I have been going over the year and picked out some of my personal favourites as well as some of the most popular posts this year.

Humour

My top piece of humour for the year was a pictorial on the difference in perception between Network and Server engineers. Note: humour is a relative term since it is geek humour. Many people kindly said it was funny.

The Difference between Server and Network Engineers

Another favourite is the Lay of the Network Hero

A far more cynical post is The Real Job Description for Network Architects, but it comes from my frustration in explaining my value to management. Which is definitely a personal failing – must work on that next year.

Network Dictonary

The Network Dictionary continues to be a favourite pastime for me. Although I have been a little cynical lately, I have had a lot of fun thinking of terms that we use everyday but never take the time to think about.

Spinning Rust

Assonance

Fancy Ethernet

Server Hugger

Ciscotist

Human Remorse – my name for the Human Resources

Technical – Cisco mostly

Using IOS as a SSH terminal server An articel showing how to configure an IOS terminal server to use SSH. With a followup article Part 2

Musing: On Permananent and Ephemeral Knowledge and Exam Study

Anti-FCOE posts

I remain convinced the FCoE is a dead end technology. While I can perceive why Cisco thought it would be a good idea for shifting the emphasis away from Fibrechannel switches to their product strength on ethernet, I suspect that most people will bypass FCoE and move to iSCSI because customers don’t see the value in Fibrechannel at all. (Except for existing storage people, who increasingly sound like the Telephony industry before it was ground into meat by Voice Over IP).

http://etherealmind.com/2008/04/17/not-anti-fcoe-i-am-anti-fibrechannel/

People against FCoE, its loud and proud – Part 1

Voice Mail and Phone Manners

This was the year that I disabled Voice Mail and this has improved my quality of life tremendously. Now people send email or SMS, and my productivity has improved out of sight.

Rant: I Loathe Voicemail, its disruptive and inefficent

I have also stopped answering the phone in meetings, or when talking directly to people since it is possibly the rudest and most insulting thing I could do to someone. Exceptions apply.

Certifications

I posted a sequence of articles on the value of certification, which has continued to echo around the blogosphere. These started in response to a fellow worker who claimed that certifications was a rip off (and had no certifications) but equally would not consider people for a job if they did not have at least CCNP. The first article starts Why Certfication Matters, Experience Less So and continues into a four part series.

Fundraising

I have now raised £62 for charity – and some more money will be coming in the new year. Thanks to everyone who supported this. Next year, I will also be sending a portion of the money to a charity in a developing country to help those who are worse off than me. Once I have selected a charity I will let you know.

Next Year

I am not sure what next year will bring. I am weary of working and considering an extended break but the recent changes in the world make that a hard decision. I have some ideas on doing more blogging, but I don’t really have the time to do them. For sure, you can’t make money out of a blog for network nerds.

So best wishes to everyone, and look forward to seeing you in the new year.

Addendum

You can see a list of all my posts in the Repository.