Clearfield

Service With a Smile

A few weeks ago my wife brought the family vehicle in for repairs. There were several items we wanted checked out so when the garage called back with an estimate we braced ourselves for what we thought would be a hefty repair bill. The list ends up being pretty long and includes manifold seals, some work on the cooling system and front brakes. They said the rear brakes were fine and didn't need to be replaced. Total tab: about $1200.

We had the vehicle back for just a

Posted 07/23/10 12:01 PM by Admin

Dinosaurs vs. Mammals

There are many theories on why the Dinosaurs disappeared from earth 65 million years ago. (An asteroid that hit the Yucatan peninsula, a super nova, climatic changes that raised the oxygen content in the atmosphere which increased their metabolic rate, disease carrying insects, increased volcanic activity, even that the slow moving, dim-witted dinosaurs couldn’t cope with the mammals stealing their eggs).

Not that it matters, but I’m in the asteroid camp.

No

Posted 07/22/10 9:06 AM by Admin

Get In Early

You would think with as much as I travel this would happen more often. I guess I have been lucky. Traveling up from Colorado to North Dakota today I almost got caught. I usually don't make my hotel reservations until later in the day when I know where I want to stop, it depends on how tired I am and where I have to be the next morning. I started making calls while I was still in Wyoming; I was pretty sure I could make it to Dickinson, North Dakota. 9:30 wouldn't be

Posted 07/22/10 8:48 AM by Admin

Common Ground

My oldest daughter works the second shift (1:30-9:30) in Manufacturing at Clearfield. (We fire up a second shift when we get busy, and we are definitely busy.) She is a college student working hard to help her Dad pay for her tuition. She mainly does Fiber Check which is a manual process of verifying the quality of fiber end-faces. She plugs a connector into a device that magnifies at 400X and runs a computer program that determines a passing or failing end-face.

Posted 07/09/10 7:48 AM by Admin

Old School

I just bought a 1970 Jeep Commando. My latest project, I love working on the old stuff. Simple, mechanical, and no on-board computers. It has a Buick 225 ci V6 motor and a 3 speed manual transmission. I plan to lift it, put in a Weiand intake manifold, headers, and a Flowmaster dual exhaust. It needs some body work, but since it’s a western Colorado Jeep, it has very little rust. If it was a Minnesota vehicle it would probably look like Swiss cheese. I’m

Posted 07/08/10 8:48 AM by Admin

Fresh cut alfalfa

I’m a country boy at heart. Grew up on a farm where I baled more than my share of hay. So when I’m driving across the country and catch a whiff of an alfalfa field that has just been cut, memories of my childhood come rushing back in. Those memories are bittersweet.

Back then life was good, drove a 1971 Ford pickup, a 360 V8 with a supercharger. Gas was 58 cents a gallon and I could burn through a set of rear tires every summer. I’m not going to lie to you;

Posted 07/01/10 1:42 PM by Admin

Synchronicity

If you have read any of my blogs in the past you know that I travel all over the country. You also know that I drive most of the time given that my meetings are usually spread out and it’s the most efficient way for me to make my meetings with the demo equipment that I need to show my customers. In one of my many trips through Iowa I noticed one night that all the obstruction lights on a wind turbine farm were synchronized.

That got me thinking; I have nothing

Posted 06/30/10 11:25 AM by Admin

The Human Element

Have you seen the Dow Corporation commercial? It talks about the Human Element of their company. The commercial portrays the human affects that this Science and Technology company has on people around the world. They even created an element symbol, ala, Periodic Table of Elements, (Hu) Human.

I was having a conversation with the General Manager of a Telephone Company in North Dakota. They offer triple-play services over new FTTH networks in four of their

Posted 06/16/10 9:20 AM by Admin

Timing is Everything

I’m driving down the freeway through the great state of Michigan near the end of a long day. When I pulled off the interstate my car started running rough and it stalled at the bottom of the exit ramp. Start and stall, start and stall, luckily I was able to limp it a half a mile to my hotel. Being a backyard mechanic, I’m thinking fuel pump or one of the many sensors (O2, throttle position sensor, cam shaft position sensor) that are critical on late model cars.

