I'm un-retiring myself...

[Jay]

It’s looking about 90% certain I’ll be retiring in 6 months. I’ll turn in my retirement packet next week. That will get the ball rolling. By September 1 I’ll have to do the paperwork with the my employer. 5 days after that, I’m locked in. Effective retirement date of Nov 1. Last day at work will be Halloween. I’ll be 46 with 25 years of service. My income will go down significantly. But, I’ll be debt free including my mortgage and I’m still young enough to find something else to do for fun and pocket money.

[Wambli Ska]

Congratulations! I like the way you think and you've been smart enough to put yourself in a position to have great options.

My returns is short term and everyone I work with (and my wife) knows it. I do have a bunch of irons in the fire including starting a firearms related business that I did some test marketing and sales on over the last year. It worked very well and now I'm using this time to formalize the when/how it's getting rolling officially.

I was really called back because the vacuum I left on my last exit was not truly filled and some strategic initiatives in my current business have fallen now years behind. I think in 2-3 years I will be able to adequately backfill my function with another person who can lead these and the projects I've initiated will be in good enough shape that I will be able to make a gracious exit and go do something more suitable to an old guy just wanting to go cowboy for his retirement.

[Jay]

Kinda seems like my retirement is meant to be. Retiring on Halloween. Thinking I’ll either dress up like a cop, or dress up completely different for the occasion.

Right before the holidays and hunting season. My son is getting married next year. I’ve got a lot of projects that need attention.

I don’t hate my job. But I’m ready to be done. I don’t enjoy it like I used to. I started passing knowledge to younger guys years ago. They’ve got it now. I was planning to stay a little while longer. But things happened that got me to go this year. So, I’ll go with it and make it work. Life goes on.

[Jay]

Slight change of plans for me. My retirement association says I can retire a month earlier than HR said I could. Since it won’t change anything, new plan is to be out Oct 1. Last day at work Sept 30. 4 1/2 more months…. Right at hunting season. If I can afford it..

[Diver43]

Slight change of plans for me. My retirement association says I can retire a month earlier than HR said I could. Since it won’t change anything, new plan is to be out Oct 1. Last day at work Sept 30. 4 1/2 more months…. Right at hunting season. If I can afford it..

Congrats

[Wambli Ska]

That’s awesome buddy!!! Good for you

[Wambli Ska]

I was on a video call this morning at 6:30am and enjoying myself thoroughly. Spent last week in Mexico revamping an international relationship that will change the way connectivity in the whole region is made available for future high tech devices.

Yeah…. I missed this crap

[Freezer]

Slight change of plans for me. My retirement association says I can retire a month earlier than HR said I could. Since it won’t change anything, new plan is to be out Oct 1. Last day at work Sept 30. 4 1/2 more months…. Right at hunting season. If I can afford it..

Congratulations! I've been retired for the second time for 9 months and I love it! I keep myself busy.

[PFD45]

I was on a video call this morning at 6:30am and enjoying myself thoroughly. Spent last week in Mexico revamping an international relationship that will change the way connectivity in the whole region is made available for future high tech devices.

Yeah…. I missed this crap

So on that topic, what's your take on the starlink stuff?
I know fiber beats OTA every time but are satellites really affecting decions regarding ground based infrastructure?

[Wambli Ska]

HA! BOY are they ever... Just a thought, Elon has 7,000 satellites in the sky already and two of the most powerful $$$$$$$$$ forces on Earth, Bezos (Amazon) and the Chinese are now struggling to catch up in a hurry, and they will. That should tell you EVERYTHING you need to know. Elon will be delivering gig service off his satellites SOON and the cell phone makers are now designing and quietly making their devices satellite ready.

TOTAL gamechanger.......

AT&T foolishly committed to covering the world with fiber years back, at MWC about 3 years ago they tried to talk about it in a keynote address and the room emptied out because everyone knows it's nonsense. In my mind, AT&T will be defunct brand in the future. They already gave up on being a global dominant player. Now they are just a crappy cell phone carrier. Hell they don't even own any cell towers anymore.

[PFD45]

HA! BOY are they ever... Just a thought, Elon has 7,000 satellites in the sky already and two of the most powerful $$$$$$$$$ forces on Earth, Bezos (Amazon) and the Chinese are now struggling to catch up in a hurry, and they will. That should tell you EVERYTHING you need to know. Elon will be delivering gig service off his satellites SOON and the cell phone makers are now designing and quietly making their devices satellite ready.

