America’s Confusing Messages, “Individual” Negligence and COVID19: 2020 In Review

Clickford, Steven M.

Typically such thoughts would be written near the time like December. But 2020 seems to be extended by several months and weeks and maybe it feels like 400 days have existed so far.

I can’t imagine what 2020 was going to be like with everything divided; from policy to the lack of getting along. It’s us-verses-them. If you agree with one’s ideas, you’re one-of-us; you like philosophical policies, then you’re one-of-those-people. In all seriousness, if you’re a right leaning person that likes a Democrat, you maybe name-called as a donkey-fucker.

It’s very apparent that many Americans are taking “mitigation” by ignoring the enemy; and ingnore advice: if their logic made sense, then this explains why there is millions of cases and over 200,000 deaths so far; beating out car accidents and annual flu combined – five times in less than 10 months!

No one can be “right”, except to what the popular views are. Everyone is like a couch, they take the last position on whoever last sat on them. Individual thinking or critical thinking has gone on the wayside. People scream at political candidates like they are a member of 1Direction. It’s all pop culture in the political world.

However Americans have showed their true colors by March. At least a large number of them have shown their intelligence is lower than a 12 year old. Before you accuse me of name-calling them; remember intelligence is the measurement of the quality and performance of ones knowledge of life; not how much they know things. (I speak from experience!)

#LowInfoVoters: Why are they not compensated well in their job? Why are they not working for a “career” so they can feel fulfilled personally? Why are they so gleeful when a single man comes up on a stage and insist that this one guy will fix all of their problems? Why are they stuck at a high school learning level, if not less than?

Of course the topic has shifted to COVID19; people thought the media was hyping this up; that the doctors were part of a “deep state”; that they wouldn’t accept the shutdowns, unless there were more deaths than vehicular crashes. So in 2018, 36,560 had died from automobile crashes; a similar number of deaths from the 2018-2019 season, but few less at 34,200. The flu season is roughly 5 months or so. In America alone, deaths related to COIVD19 have had the combined comparable stats times 5 in only 7 months! People continued to challenge it by accusing some state governments for mixing in overall flu deaths with COVID; and that can be disputed because the flu season started a bit later in the Boston area, right as concerns of COVID19 was raising flags.

America’s Lack of Sense

Prior to 2020, I would say Americans were not dumb or “stupid” but they lacked information. I would say they weren’t well versed in understanding politics, not understanding history (for sure) and we lack so far behind math and science. Millions of Americans will be voting or have already voted for President, and it’s unclear if they voted for state and local offices as well. Many do not show up in midterms, and I’ve already discussed SB2 towns and municipalities having abandoned democracies.

“Low Information People” were typically described as leftists who typically watched Dancing With The Stars and liked Barack Obama because he had a likable presentation of himself. His policies were a joke. Presidant Trump was well liked by people who had more empathy and emotion to inmate objects like “the economy” and “jobs”; and “cared about the country’s future for their children”. POTUS was also elected by Low Info Voters too, but these people were  working 80 hours a week putting food on the table and putting a roof over their heads. For one thing, why are people in America’s heartland and other red states working so hard?

There are so many issues that has to be asked to the Trump version of the #LowInfoVoters: Why are they not compensated well in their job? Why are they not working for a “career” so they can feel fulfilled personally? Why are they so gleeful when a single man comes up on a stage and insist that this one guy will fix all of their problems? Why are they stuck at a high school learning level, if not less than? Why are they so proud of an uber-level of simplicity? Writing Online With Improper Use of Capitalizations in Sentences? Why are Objects like Our Founding Fathers a proper noun? Why do they always get angry when they call into radio shows  when a left leaning politician that doesn’t even represent their own district get to them? Worse, why are these church goers not going home on Sundays and read stuff to follow up on things, reflect on themselves and think about their actions of their convictions? Are they that senseless? They get upset at the Democratic party for taking him down; why do they take such politics so personally?

Well in the last 4 years, fanboys on bordering propaganda (err public relations type of media) will say Presidant Trump has deregulated the crap of industries, double-down on declining industries, and didn’t believe in redirecting and pivoting America into  a more holistic approach to life, liberty and pursuit to happiness. America needs different types of jobs and careers to address jobs that will never return; but our presidant acts like he can turn the clock back to the 1950s and do it perfectly.