Posted 06/16/10 9:01 AM by Admin

In The Club

I’ve joined the club. West Central Telephone Association just today cut me over from copper to their new FTTH network.

There are a couple of odd circumstances that stand out to me in the event. The first is where it is. I’m not sure I would have guessed that I would have FTTH at my farm house, in very rural Minnesota, before my home in a Minneapolis suburb. Secondly, I’ve been in the telecom industry for 32 years and the last 5 of that have been very

Posted 04/27/10 8:13 AM by Admin

Torque

“Horsepower sells cars, but torque wins races” – Carroll Shelby

In physics, Newton’s Second Law states: Net force acting upon an object causes acceleration directly proportional to the net force and inversely proportional to the mass.

Guess what, not only are we finally getting movement with Broadband Stimulus, we are getting acceleration. Several BIP and BTOP projects have been successfully awarded from Round 1 and we just completed the Round 2

Posted 04/06/10 8:29 AM by Admin

Keep your balance

As a kid I grew up on a horse farm. We raised, trained, and showed Quarter Horses. When I was in my early teens I would break and rough-train horses (saddle-break, neck rein) and such. I would spend a couple of weeks with each horse all for a whopping $50. I guess that was a lot of money for a 13 year-old in 1972.

Anyway, I’ll get to the point. We had a fence made from 4x4 posts and 2x6 rails that ran the full length of the front side of our pasture. It was

Posted 02/19/10 11:56 AM by Admin

Content is Not King

You may have heard the phrase "Content is King". This can be in reference to website content or more often media content ( TV shows or movies). Some very large companies must agree with that philosophy. Comcast agreed in December to purchase NBC. Comcast wants to own the content (although I'm sure they could get by without MSNBC )

You have recently seen squabbling between Cablevision and HGTV and the Food Network. Cablevision blacked-out those 2 channels from

Posted 02/19/10 11:46 AM by Admin

The Road Ahead

I've got a cigar lit and a hot cup of coffee in my cup holder. Driving through Iowa like I've done a hundred times before. But this day in January I'm fighting my way through a thick blanket of fog. Its hard to see more than a few hundred yards ahead. Got my cruise set on 70 and I can't see what's over that next hill. Maybe a semi pulled over to the side of the road? Or one of those infamous Iowa State Troopers?

I've got to believe this is the way many

Posted 01/18/10 1:48 PM by Admin

It Could Be Tricky

I was driving across Minnesota last month, wind blowing from the north. I swear the snow was coming all the way from Manitoba.

I stopped at a rest stop to calm my nerves and take a five minute break to get the blood flowing back through my white knuckles.

On the way out the door I stopped for a minute to talk with an older gentleman that was mopping up the sloppy mess being tracked into the lobby. He asked, " How are the roads?" "Spots are pretty slick" I shared.

Posted 11/11/09 11:41 AM by Admin

How Much Speed Do You Need ?

How much speed do you need?

I only have a few vices. No drinking or gambling for me. I do like a good cigar, but my passion is fast cars and motorcycles.

Do you think 6 motorcycles and 4 cars is enough? Ha!

One of my rockets is a Yamaha VMax, 145 horsepower V4, 140 MPH in the quarter mile. Is that fast enough? Ya I think so.

How much speed do you need to your house? Is 2.4 gb/s GPON with 1x32 splitters delivering(75mb/s) per house fast enough?

We have all been

Posted 11/11/09 10:13 AM by Admin

The Perfect Carrier

The Perfect Carrier

It doesn't get any better than glass and light, right?

Einstien theorized nothing can exceed the speed of light.

Recently, some theoretical physicists are disputing that.