TOTAL gamechanger.......

AT&T foolishly committed to covering the world with fiber years back, at MWC about 3 years ago they tried to talk about it in a keynote address and the roodm emptied out because everyone knows it's nonsense. In my mind, AT&T will be defunct brand in the future. They already gave up on being a global dominant player. Now they are just a crappy cell phone carrier. Hell they don't even own any cell towers anymore.

I figured I'd learn more (trustworthy) info about that from 2 short paragraphs from you than 2 hours searching the net.

Sat ready cell phones? Kids already don't know what a pay phone was...is that where cell towers are headed? I pay $90 a month for fast, reliable internet (fiber to the pedestal and coax to my house) and i'm relatively rural. I wonder if Sat service will ever compete strictly on $.

And yeah, AT&T seems like 1 bad decision after another (dish tv).

We do live in interesting times.

[Wambli Ska]

We live in outright fascinating times. I switched to 5G internet for the house and it’s pretty flawless, and I’m NOT a light user. I’ll probably be getting the Starlink package for the next house since I MIGHT be building off the grid (the technologies seem to be aligning nicely), still looking into this. Price is still a hair higher (self correcting problem) but the ability to have a travel setup I can take camping with me is just freaking awesome. This means I can do work and be on video calls with anyone in the world from my tent on a mountain!!! That’s just too appealing.

[CPJ 2.0]

Hell my iPhone 10 can send messages over satellite.

Any cable (cooper or fiber) based communications will be gone by the time my future grandkids are around.

The AT&T buildings I used to service are aging. Aging….everything. From the windows to the walls, plumbing, electrical, HVAC. All stuff that’s not cheap to maintain. With folks ditching land line phones (who has those) and internet, I don’t look for them to be around long.

Cable installations aren’t cheap to maintain, nor is it easy to replace the gray beards who know where to hit the equipment with a hammer to get it to work.

[Gene L]

I retired in 2011 after 33 years as a LEO. It was Good at first but I became bored and spent too much money. Now, it's OK, not fabulous but just fine. I still dream about it in a friendly way, and don't have any war stories that a lot of retired cops seem to have.

I've run out of funds on firearms unless I come upon a super good deal. I've got all the firearms I want, at least for now. I'm OLD, 80 as of May 6, and I've outlived every male in my extended family.

Enjoy life, Wambi.

[Wambli Ska]

Yes on all counts for consumers and most commercial communications needs…

Fiber is still useful in some niche markets. Banking and securities trading depends heavily on fiber because the latency is the speed of light, and if I make a trade in New York and it doesn’t get executed in fractions of a second in Japan it could cost me millions of $$$s at the scale banks and markets operate. So we’re not dumping global fiber networks soon for the finance world, but entertainment and regular communications? Yep.

Another example, there used to be a time when a software upgrade/uodate for your car was a few Mb of info over cellular networks. Just saw an 8Gb per car update unleashed in 3 countries to thousands of autos. Heard a president of a car company talking about a Tb of info in/out of every car every day within OUR time.

Times, they are changing…

[PFD45]

Damn.
Makes me think about my career installing and maintaining NEC PBX equipment.
I started in 1995 installing a state of the art call center. Our Telco trunks were wink start, two way DIDs. I still have 3 butt sets and a digit grabber.

20 some years later I retired from a giant school district. We had to get boxes to convert VoIP to PRI T1 because Telco stopped putting T1s over copper.
We used cell phone boxes to put dial tone in our elevators because we constantly had POTS line failures!

Oh yeah, NEC stopped making PBX hardware a couple years ago making me a factory trained and skilled buggy whip maker!

[CPJ 2.0]

It’s funny, when I started in the alarm business cellular radio-ish things were available, and EXPENSIVE. POTS ruled for reliability. Without question.



Now with POTS being almost phased out, and all the “dial tone in a box” horse shat, and of course cellular communication advancement, we exclusively install cellular dialers for alarm panels. Some fire marshals require cellular. Simply because any of the VOIP is garbage. It may be fine for conversations, but for same communications it’s not. They compress the signals to save bandwidth, they don’t include the pauses between tones the panel requires. It’s all ran together in one string. So the receiving equipment says “naw fam, I don’t understand your authentic frontier gibberish. Goodbye.”

