Jimmy's Blog-o-Sense

Over the last couple or three years, I've been able to pretty much live my dream, not stuck behind a desk wondering why nothing is moving, and as I'm sat here in another hotel conference room doing another corporate job, I got thinking about what I've done, where I've been, and how blessed I am, not only with this job, but also my amazing family.

About 3 years ago, the company I worked for put me and a couple of other chaps on notice that one of us wouldn't be there much longer. At first I was a little annoyed, there wasn't much communication about it other than what was being used to 'score us'. So, after mulling this over, should I stay (figured that I wouldn't be the one chosen to go), or nominate myself to get the shove? At the time I stayed, but that only lasted another 7 months.

So, while I was on redundancy notice, I was thinking about giving it in, and going freelance, doing sound / video / lighting. But the timing didn't work with those making the decisions. However, when it came to 7 months later, I found myself sans job, which was a huge relief, as I was just becoming a pain in the backside at home, lethargic, and the people I was working with were approaching being thrown out of the 2nd floor window for sheer stupidity, so probably saved me some bother with the plod, saved several broken bones, and made me a happier more delightful person to be with at home.

So, since then, I've put myself out there as a freelance sound / video (and sometimes lighting) chap to various companies around. Some have taken me on for only a couple of jobs, others have had me working in their warehouse for weeks at a time, and I've even travelled a fair bit.

Here is a quick list of the things I can remember doing…
- Corporate job for a chain in airports
- Bradford Mela rigging
- Working in the Wigwam sales warehouse, including some installation work, repairs, training
- Sound tech on the New Wine conference in Lincoln (twice now)
- Repairing camera cables for a church both in Bradford and their site in London
- Lighting for a corporate awards gig in Bristol
- Several corporate events at church when we hire the place out
- 4 excellent trips out to Nigeria to take part in the Reinhard Bonke / CfaN events, ranging from 10,000 up to 500,000 people (there are photos from these on the gallery)
- A bit of light IT work for small companies that just need a prod in the right direction
- A corporate event featuring Mike Tyson
- An outdoor event in a church car park between the Notting Hill tube station and the carnival route
- Charity dinners for Christians Against Poverty (and excellent charity helping people with debt, Michelle works there now)
- A trip to Romania to train churches out there how sound systems work (just seeing their faces turn from 'eh? whats the strange man talking about?' into 'ah, I see, that makes sense now…' is one of the best things)
- Several corporate jobs around the country for Team Spirit, from the UK-India Business council, to an Oil Company, to a Health Insurance company, an ICT company and now 3 mobiles financial folks
- A rig at the Alton Towers Hotel (and an overnight stay, those rooms are not your usual hotel rooms)
- An event at Manchester Cathedral for the Royal British Legion
- A gig at Doncaster Dome for an African church annual conference
- A job in an aircraft hanger at Luton Airport (I think my sneeze is still echoing in there)
- A school awards evening (twice now, I think)
- Some Christmas parties for several companies

Theres a few more, but I find that stuff an impressive list. In between all that, whenever I've been available I've enjoying sorting stuff out for the production team at church, serving with them on conferences, and taking information I've learnt / picked up on corporate jobs into church, and vice versa. Also, while serving at church, I've worked with some great speakers and bands (Hillsong, Hillsong United, Gungor, ALM:uk, RPM, to name a few…).

So, out of that list, which ones have stuck with me most? Well, the CfaN trips to Nigeria are a definite, just the change of scenery, and everything about the culture, the work style, and the awesome people I got to work with. That, and having a proper Christmas dinner with the CfaN team, in Nigeria, in 35C+ heat, in a container, all cooked that day, on a cooker and a half, it was awesome fun.

Also, the trip to Romania to spend a weekend training the church folks out there how to properly do sound, even with the most basic equipment. Working with a translator was a challenge, but as someone who finds public speaking difficult (you'd never have guessed, given the length of this post…), it gave me a chance to find the most appropriate words Just working through how a desk works, why it does what it does, and how speakers work, etc made a real difference to those guys, starting with the basics, and seeing their faces change as they began to understand it. I hope to go out again, but even if I never get the chance again, I know I've made a difference.

In the last 3 years, Lara has grown up, and is now in nursery, and we've selected the school we'd like her to go to. Boris the cat is still as daft as ever, and treats the house like a hotel, coming and going when he pleases. Also, Sophie is now a year old, and loving life. Having the time to spend with the girls when Michelle is at work is lovely and being able to come home from another different gig to these 3 girls and the cat makes it all worth while.

I'm going to leave this here for now, and probably end up filling stuff out in other posts...

Jimmy

Well, long time no blog, and the site has mostly felt abandoned, sorry about that, I never did manage a decent, regular blog post, and I got twittering instead. I thought I had my feed on here somewhere, must get around to fixing that...

Anyway, been busy / lazy, depending on the time Had a good holiday with the family in Belgium for the F1 in Spa, and then a few days up near the Belgian coast.

Right, on with kicking netgears ass... My brother has been trying to get some sense into the network at the church he works at, so buying a managed netgear fsm726s switch from ebay for 20quid, I said I'd give him a hand. However, this switch had an admin password set, so getting at the console, or web interface was impossible. Also, this stackable switch doesn't have a reset button, unlike the FSM726v2 I've used in the past.

So, after a bit of googling, I discovered that by rebooting the switch with the serial console attached, I should be able to reset it, which you do by hitting ESCAPE while it boots. Now, the most obvious google link told me to do this, then try some 'EmergencyPasswordReset', and then gives a broken link to some search on the netgear site. So, just blindly forging ahead, I tried entering EmergencyPasswordReset, hitting enter, and then, at the prompt (Are you Sure? (y/n)), typing y and hitting enter again. I discovered that it didn't work as advertised... cue much grumbling, and returning to google. Where I happened upon a Chinese page (thankfully, with screenshots) which showed that instead of entering 'y', you should enter 'X'... So, here's then entire process:

- Power off switch
- Connect serial console (9600 8N1)
- Start HyperTerm / Minicom
- Power on Switch
- Hit escape a few times until you get the '> ' prompt
- Enter 'EmergencyPasswordReset' (hit enter)
- At the y/n prompt, enter 'X' (capital x), hitting enter
- You'll see something about the password being disabled
- Back at the > prompt, enter 'g', hit enter
- The device will boot up, dropping you at the menu
- The password setting option is somewhere in the Security sub menu

So, thats that... but why the heck do you give a y/n prompt, and expect a capital X? Netgear, but the 'peace pipe' back down, sober up, and write something properly (I'll whinge about the GSM7212, port trunking and random reboots another time...)