Matched/paired atoms on opposite sides of the earth have been proven to react simultaneously when one or the other is stimulated. Instant communication, pretty cool, that's Quantum physics. Einstein called it "scary science". Niels Bohr and Albert disagreed on this

Posted 11/11/09 9:57 AM by Admin

Houses On Stilts

As I was driving across the snow-swept Great Plains of South Dakota, roads were glazed with ice. I drove down Gulf Coast of Texas through Houston to the prettiest little island you'd ever see (Port Aransas, TX). After my short ferry ride to the island, the first thing I noticed was the houses were on stilts. Makes sense with the hurricanes and high water I'm sure that are not an uncommon occurrance there. What a beautiful and diverse country we are blessed to live

Posted 10/22/09 1:37 PM by Admin

Too Busy ?

Almost everyone I have met with over the past few years say the same thing. “We are really busy, but it sure beats the alternative.” Those of us that have been in the telecom industry for more than 15 years have seen this before. The mid-to-late nineties were a crazy time in our industry too. We also survived the lean times shortly after the telecom bust in the early 2000s.

I sometimes wonder, if not for some small decisions early in life, what I would be

Posted 10/22/09 1:10 PM by Admin

Change is good

We’ve all heard it said that ‘change is good for us’. When I was a youngster I remember my mother telling me that a spoon full of cod liver oil is ‘good for you’ ….but that didn’t help it go down any easier. We’ve also heard it said that if we aren’t careful we can get ‘stuck in a rut’ and that ‘a rut is just a grave with the ends kicked out’. I wonder if Judge Greene had all the changes we’ve seen in the market place in mind when he made

Posted 09/25/09 9:26 AM by Admin

The Collapsing of a Network

Over the past 20 years we have seen a continuous collapse of network electronics from specialized functionality and rigid configuration rules into scalable multi service access and transport platforms. The result include economic benefits like reduced acquisition costs and ongoing operating expenses.

But what about infrastructure? Too often it conforms to the old rules of fixed networks, services and little or no scalability. With the massive investment of fiber going

Posted 09/25/09 9:22 AM by Admin

Gift Horse

“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth” We’ve all heard that saying and it makes sense that when someone gives you something it could be considered rude to examine that gift too closely. Since it’s a gift, it’s free, right?

I’ve been meeting with folks across the country and the hot topic over the past few months is the Broadband Stimulus Package. When are the rules coming? What will they look like? How can this benefit my company and my community?

Posted 09/25/09 9:11 AM by Admin

CHEMICAL RESISTANCE

When considering the realities of OSP cable, chemical resistance must be addressed.  The world is a nasty place, and fuels, oils and other kinds of chemicals can enter an OSP enclosure despite the best efforts of service providers and their technicians.  While inside-rated jumpers will degrade when exposed to such substances, cables meeting MIL-PRF 85045 are fully resistant.

Some telcos’ standard field practices include fogging a fiber distribution pedestal, cabinet

Posted 08/28/09 10:48 AM by Admin

PEOPLE-PROOFING

Environmental factors are just part of the practical hurdles not fully addressed by OSP standards.  The number one cause of fiber optic network downtime is equipment damage resulting from human error, either through rough handling or improper cable routing.  Even the best-designed fiber solutions can be easily compromised by routing and handling fiber circuits incorrectly.

While most technicians are both highly trained and diligent, interconnect cable must be able to

Posted 08/28/09 10:47 AM by Admin

FTTH-OSP Standards Lag Reality

One of the continuing ironies of Fiber-To-The-Home (FTTH) interconnect cable products is that while a great deal of effort has been expended to develop optical components that perform well under harsh conditions, many of the materials and specifications essential to these products—despite the environmental, routing and physical handling demands found in FTTH enclosures—are better suited to indoor applications.

Outside Plant (OSP) equipment such as fiber

Posted 08/28/09 10:45 AM by Admin