I’ve YET to see any of the cell boxes NOT specific to alarm panels or any of the magic phone lines EVER work like they should. Talked to a phone guy at an old folks home I service. Asked maintenance if they wanted a price for a dialer. “He says his will work.” He proceeds to brag about how great it is, talked a good story, almost had me convinced since he knew some things most don’t.


Two months later…..here’s your new dialer, the one I suggested earlier. After about the 5th 3am wake up call, the administrator had enough. When I walked in she said “get this **** thing OUT of my building.

[PFD45]

They compress the signals to save bandwidth, they don’t include the pauses between tones the panel requires. It’s all ran together in one string. So the receiving equipment says “naw fam, I don’t understand your authentic frontier gibberish. Goodbye.”

Dude, try supporting (HIPPA) a fax server when telco constantly changes some obscure setting in their VoIP server. . .

Once I listened to 2 "engineers" trying to figure out why we couldn't receive faxes anymore. When they paused blithering, I pointed out they were flagged for T38 and we weren't. We got out on time that day.

[Wambli Ska]

I retired in 2011 after 33 years as a LEO. It was Good at first but I became bored and spent too much money. Now, it's OK, not fabulous but just fine. I still dream about it in a friendly way, and don't have any war stories that a lot of retired cops seem to have.

I've run out of funds on firearms unless I come upon a super good deal. I've got all the firearms I want, at least for now. I'm OLD, 80 as of May 6, and I've outlived every male in my extended family.

Enjoy life, Wambi.

I am sir. Living in a retirement community for a while made me realize how swiftly it all goes by. My intent is to try not to waste a moment. Two granddaughters now make it even more interesting. I think the only thing we get to keep is the knowledge that we did our best to have a good meaningful life.

[Wambli Ska]

Damn.
Makes me think about my career installing and maintaining NEC PBX equipment.
I started in 1995 installing a state of the art call center. Our Telco trunks were wink start, two way DIDs. I still have 3 butt sets and a digit grabber.

20 some years later I retired from a giant school district. We had to get boxes to convert VoIP to PRI T1 because Telco stopped putting T1s over copper.
We used cell phone boxes to put dial tone in our elevators because we constantly had POTS line failures!

Oh yeah, NEC stopped making PBX hardware a couple years ago making me a factory trained and skilled buggy whip maker!

Brother you bring back a lot of cool memories. I’ve been in the IT business and then in the network side since the 80s. I remember when 256 Kb of RAM memory was a lot and a DS-3 (45 Mb) line was a huge deal and cost thousands a month. The first time I saw a 5ESS (did I get that right?) AT&T central office switch I was just floored.

Today we speak in numbers and speeds that are hard to understand. Our offices don’t even have phone systems. I carry around two iPhones, an iPad and a laptop everywhere I go. It’s a fun world and I’m happy to be stil greasing the skids for the next generation.

[Wambli Ska]

It’s funny, when I started in the alarm business cellular radio-ish things were available, and EXPENSIVE. POTS ruled for reliability. Without question.



Now with POTS being almost phased out, and all the “dial tone in a box” horse shat, and of course cellular communication advancement, we exclusively install cellular dialers for alarm panels. Some fire marshals require cellular. Simply because any of the VOIP is garbage. It may be fine for conversations, but for same communications it’s not. They compress the signals to save bandwidth, they don’t include the pauses between tones the panel requires. It’s all ran together in one string. So the receiving equipment says “naw fam, I don’t understand your authentic frontier gibberish. Goodbye.”

I’ve YET to see any of the cell boxes NOT specific to alarm panels or any of the magic phone lines EVER work like they should. Talked to a phone guy at an old folks home I service. Asked maintenance if they wanted a price for a dialer. “He says his will work.” He proceeds to brag about how great it is, talked a good story, almost had me convinced since he knew some things most don’t.


Two months later…..here’s your new dialer, the one I suggested earlier. After about the 5th 3am wake up call, the administrator had enough. When I walked in she said “get this **** thing OUT of my building.

It’s always fun to see folks resist progress and then in time get to regret it when the pain gets to be enough

I have my whole house alarmed and everything is wireless. Obviously not to commercial/professional level of course but it was cool to take down my whole system in NC, put it in a box, install the whole thing back in NV in about an hour and when I needed more window sensors just go online and $20 a window later I was good to go! Not a bad deal.

