SIP and Sockeye

One of the great things about being SIP Maven for Junction Networks is that the company allows a certain amount of "flex time." As long as you're thinking about SIP (and coming up with clever blog posts) you can occasionally sneak away from work a little early and put in some creative time doing other things. Such as salmon fishing. I happen to live in some of the best salmon fishing waters in the world - British Columbia. It's also home to some of the more creative SIP companies; both Polycom and Aastra have development and research centers here. We're big fans of both Polycom and Aastra. (Have you seen our current Polycom boot server promotion?) I digress. I recently took some flex time and went out in a 19 foot fishing boat with my friends Matthias and David. As we motored to our preferred fishing spot a couple of miles off shore, the conversation turned, as it always does, to our broadband internet provider. Matthias and David were complaining about not being able to send any emails for three days. Shaw Cable's outbound mail proxies had failed and anyone trying to send mail using them was having a very bad time. All my private domain email hosting is provided by Google's Gmail. I'm using the same broadband internet provider but wasn't having any problems sending or receiving email. We got to our "prized" spot and started trolling using a downrigger in about 80 foot of water. We caught a few small Ling cod, some undersized black cod, and rock-fish, all thrown back. Just as the sun begins to set (prime salmon feeding time)… Matthias gets a call back from Shaw tech support on his iPhone. He's desperate to get information on how to send email (he's a work-from-home graphics designer; email is his business lifeblood). David is also listening in to try and figure out how he can start sending email again (he's had to wait for over an hour to speak to someone from Shaw tech support...not like calling OnSIP tech support, where your call is answered immediately). As luck will have it, I get a strike. My buddies are too busy trying to get their email working. This one is up to me. I can tell it's a salmon on the end of the line by the way he pulls away. I can't let him get any slack line or I'll loose him. I let him run whenever he wants (I'm using 15lb line) and reel him in when he gets tired. When I get him to the surface, he sees the boat and makes a run for it. This is fun. I also have a seal swimming close by hoping to catch a salmon supper from me. Just as I'm needing some help getting my salmon on the boat, Shaw Cable drops the call and Matthias and David pay attention to what really matters. We net the fish and dispatch him with a sharp wrap to the head from the trusty billy club. I've landed an 18lb Sockeye (or spring salmon) about 3 feet long. The moral of this story is to always use a competent provider for email and all hosted services (and make sure the support line for any service you use answers the phone as quickly as the techs at OnSIP do!) The second moral of the story - the only good planking is a cedar plank and a side of sockeye on my grill. More of this: Less of this: