Monthly Archives: March 2009

Cable Geek is who most of our established customer’s know as [email protected] . Lance has been on our team for about a million years. In short Lance is our company’s and our customer’s safe sales harbor in stormy seas. Yep-the rest of us could be wiped out with the stomach flu or a snow storm and Lance is still gonna be there holding down the fort. He has an amazing ability to find a funny story just when you need it, or find the silver lining in a dark cloud. He is quite inquisitive and has a wide variety of interest. Cable Geek is unbelievably loyal and most important to our customers, honest and ethical.

This is a really cool technology. I will link you here in case you don’t know about this: http://maps.google.com/help/maps/streetview/index.html

You can go to street view and see a real picture of a neighborhood. Imagine how helpful this would be if for example you were moving from Alabama to Seattle and wanted to know what the neighborhood the real estate agent was recommending? Although it might a cramp in my personal business www.nwconcierge.com where I have done house scouting for clients.

But a warning to everyone in the blogosphere-be aware when the Google car comes by taking pictures. Be aware of what you are doing and wearing and if you look fat in those shorts. The Google car caught me at the worst possible moment. Story as follows.

Mr. Connectzone calls

That’s me, it’s really kind of more of a personality type than a name. My business card says my title is “Mission Control” that’s an upgrade from what my title used to be which was “does everything that no one else knows how to do or is unwilling to do”. Remember the movie Apollo 13? Ed Harris portrayed Gene Kranz as NASA Flight Director? He makes a couple really strong statements that describe what I do all day. The first is “Failure is not an option”. The second is as Apollo 13 is re-entering the atmosphere with everyone at NASA predicting disaster and Ed Harris puts on his white vest and says “Gentlemen, I believe this is going to be our finest hour”. I have been known to drag salespeople kicking and screaming into new software and routines. I am the one that pushes people of their comfort zone cliff. I am

Is the most recent addition to the www.connectzone.com team. Since he is kind of new-I don’t know him inside and out like I do the rest of the crew. Here is what I do know: he has got to be one of the most cheerful employees I have ever had, surely he most have bad days like the rest of us-but it never shows-not even a little bit, he is willing to do any task assigned and I mean anything. Aaron will go help on a cabling install, he will crop photos for our website, he is always on time and extraordinarily polite and that quality is really hard to find in the “X” generation. Now I will tell you a secret. Aaron is a type A perfectionist about everything. I feel bad for him; being an obsessive compulsive perfectionist myself I know it is really burdensome. As his employer on the other hand it works out really well for me.

One of the unique things Connectzone.com can offer that many of our competitors can’t is custom cables. We make them fast, we make them to spec, we guarantee them and Cable Stud (known as Ed to his Mother) oversees the whole process. If it isn’t built right-it doesn’t get past him. Period.

Ed and his co-workers also manage our warehouse stock and believe me when I tell ya-they know if anything is out of place. As a matter of fact our entire warehouse crew is very intolerant of disorder. Speaking of which you should see how clean and polished they keep their cars!

If you meet him, you can call him Cable Stud or Ed but if you call him Edward-trust me he won’t answer to it. [email protected]. Lastly-in the event you want to know what we look like in real life visit our company facebook page Connectzone. If you do, don’t ask me who “Cable

PZ is another one of our amazing employees. Remember in the networking blog entry I told you about hidden skill sets? Well here is an example of what I was talking about; this guy can take amazing pictures of little teeny tiny connectors with a very complicated digital camera so we can display them on our website. He and some other employees made videos of how assemble our new line of data cabinets at www.connectzone.com. I am told by other employees he knows how to write html code (whatever that is).

His formal job is as our incoming and outgoing transport guru and he does a superior job. He is astonishingly detailed-I can ask him for a copy of a signed packing slip for will call from 3 years ago and he knows right where it is. He seemed pretty shy when he first came to work with us but overtime has revealed a really fun personality and is a loyal, dedicated employee.

He has been in the Wire & Cable industry since he was 14 years old running an old Eubanks automated wire stripping machine for his father, in his grandfathers garage; getting paid $0.50 for every 5,000 wires he stripped. The job was easier than is sounds as he basically sat & watched the machine in case there was a problem. That was in 1976 a lot has changed in the industry since then. Dann is our fearless leader here at Connectzone.com. He is also the idea and corporate direction guy. And he knows a little bit about cabling and connectivity. Daniel Oberholtzer Daniel Oberholtzer

You would spot her instantly in our office. Behind every successful leader-there is a Jemma sweeping up the consequences of genius. Our office has two Jemma’s. I am Jemma one-not because I am better than Jemma Jr. but because I was here first and I coined the name. It came out of a movie called “A Good Year”. It’s a great movie starring Russell Crowe and has something for men and women-so boys don’t be afraid to rent it because it’s a chick flick. If you have seen the movie-you will understand the meaning of being a Jemma.

A Jemma is essential to every executive and if you don’t have one-I recommend you get one and do it with some urgency! You see Jemma is the office Jedhi Master she is also a Japanese Ninja combined with Master Po and a couple of encyclopedias. If Jemma were a race car she would have the capacity to travel at the speed of sound, in all wheel drive and have a shift on the fly feature.

Last summer a terrible thing happened at Connectzone.com. A truly vicious horrible thing happened. A catastrophic, mind bending, corporate wide devastating event. An employee opened an email. Opening an email shouldn’t be dangerous…..

It made sense-it was from UPS. We have daily pickup and delivery from UPS-they email us all the time so why not open it. Guess what? It wasn’t from UPS, that email came from the devil, not “a devil” but from “THE DEVIL”. Yes, it was from Lucifer also known as Satan, Angel of the bottomless pit, Antichrist and The Prince of Darkness. Here is what the attachment in that email really was: http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/ups.asp

Of course once you open the email you gasp and realize you just shot your computer in the head and are

Simple, everyone who wants improved transmission performance and extension of the available bandwidth. Cat 5E while much superior to Cat4 & Cat3, is old news. Cat 5E has inferior immunity from external noise. What that means to you is Cat 6 with have more robust reliability and SPEED. Of course that’s only important if you want to fly around the internet and run your internal network at lightning speed without losing data and having to re-transmit. (Insert visual of the Comcast turtle here) Cat 6 is used to carry Ethernet 10Base-T, 100Base-TX, and 1000Base-T (Gigabit Ethernet) connections. Cat 6 cable is backed with more stringent specifications for crosstalk and system noise than earlier cabling standards. Some Installers will tell you that Cat 6 is more difficult to install, which is probably true-but only by a little bit. That’s because the conductors are twisted more tightly which makes them more difficult to split apart. But a little prudence