America gets history, that’s why they love to relive the 1950s. Some who have done extensive research would say that 1950s wasn’t so great.

The Care of America’s Strengths at the Price of Personal Responsibility

Translation: Americans who are refusing to adjust to “mitigate the spread” of COVID19 are doing it to “protect” the economy and jobs (the part of selflessness) but the actions of such rebel is observed as them acting rude and reckless (being selfish)

“mitigation” : the act of mitigating something or the state of being mitigated : the process or result of making something less severe, dangerous, painful, harsh, or damaging Merriam Webster’s Dictionary 

This word is recommended to be taught in upper elementary to middle school. One Google search result indicates 7th grade learning level. If Americans can’t understand this language that even a fifth grader can comprehend, what the fuck is wrong with our country? For gawd sake’s alive don’t teach the adults what “mobilization” would mean. It’s very apparent that many Americans are taking “mitigation” by ignoring the enemy; and ingnore advice: if their logic made sense, then this explains why there is millions of cases and over 200,000 deaths so far; beating out car accidents and annual flu combined – five times in less than 10 months!

Americans also have had a declining sense of self and inactions to others. The concern of COVID19 may have a lot to do with a growing trend of “anti-vaxxers” who have strongly believed a certain subset of autistic individuals born after 1998 have had a “vaccine induced” autism, as if it was some brain cancer. They believed in a correlation being the causation. As a result, they choose to not vaccinate at all costs. This caused a rise of measles 5 years ago in the midwest, but the anti vaxxers played a distractive card of “the real” issue being autism. Even recently; some infamous online talk show hosts during COVID19; the real threat is autism, not a diabiliting, and deathly disease known as COVID19. Worse is the lack of trust in the medical field of using a mask to protect others in case you have the virus; 2020 introduced us to “Karen” a stereotypical American of the GenX age group who doesn’t believe in anything in medicine, and have made asses of themselves in public that trend on social media; getting angry at Wal Mart clerks for not having a mask; and insisting their “freedoms” override “responsibilities”, that the U.S Constitution dictates both must go hand and hand to individuals. Is it safe to say that 2020 exposed the Typical Caucasian American, who never had to deal with advericities; are acting like perpetual babies; while the more resilient and oppressed people are more like quiet-adults?

America needs different types of jobs and careers to address jobs that will never return; but our presidant acts like he can turn the clock back to the 1950s and do it perfectly.

It’s these thoughts that I ask publicly make me wonder why the fuck should I be proud to be an American when the pride is all bullshit and filled of emotion and not facts? Why the fuck should I vote if everyone else is going to vote because their candidate shares the same favorite color? Why am I talking like I to Americans as if they are children?

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The Quick and Dirty Reference to Cisco Call Manager Express

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In seriousness, if you’re all wired at home, or you are interested in wiring up your home for multi line telephony or have the ability to answer calls from a number of phones or internally call people from within… I think given the consolidation and the access to them, the recommended path is to Cisco. As much as I can’t stand a lot of their technology, you do not need to need  to have everything running on Cisco to do Cisco telephony. Being frank. I have switches using Netgear, and I have some third party endpoints.

Click below for more, and jump to six different parts

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The News With Shepard Smith Begins Tonight… Predictions

Clickford, Steven M.

It was Gram’s 79th birthday last year, October 11th, a Friday fall afternoon. 3:59 pm Eastern Time. I am having a late lunch. I can hear the TV in the dining room of which Gram is watching. I hear context of self-reflection. I also hear something about contracts and leaving. I literally run to the living room and saw the abnormal closing of Shepard Smith Reports on the Fox News Channel; using my ears, I knew he was gone. Both of us looked puzzled Because our box has a DVR, I rewound back 2 minutes before to see it again. This time, we see the leadup to to Neil Cauvto who went like “wola” and was felt he was thrown under the bus. In fact when you see the last jib cam shot, you see a group of people on an Avaya phone almost like coordinating his shadowed exit. 