[Varmintmist]

Yes on all counts for consumers and most commercial communications needs…

Fiber is still useful in some niche markets. Banking and securities trading depends heavily on fiber because the latency is the speed of light, and if I make a trade in New York and it doesn’t get executed in fractions of a second in Japan it could cost me millions of $$$s at the scale banks and markets operate. So we’re not dumping global fiber networks soon for the finance world, but entertainment and regular communications? Yep.

Another example, there used to be a time when a software upgrade/uodate for your car was a few Mb of info over cellular networks. Just saw an 8Gb per car update unleashed in 3 countries to thousands of autos. Heard a president of a car company talking about a Tb of info in/out of every car every day within OUR time.

Times, they are changing…

The 5ms lag up then again down and across from sat will always be there. Lag affects bankers, gamers and porn. Porn runs the internet (like it or not it is the industry driver) and gamers spend as much or more then avg companies and are more demanding. Sat is not on all counts the be all to end all. FO will be the backbone. Sending emails or downloading T that isnt going to affect anything until it is finished and checked, not a big deal on a laggy sampled signal. You will never see it. Most people wouldnt notice their ISP dropping them by 50% speed if they are over 300m

[Varmintmist]

Hell my iPhone 10 can send messages over satellite.

Any cable (cooper or fiber) based communications will be gone by the time my future grandkids are around.

The AT&T buildings I used to service are aging. Aging….everything. From the windows to the walls, plumbing, electrical, HVAC. All stuff that’s not cheap to maintain. With folks ditching land line phones (who has those) and internet, I don’t look for them to be around long.

Cable installations aren’t cheap to maintain, nor is it easy to replace the gray beards who know where to hit the equipment with a hammer to get it to work.

A lot of people have said that all cable will be gone for longer than I worked in the industry. I have a book from a college class that states that no home will ever need more than 9600 baud...... I heard many times that copper would never run more than 56K..... Well when I got out, there was 60M bonded copper internet service over 2 copper pair. Copper is expensive so they are getting away from it, mainly because higher ups have no idea how to make signal pass over copper and if you dont do main on it for 15 years because you dont understand it and dont care about your customers its even more expensive. When you train HR about DEI hires and dont train techs on cable maintenance, its even more expensive. There are literally 2, repeat 2 people on the east coast that work on lead cable. Who cares? Well the hospital that is fed off it kind of cared when it went on its butt..... But fiber/cell/sat will replace it.... in a few years, maybe. POTS is done. The day the telcos are no longer required to pour money in to it because the govt tells them they are the provider of last resort, its gone.

As with copper, what they are doing with fiber is the same. When I started fiber was kind of new and it could only do X. Then someone came up with a mux, and it could do X-28th. And so on and so on and when I left the amount of info that could go over one fiber is incredible. Fiber is cheap. Dirt cheap. The main cost is to hang it. Once its up and one signal goes over it, its paid for.

People are ditching landline internet, to a point. They 5g you pick up at a cell works well, not as well as a FO and the towers are served by FO so thats not going away. THe FO that is going to homes is real cheap and real cool tech. Its one FO that is broken down to serve 130 customers, and it works.

Sat has lag, up, AND down. Downloads, sure. Messages, sure. I will be interested to see what will happen if they get a bunch of customers on a sat at one time. My father was one of the first people to have a cell phone. He was told that he would NEVER get a busy. Within a year he couldnt get through.

So in a nutshell, every time I hear how XXX is great and will make everything else go away I think about the 30 times that someone else looked at the "old" tech and rethought it and made ti cost effective again.

[GrapeApe]

Anyone else remember that steering wheels, and even tires were supposed to be gone ~25 years ago? Popular Science magazine said so, MULTIPLE TIMES, back in the early to mid 70s that we'd have self driving(piloting?), flying cars by 2000. And who can forget about the mag-lev vehicles too (that still don't exist)

I'll believe ____ is going away, when I see them tearing it down, not a nanosecond sooner

[Wambli Ska]

Popular Science is making predictions on what they see out in the world and some educated guesswork in their part. No one is inviting them to the VERY small meetings in which this stuff is decided, planned and executed. At least I’ve never seen one of their guys…