County forgets to include cabling when building new jail

A new justice center is being built in Houston County, Minnesota without the cabling necessary for in-building wireless communication. According to reporting from the Spring Grove Herald, county commissioners railed against the consultant who apparently forgot to include an in-building distributed antenna system (DAS) in the construction plan. In a plight that is too familiar to many in the cabling industry, the system was tacked onto the contract at the last minute but rejected.

The $101,247 bid from Cellular Specialties Inc. was met with scorn from some of the commissioners. As The Herald's writer Craig Moorhead noted, Houston County Commission Chairman Jack Miller said, "We seem to be spending money on every whim and want, and enough is enough. There is a cheaper way to communicate when you're in that building." Smith suggested the use of handheld walkie-talkie style communication.

It sounds like Miller's biggest beef is with the consultant who overlooked the DAS: "We're paying half a million dollars, practically, to a consultant, and at the last minute we come up with this ..." he is quoted as saying.

Another commissioner's comments make me think that someday we'll hear about the $350,000 brownfield DAS installation at the Houston County, Minnesota Justice Center. "It wasn't budgeted," said commissioner Tom Bjerke. "If we delay this, we could always put it in later."

Or maybe not. After all, there are far more economical options than an in-building distributed antenna system.

Not to say I told you so, but ...

Remember that rant I went on about how a "just-for-fun" contest, looking for the biggest cabling mess around, could really be a setup for a movement to rid the world of as many cables as possible? If you don't remember it, or just can't wait to read it again, here it is.

Well, today I found a blog post from Cisco Systems' J Metz, a product manager for FCoE. The post's title: FCoE Cabling - Before and After. Take a look.

Crazy Cabling Contest more than it appears?

First Black Box launched a makeover contest for messy racks and telecommunications rooms, the winner of which will receive $20k in equipment and installation services. That contest appears to be going well. Last I heard there were 100 or so entries. Black Box has determined the five finalists and anyone can vote to decide the winner.

Today I learned about another, similar contest sponsored by none other than Cisco Systems. It's called the Crazy Cabling Contest (go ahead and click to find out all about it). Like Black Box, Cisco is looking for photos of the worst abominations of telecom rooms. "Send us a photo of your data center in all its crazy, twisty and windy glory and you could win big!" they say. The top three photos, as judged by popular vote, each will win a Flip Mino HD 120 camera. The top winner will also receive a $200 Amazon gift card with second- and third-place entries receiving $100 and $50 Amazon gift cards, respectively.

So if you've already missed out on Black Box's $20,000 prize package, you still have a chance to win something.

In its promotion of the Crazy Cabling Contest, Cisco says it doesn't plan to disclose the name of anyone submitting a photo, nor the location at which the photo was taken. "This is strictly for fun," they say. OK but, well ... it's not that I don't completely believe them when they say it's only for fun. It's just that, I maybe kind of don't completely believe them. I read the contest's official rules. OK, maybe not all five pages of them, but I read until I found what I was looking for. Basically, once you submit a photo for this contest, they can do anything they want with it. Here's how they officially say that.

By Submitting Photo(s), Participant irrevocably grants Sponsor and its affiliates, legal representatives, assigns, agents and licensees, the unconditional, irrevocable and perpetual right and permission, royalty-free, to reproduce, encode, store, copy, transmit, publish, post, broadcast, display, publicly perform, adapt, exhibit and/or otherwise use or reuse (without limitation as to when or to the number of times used), for any purpose, the Participant's Photo(s) and ideas and materials contained therein ...

It goes on much longer than that. And it all sounds like pretty run-of-the-mill legal stuff. I'm sure it is. But am I the only one who will not be surprised if and when a Cisco campaign disparages cables as cumbersome and a necessary evil, using one or more of these contest photos as evidence? Further, I suspect that such a campaign would only be created to promote a technology solution that allows you to rid your network of those dreaded cables, making them an unnecessary evil.

Remember IBM's "Out With Cables, In With Blades" advertising campaign, which essentially depicted the essence of our industry as a menace to data networking? When I would see that commercial during a National Football League game, for example, I'd wonder what kind of an impression it made on the millions of NFL fans who don't know anything about cabling.

And remember the word "adapt" from that legal disclaimer? Photos of cabling messes could be altered to look even worse than they really are. Imagine such a commercial from Cisco airing during a Green Bay-Chicago game in the fall.

Almost makes me want the lockout to happen. Almost.