Ironically Emily Rooney’s show on WGBH was on tape that evening because it was the upcoming Columbus Day Weekend. Did the panel follow up and made a segment the following Friday? Nope!  Not to mention in January she made a remark confused of where he was on the channel. I said he left on the week y’all off! Brian Steltzer had a tingle in his eye when the news broke at CNN.

Nevertheless Shep’s disappearance (whether you like him or not, whether or not you like his politics or whether or not you approve of his sexuality) was a huge void missing in cable, of which I am pointing to YOU COVID19 and POTUS & Friends! The news of Shep moving to CNBC was announced in mid to late summer and promos are running on CNBC’s air this week. His show begins tonight 7:00 Eastern on CNBC.

My predictions:

  • If you wanted balance and stable coverage on COVID19, Shep is the go-to guy. If you were missing better coverage, Shep being off the air didn’t help
  • There will most likely be some business and market coverage. That 7:00 ET slot had been reserved for emergent market events; and Shep can do that either on his own or help with his new CNBC team
  • Will Shep chase the storms in studio or in the field? That may not be out of the realm of possibilities.
  • This may not occur, but CNBC is due for a massive rebrand….way overdue. Because the dark blue colors of graphics and set have gone for too long. In fact in it’s 31 years, nearly half of it has been around dark blue/black; whether it’s graphics or sets and/or both. CNBC’s history has not had many years had vibrant colors. Their current studios is roughly 17 years old, and for at least 15 years, CNBC has had a lot of dark backdrops and lighting in the largest part of the building, the newsroom. You can’t tell me that it’s growing mold and other elements of sick building syndrome, which actually what SBS stands for.

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How to Implement Cisco Call Manager Express at Home, part five

Clickford, Steven M.

Session Initiation Protocol

In 2020, as previously mentioned SIP is replacing most of the desktop phones. SIP stands for Session Initiation Protocol.  H323 or SIP is neither better or worse of standards, it only differs how the phones connect and disconnect calls. Cisco’s SCCP uses H323 standard, even though the protocol itself is proprietary. Your routers IP address handles the configuration (buttons and lines, sometimes for the user like backdrops and ring tones), the time clock (the time of day and day of the year), the signaling (the tones), and the transmission (the human conversation). SIP could do any of the four things and could be separate devices on separate networks.

The basis of the SIP “stack”/protocol/extension supports

  • Video chats
  • Audio calls (err the traditional telephony)
  • Instant Messaging (known as “texting”, “messaging” or “chat” if someone has been born after 1994
  • The basic SIP telephony stack supports essentially all standard 19 Custom Calling Features that the phone company used to provide separately, that many broadband phone companies provide for free or is included at a much lower price rate.
  • The protocol literally revolves around Caller ID. “Display Name” and “SIP Alias” is equivalent to the “station-id name” and “station-id number” in the FXO ports respectively  in the IOS configuration if you wanted to do ethical caller ID spoofing.)

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How to Implement Cisco Call Manager Express at Home, part four

Clickford, Steven M.

TFTP: (Sometimes known as the “CUCM address”)

TFTP and call management in Cisco land is the same. It’s assumed you are treating your router to just do voice, and you’re not mixing this with another network like an ASA or an AirPort Express with it’s own IP network, etc. (I am not the only one that had this inexperience.) You use SolarWinds or tftp32d to insert new files to the Cisco router; then use the tftp-server command to serve the files for the actual sets themselves. You typically don’t use the laptop/management PC’s TFTP server to have the phones get their files. Why?

TFTP and call management in Cisco land is the same.

Now depending on the files, you’re going to have to do this individually. If you have some mind in IOS, you can do in config mode, tftp-server flash:loa [first three letters of the file, then Tab] you can speed up this process. This flags the files living in the flash: directory this can be spit out to the TFTP server you have previously set up. Ensure that in config mode your tftp-server source-interface is set on the same network/subnet that the VOIP is running under.

Your going back to the telephony-service function yet again, this is where you enter in the “Loads” for your Skinny phone. Why if say it works out of the box and it registers? You may run into some bugs. My Cisco 7970 which I’ve had for years; didn’t understand the quad-lines very well, and it locked up, and sometimes would constantly reload. The firmware dates back to CME 4 years and perhaps it needed a little more up to date code so it would work better.

