Marshall Sutherland

Tue, 31 Aug 2021 12:53:55 -0400 last edited: Wed, 08 Sep 2021 17:01:21 -0400

dwatney@hub.farthinghalearms.com

While we aren't seeing much in the way of shortages in our personal lives right now, at work we have months-long waits to get WiFi access points for the new office and we've been warned that there is a shortage of fiber optic cable.

work

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Wed, 08 Sep 2021 17:01:10 -0400

Marshall Sutherland

dwatney@hub.farthinghalearms.com

I just found out that some of the network equipment for the new office has a lead time of 30 weeks!!! Given that we are supposed to be moved in by January, there is going to be some guerrilla networking going on and a rebuild of the network once everything arrives.

Wed, 08 Sep 2021 19:10:18 -0400

Cyborg 2-A ✅

wago@libertious.com

Might need to alter the plan. That's quite a long lead time !

Wed, 08 Sep 2021 19:14:46 -0400

Marshall Sutherland

dwatney@hub.farthinghalearms.com

Fortunately, we don't expect many people to be working in the office. I don't know how many people are working in the current office now that it is reopened. The new office is only large enough for about 1/4 of the local employees to be there at a time.

Thu, 09 Sep 2021 12:34:35 -0400

Marshall Sutherland

dwatney@hub.farthinghalearms.com

This morning, I learned that there is a 4-month lead time for the Lenovo laptop models we standardized on. Fortunately, this happened after we on-boarded 150-160 employees in recent months, so our need for more should be greatly reduced.

These are manufacturer shortages, not shortages at particular dealers.

Thu, 09 Sep 2021 14:07:45 -0400

Cyborg 2-A ✅

wago@libertious.com

AFAIK all laptops are manufactured by thtee companies in China, no matter if Dell, Lenovo, HP, etc. So it probably is an issue for all companies. I read there are like 50 container ships stuck off the california coast with nowhere to dock and it's building up. As i understand It used to cost like 7k for freight on a container (which is basically a semi truck) but now up to 30k if you can find somewhere to unload.

Fri, 10 Sep 2021 19:03:42 -0400

Marshall Sutherland

dwatney@hub.farthinghalearms.com

I found out today that we have 20 temp employees coming on soon for light-up season (when heat-only gas customers turn their gas back on). Since we can't get laptops, they will be getting micro desktops. And I will soon be setting up some Azure Virtual Desktop stuff for experimentation. We currently have that set up at Infinite Energy so that employees who have transferred to Gas South can remote into an IE computer to do things they still do on the IE side. I may also be experimenting with Windows 365, which looks like it might do the same thing, but without us worrying about anything on the back end (with AVD, we still manage the host VMs).

Fri, 10 Sep 2021 20:31:39 -0400

Cyborg 2-A ✅

wago@libertious.com

FYI A 10" tablet running android with a bluetooth keyboard is 1/2 the price of a chromebook. You can run Office 365 on it, also remote desktop/ RDP