Brought to you by the Xliney
Lineman - PMG / Telecom / Telstra workers who constructed and maintained the external plant network, commonly referred to Lineys.
1978 I started my career with Telecom Australia as a Lineman, went on to become a LineServiceman, from there moved into administration, then into estimating and design. I had some fun, met some really great people who shared their knowledge and skills and helped make Telstra what it is today.....sadly some of them are no longer around.
2 engineers- James Scott and John Atherton got me interested in computers and computing and pointed out how this was the way of the future, of course I wasn't convinced but they persevered anyway and I came to believe they were right.
APCAMS - Automatic Pressurised CAble Monitoring System was where I cut my teeth on 8086 machines like the Kaypro luggable, 286 NEC's, MSDOS, Edlin, etc. and Jim Scott's batch files...
1993 I was part of the design team for the first 600mhz Pay TV system in this country and had a great time amongst the frenzy of getting not only a new product but a new technology (for us) out to the customers, the building and commissioning of the 600mhz hybrid fibre / coax system was a remarkable achievement at the time, given the extraordinary number of dwellings to pass in a short time frame. As always great people made it a less onerous task.
1995 I moved from Pay TV Design to Information Technology - Network Services providing LAN/WAN support to internal Telstra staff (thanks to Gerry Allardice).
2000 I am known as the (e)XLiney.
2001 back with APCAMS Data & Support to web enable most of the APCAMS processes.
August 2005 and there is now a National CPAS Monitoring Centre in Sydney. All alarms are now processed in Sydney, 1 x server 2003, 5xWindows 2000 boxes and 1xLinux box make up the network. Software programming by Ian Beadle of Viablesoft.
July 2008 and another milestone with Jim Capner and Alan Olden leaving the company, both senior managers with a wealth of experience and commonsense, the company's loss.
August 2008, exit Telstra and embark on a new career, working at Woolworths Head Office, then out to the Sydney Distribution centre. A large warehouse with automated picking systems, HiBay cranes, AOS, Swisslog, VoCollect, RF, VMU. 2 x support staff looking after a mass of gear, everything from the patch panel to the servers, desktop support, MFD's we do it all !. never boring
February 2013, working as a contractor for RRT on a cable recovery project for Telstra. Recovering old unused copper cables.
2013-2015, working as an IT contractor rolling out Windows for a big bank.
2016, working in a NSW High School with over 1700 pupils as a general assistant, part of a 2 man maintenance team. We do it all !!
2018, still doing school maintenance work but at a smaller specialised school - SEWS.
2022/23-, retired in Qld and looking for a new challenge/s
This site still under construction