Networking history from the bottom of the bag

Even though we're up to our trailer hitches in snow, it's time for a bit of spring cleaning. I emptied my briefcase and sifted through six months of accumulated tools, cables, connectors, pens, batteries, and a spoon. (On a business trip years ago, I was on my way to my hotel late one evening and bought some yogurt at a convenience store. Back at my room, I discovered that I didn't have a spoon. I wound up eating the yogurt with my toothbrush. I now carry a spoon in my briefcase.)

In the early-to-mid 80s, Digital changed the name of its internal network from the Engineering Network to the Easynet. The idea was that the network was used for general business operations and not just by the engineering groups. It was also quite easy to use. We had teams of people throughout the world working on projects together with the same ease as teams in the same building.
Digital had its own networking standards, DECnet, and contributed to the Ethernet standard that supports modern networking. Another set of networking protocols, TCP/IP, now used in the Internet, were just starting to make inroads.
By one estimate, a typical American household has 5.7 Internet-connected devices, such as smartphones, computers, and tablets. A small town could have more connected gadgets than DEC had in support of 100,000 employees 30 years ago.

Bought my last HP printer

HP is using WSD ports when its networked printers are configured on Windows 7. (There may be more details on this, but this is as much as I've found.)
The trouble is that, for some machines in some environments, the service that resolves these virtual ports into an IP address will often fail and so the print jobs just sit in the queue. Changing the printer port to an IP port fixes the problem. You then have to make sure that your printer is set up with a static IP address.
This is just the latest in a series of problems that I've had with HP printer software. I also Epson and Brother printers; none of them have had anything like the kinds of setup woes that HP has inflicted on me.
In other words, bye-bye, HP.

Don't eat lunch alone

Last night I attended a gathering of our local chamber of commerce.  I like these folks. Most of the people there are trying to build small businesses that let's them do things they're good at. For some people, it's banking or real estate. For others, it can be a store or a services business or goodness knows what.

We talked very little about doing business in the sense of trying to work out a deal. We talked about how we helped other people solve problems. I talked as much about my grandkids as I did about WordPress, Cat5 vs Cat5e vs Cat6 cabling, or state and federal trademark law. I talked with a nursing home administrator about the discussions she'd been having with an about-to-be college graduate, with a bank branch manager about how electronic banking was  giving him and his staff more time to spend on customer service, with a realtor about finding a volunteer opportunity for her teen-aged son. I had a good chat with a guy who called me Gary about the effect that the warm winter had on local businesses.

Toward the latter part of the gathering, I saw John DiPietro. John and I will be giving a LinkedIn workshop for the chamber in a couple of weeks. After talking about the workshop for a bit, John mentioned the interesting results he was getting from posting questions on LinkedIn. His most recent question, Going out for lunch vs eating at your desk, was bringing comments from around the world.

He then noted that, if you're eating lunch at your desk, three bad things may happen: 1) you might spill food on your computer, 2) you'll miss a chance for some exercise, and 3) you'll miss a chance to talk with some. "Go out. Have a cup of soup. See what happens."

In this world of virtual work, it's easy to overlook the opportunities for face-to-face contact. Even if the people around town aren't working on the same things that you are, they're working on something interesting and living lives that offer something important.

I stayed for a while longer, talking with a web designer about developing sites for multiple platforms, particularly for the smaller screens on mobile devices.

When it was time to leave, I waved to the guy I'd seen earlier.

"Bye, Gary," he said. "Thanks for coming."