You type in the telephony-service prompt in config mode the following:

load 7970 [filename without the .loads, or .default]

change the model number if different from the example

There’s roughly 6 files, and it’s best you put them in the order that the other documentation has it.

The Cisco IP Phones basically phones home via TFTP and if it sees a new bootloader and firmware and checks against what it has, it should restart and attempt to upgrade.

There are catches and gotchas, ensure you have read Cisco’s documentation on upgrading, because hopping well past major versions will make the phone become a brick, or totally just ignore the new files. For an example, you can’t go to version 9 unless you have patched to 8 if the version is below 7. Understandable for IP appliances, yeah?

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How to Implement Cisco Call Manager Express at Home, part three

Clickford, Steven M.1 Comment

The Numbers Game

There are several types of telephone numbers, known as “tags” to identify the individual extensions, sets, etc.; similar to how an Internet routing path works.

ephone for [Selsius] Ethernet Phone, or known today as Cisco IP Phone (the company Cisco acquired in the late 1990s)

ephone-dn for Directory Number (easy if you came off from Nortel)

voice register pool for a SIP Phone, whether it’s a Cisco or not

voice-register-dn the number for the SIP phones or devices

SIP and Voice Registers are in a separate post. As of this writing in 2020, the CME releases prior to 9 are essentially becoming End of Life; and SIP is now becoming the only protocol Cisco will officially support, no new models since the mid 2010s uses SCCP exclusively; though CME doesn’t work well with SIP natively if you have the 7900 series with SIP firmware. Since version 11, it only handles SIP at the desktop level, SCCP only works if you still have the VG200 analog phone gateways; or the smaller FXS cards. The more recent, 7800, 8800 and 9900 models only runs on SIP protocols. In reality, SIP is much more mature (but still not the best VOIP protocol around), and the newer generations of Cisco IP Phones with the SIP stack reflect it. The 7900 was never really intended to take all the lack of benefits to SIP and not only that the very original generations the 79×0 models limited it’s use to support BLFs, the speaker was half duplex, and the audio quality was at level of a POT set, over a set that had a Skinny firmware.

Trunk mode: Key System (“Call on Line 1”)

As much as I admire the 1A2 systems, and my poor fine motor skills, I don’t want to forget history of the largest types of systems, PBX are actually a microcosm in the telephony world. If you got a 796x, this will be easy; without loosing button space for other line appearances.

In this example, this would be a dummy extension

CORE1(config)# ephone-dn 60

CORE1(ephone-dn)# number 200

CORE1(ephone-dn)# label Line 1

CORE1(ephone-dn)# name Line 1

If you have Call Waiting and you enabled Switchook flash in telephony-service, you could set this up to be a dual-line, to achieve this, to do that, all you would need to do is add  “ephone-dn 60 dual-line” to the end if you did this already, and made a mistake you will need to remove it (using “no ephone-dn 60”  as the example) and reenter it as such.

FXO Configuration (voice-port)

Now it’s time to define that FXO port to match that dummy extension. Now you’ll branch out to the trunk level and assign various commands to make this work:

CORE1(config)# voice-port 0/1/0

Which means on the Cisco 2801, it’s on router  0, slot 1, port 0 (the female jack),  similar to 01A0401 on say a large Avaya PBX.

CORE1(voice-port)# supervisory-disconnect anytone 
CORE1(voice-port)# groundstart auto-tip
CORE1(voice-port)# timeouts-interdigit 6
CORE1(voice-port)# timeouts call-disconnect 28

I use this because the Xifinity Digital Voicemail, and if no one answers by the 6th ring, it stops ringing. If you do not have this type of timeout, the router “answers” the call and rings to the command below. If you do not insert this, the phones will “ring off the hook”. In fact it concerned one of my grandmother’s doctors who just happened to call on the same day of the final cutover, and I realized I omitted it.

connection plar opx 200

This means it will connect to a Private Line Automatic Ringdown to Off Premise Extension of 200, the ephone-dn 60 for the dummy “Line 1”. Ironically OPX must think the extensions is off premise to the router’s mind.

description Comcast POTS

caller-id enable

If say you wanted only one phone to answer the call (which this would act like a PBX, where a single point of entry), you’d use the DN that is of the extension you wanted to answer, such as say 101. For the home, it’s easier to lump sets on a dummy extension in case of some network flare up that caused a phone to go down, someone unplugged a set, etc. I’m a clumsy guy, and if you had one set go down, a busy signal would generate on the other end, because no device is able to ring.

