introductions

When I created this blog I dropped one very short little post and got to work posting more technical items. Someone just pointed out I never really told you who I am or what audience I am looking for.


About me
My name is really Thom, I'm a senior engineer with a technology consulting firm. A few years ago I evaluated a product called Vocera and my company decided to become a Vocera partner.

Prior to working on Vocera I had been installing other systems for my clients for quite a while:
- Cisco routers, switches, wireless, and firewalls (2000-2008)
- Cisco CallManager, Unity, etc (2001-2008)
- Cisco IPCC/UCC Express (2002-2008)
Obviously these skills aligned with Vocera very well, lucky me!

Prior to consulting I paid my sys admin dues on a handful of systems: Novel, NT, Windows 2000, various Unix systems, and AS400 midranges between 1998 and 2000. Given how many systems I was working on during the y2k build up, it's safe to say I knew some of them far more intimately than others. Most of my work was NT/2000 and AS400, but my love for *nix came from this time period. If I ever go off on a Slackware or BSD rant it will be tied to 1999 in some way.

In the late 90's I connected up with a few magazine editors and while I was going through the certification tracks for MS and Cisco. I wrote reviews and articles for several magazines but by 2002/2003 I was too busy to keep up with it and I put writting aside.


About this blog
Vocera has several hundred customers, and thus there should be several hundred sys admins out there. There are also a handful of us engineers who deploy these systems week after week for new customers. All of us get to see a little piece of the Vocera landscape first hand, but none of us get to see all of it. Along the way we all learn little tricks, or create our own tricks out of neccessity and our own creativity.

This blog is a place for me to post links to the things that I need and that others might use, like code 128 barcode scanners, etc. This is also a place to link official Vocera information, like release notes or various specifications. Most importantly it's a place to bind together all the loose ends as it relates to Vocera. When I looked around I found that there are many examples of backup scripts for Windows servers, but I couldn't find one anywhere that told me what files on a Vocera server should be backed up.

Finally, the reason this is a blog and not a static html page is the comments section. Knowing that there are people out there with their own tricks, I really wanted to have a mechanism for everyone to be able to share that knowledge with the entire community.


Conclusion
Since I didn't find a place to say it above I would like to say a few things. I am not compensated by Vocera in any way. I use CDW links but I am not paid commission or advertising by them in any way. Buy your goods wherever you like, CDW provides manufacturer part numbers on each of its pages and that is why I use their links.

The reason I am not publishing my last name or contact info is because I'm not using this as a business vehicle, this is a place for cooperative sharing of information. If you are shopping for a partner please work with your Vocera account team to select one.

Comments? Questions? You know what to do.