Internal Communications

There's a certain smell that you just know means (a) expensive and (b) a lot of trouble. It's a sort of fried plastic smell. When it comes 10 seconds after the sky has been lit up by lightning then you just have to resign yourself to the inevitable. That was 5.30pm on 4th January 2014. Today we should finally replace the last of the damaged cables and equipment. Telephone system, underground cables, wifi access points, broadband router, structure cabling, etc. Thankfully most of the £20,000 worth of bills have been covered by our insurance company (Ecclesiastical), but there's been a great deal of disruption and time spent tracing the problems and getting quotes done and then contractors to site to do the work. The photo shows the patch panel in familiar mode of having different cables hanging out of it and the office out of action. The good side has been taking the opportunity to do some upgrades and tidying up (and yes, even proper labelling!) at the same time. With a system that has grown steadily during its 10 year life it had got a bit of a muddle. It certainly makes us appreciate all the communications when they do work properly - sending an email, browsing the internet, making a cordless phone call to a colleague somewhere else on the site. What ever did we do before we had this services?! We're planning to crack open a celebratory bottle when the job is finally finished after 341 days ...