There was some issues where the phones would ring once every 10 minutes or so. Upon a google search, I found entering the following in the config mode, this helped

voice class custom-cptone Comcast

 dualtone disconnect

  frequency 480 625

ephone-dn (Extension Number)

As previously explained, the ephone-dn is for the extension. In Release 8 and higher, there is more than just an option dual-line, but an octo-line. Octo means 8 different instances of calls can come into a CME  instance without a busy signal. Though in Cisco, your call appearances are virtual and requires juggling using softkeys and no hard keys like how Avaya is known for. With SIP, you could return back to the Avaya-style as call-waiting or appearance buttons are device-centric and not phone system specific, which in a lot of ways could be easier. In fact octo-line is designed for call-parking, which will be discussed in the future.

Depending on that PVDM that’s required to anything, even if you were just playing with commands, the more instances of calls will chew up resources on the PVDM, even if you are within the limits. This is because after you assign a Cisco IP Phone, the ephone command already populates the  lines after configuring, so that means that phone will have dedicated lines literally.

The SCCP protocol can support up to 200 simultaneous calls, but that’s more for say a UCM, and given how it can’t roll over to another idle button like an Avaya; it’s an overkill; especially when it’s line specific, not phone specific. It’s better off being a dummy extension than anything else.

Setting up Cisco IP Phones

If you did the ephone-dns for all your relevant extensions; and you’re in no hurry to add BLFs, you could in theory use auto-reg-ephone in the telephony-service function, and plug in the phones one at a time, to then to match extensions to phones. But if you want to do more, one at a time maybe your only  bet

For all intensive purposes, start with one. In config mode enter the following

CORE1(config)# ephone 1
CORE1(ephone)# mac-address 0000.0000.0000
CORE1(ephone)# type 7970
CORE1(ephone)# button 1:1
CORE1(ephone)# button 3m70

In mac-address use the MAC that is on your VOIP set that you’re adding ensure it’s split up into threes and add a “.” every 4 characters in the hardware address.

For all intensive purposes, “button 1:1” means Button 1 is tied to Directory Number 1, extension 100; button “3m70” is functioning as BLF for the dummy extension of 200 that’s acting as a Key line and is monitoring the line; you can access it and it will ring when the number receives a call. And I believe you could use 0s for MAC addresses if an event you’re waiting for a new Cisco phone to ship and use it as holding till the set arrives. I know this can be done in voice-register, but didn’t verify with ephone.

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TMOT: Analysis (The History of Telephony)

Clickford, Steven M.

As part of divesting content from The Museum of Telephony, anything identified by moi has been sent back to me as being the rights holder. 

Steven M. Clickford

As I am writing this history, it’s 2020, nearly a century after the Spanish Flu; and the midst of the growth of telephony that grew around that time. Also: our country is more divided, not just red and blue, not just Republican or Democrat, not Ford vs Chevy, not Nortel vs. AT&T or Avaya Red vs. Avaya Blue. We are up against a very divided country; and allegedly the U.S. is dealing with what could become the deadliest pandemic since 1918 known as COVID19 or the novel Coronavirus from China. In the technical sense of division; from the mind of an engineer, conflict brings innovation; but from a customer, division confuses them; from a business standpoint since the 1980s, it’s all about making money and being rewarded with cash… but what do they do with it? Sit on it!

What about the middle class? Why is my Cisco phone “Made in China”? What about the people who were proud to work at Ma Bell at the repair plants? What about the Boomers and people like my gram’s age who is very sensitive to reliable telephony?

We have forgotten what made the past so great that brought us the present. Too often Americans (by choice) want to have short attention spans. Americans do not care about “the past” they by choice “want to move forward”. Today many Gen Z (the youngest generation coming to age) want to spend money on “experiences” completely opposite to the Baby Boomers of yester-generation. But like the Boomers, they want things cheap and will laugh at the price of an iPhone; but yet will whine about the “monopoly”.

