areas inside the City and also lose the potential to generate income from regulating them. Technically, this could also cause various network and security problems such as frequency interference and unauthorized access to private networks.

Whereas, the existing cables inside the mall had also been reported to be in an unsound physical condition (the average lifespan of a network cable is only up to 10 years), we recommend to position the company in a ready stance to support all current and future network-based services by establishing a backup to the deteriorating structured cabling. And whereas, WIFI is an easy and proven alternative to wired networks and a very suitable marketing and income-generating tool, we urge the implementation of a secured, centrally-managed, and billable WIFI system for both F-Mall and W-Gate as soon as possible.

In line with this recommendation, we would like to inform you that NSA, the company that is implementing WIFI at various local malls and food chain outlets, had earlier been requested to present products and means to counter rogue signals and explore the income-generating potential of WIFI services.

With your permission, I can arrange a presentation of their proposal to you, and to allow us to carry out this project.

Thank you very much.

Yours truly,

Sanny Sison
Senior Network Engineer

Note: Excited about the project, the testing of Trapeze WiFi in both F-Mall and W-Gate was approved. But due to other ongoing projects, the "WiFi Project" will be an undertaking in 2008.