The so-called “monopoly” by the technologists today is far from what it used to be. AT&T would’ve been shamed if they were hoarding cash or gave a Western Electric exec stock options, since stock options wasn’t really a “financial instrument”. The Bell System was for sure corrupt, at some parts of the company. For whatever reason some other groups felt “secure” that their phones worked, that they had “service” that they “took care” of their customer. The ones who had a grudge was people who were fixated on price, the engineer who didn’t like using a telephone, and wanted to extend the Internet, etc.

AT&T would’ve been better of breaking up the communications equipment; go into their failed attempt in computing, and then keep the all local telephone service. The company was loosing margins on their Long Lines (or long distance services) from the 70s to the Divestiture.

What the 1984-implemented Divestiture caused

  1. allowed dog-eat-dog, cut throat competition.
  2. Shareholders came first; customers, employees came second (MCI was known for cheap long distance service; the amount of customers and cash coming in resulted in a high stock price, enabling “insiders” to use MCI as a private bank to leave the company, start it up, if it succeeded or failed, they’d return back.)
  3. Local telephone service was under siege by the Telecommunications Act of 1996; ElChea0 Telephone could by law co-locate with a Baby Bell central office, and the Baby Bell had to comply!
  4. With the Telecommunications Act, this forced Baby Bells to merge and consolidate, to grow their profit margins (remember shareholder-first)
  5. Lenient laws for “innovation” = new markets, but enabling sub-par standards (such as crappier audio quality)
  6. Lenient laws to “maximize shareholder profits”, taking skilled labor (whether you like unions or not) out of a job.
  7. “High tech” companies brought today’s new economy on zero regulation, with zero corporate governance, and zero accountability, forcing customers to “trust” these “digital companies” that reinvent (err rewriting) standards/policies/goal posts to throw smaller people out of business (Baby Bells, etailers like Amazon and eBay)
  8. The consumer is more confused by whose the villain or the hero in the economy, when in reality the populous views is far from accurate (the smaller “innovative” companies are profiting like crazy while the service providers are being sucked out of cash, even though they are pocketing customer’s money too.)

The fact is, that after the breakup, the very same thing the market wanted would actually be the beginning of the end of telephony, or standardized telecommunications, the end of customer social norms, and the inmates controlling the asylum (the shareholders and corporate executives.)

I was born 3 years after Divestiture. I didn’t follow much of AT&T’s past, until a few years before the first carnation of The Museum of Telephony. The old AT&T’s reputation was tainted by popular opinions that was probably conflated facts. The Divestiture confused a bunch of customers. Post Diveisture, customers were confused. Like some techies, some looked up to IBM even if they had skeletons in their closet, mine was literally AT&T (the competitive company of course.) I literally saw Ma Bell literally fall to her death. I remember they spun off NCR when 5 years before they bought them out as National Cash Register, the same year IBM divested ROLM. I remember AT&T’s buyout of TCI, then Media One, to then sell them off to Comcast. To then see AT&T basically sell themselves out to SBC, the Baby Bell of the West Coast and Connecticut.

The AT&T after 2005 was basically a Baby Bell inheriting their mother’s name, but still operating in that dirty corporate culture that America so wanted so badly in the 1980s; that they are bitching about today.

Lastly, because of the “cutting edge”, progressive, anti “antiquated” tech mindset, the 1 year refresh cycle (remember the 3 year cycles in the Wintel/Cisco world?); as technology has evolved, there is rarely something, that is a thing, an object that unifies us. Most Millennials can’t tell a story of a item that others shared, except if you’re like me a deep techie. But for the older, non techies, that infamous plastic clad, 500-type rotary dial telephone, brings older generations with stories or “remember-that”?

For the human side of technology, the best unity was before PCs, clearly before mobile phones, and anything that was made prior to 1987, let’s just end that the year I was born was the end of unified technology that multi-generations can relate to.

For many of my audience, I’m an old heart, and don’t subscribe to IT-group-think nor do I care for today’s consumer tech. This narrative was written out of respect of the technology that long came before my existence, because I knew there was a world before I came onto this planet too!