From britta@britta.com Tue Jun 27 19:27:12 2000 Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2000 13:24:25 -0700 (PDT) From: Britta Peterson To: noc-staff@noc.icg.net, charlie_sigars@icgcomm.com Cc: Louis Lee , Jason Newquist , Kael Loftus , Ralph Pearson , Louis Lin , Faye Kong , Maria Silva , Alvin Fuentes , Catherine Kress , Clay Fiske , Colin Paddock , Edwin Wong , Horace Crump , James Yeom , Jerry Gomez , John Pignata , Lauren Malek , Nicole Carlson , Noah Leaman , Ray Laxamana , Shastan Shannon , Tanya McCaskey , Rob Donoghue , Mark Garma , Morgan Collins Subject: setting "rumors" straight... Yes, it is official as of today, June 27th, 2000: After what seems like forever, I am gone from the NOC. I have seen many incarnations of the NOC, from the Netcom days on the ground floor of Tisch, when I would brave walking from the windowless AE "batcave" through the NOC cubes where Ralph had the amulet of connectivity on his chair while he sat there in his surgical scrubs, and Mark Swartz was using "multibuh" on the Godzilla sample...very scary! ...to when we moved upstairs, and Louis Lin on grave shift would be able to make his laser pointer reflect from window to window across the room, with many nerf missiles flying inbetween knx-tn-s0 and lap-ca-s1 bouncing incessantly (I got those circuits redesigned!)...being on grave when Kael was swing supervisor and nagging him on the hour every hour after 3am: "Kael, are you still here? (sheepish & sounding guilty) Yeees."...coming back from my British hiatus and getting the coveted day shift...with Noah's beanie-baby horsie he found while walking to work, making its rounds to sit on top of whatever workstation Mikey would sit at... ...to when we moved to Race St. into a "real" NOC, and we all wanted to make a lighted DEFCON sign like NORAD in WarGames...then the mass exodus of the millenium when the last of my old friends bailed...then in the crucible that was to follow, forging great new friendships with all the new NOClings...one of my best shifts was a Sunday with only JohnP and me, taking outages & tickets as smoothly as it should always be in a teamwork situation...then presenting our concerns to Jim O'Brien and my amazement at someone at ICG actually following through and helping us...I actually turned down an external offer at that time since things looked to be on the upswing... ...to the current situation in which the saddest fact is that I'm not really sad to leave...Yes, I was offered a position outside of NOC so I would stay, but I could not take it in good conscience, since I would have had to stay and watch NOC be dismantled piece by piece. That is very painful to watch happen to a department where I have invested so much time and effort to keep it together. I have not been opposed to NOC needing to change with the change in products, and up until recently I had been trying to ease the transition for everyone around me, but there comes a point where fighting the good fight becomes futile, once it feels like all you're doing is pounding your head against a brick wall...exactly how I felt when talking to the current management above our NOC level of management about what I thought was wrong about their current tactics. So, I am off to Equinix, where many old-time ex-Netcom NOClings have also gone. The overall environment at my new company is infinitely better and more nurturing. Not only that, but the CTO & co-founder here has the ICG Quality poster up in his cube AND the JPEG as his desktop image! He enjoys the irony immensely, even though he never worked at ICG himself. For the few of who are left who are not consultants, I echo Ralph's comments when he left: if you can put up with the current situation and take advantages of the opportunities, then go right ahead...but if you can't, there's no reason for you to stay either. Our skills are too marketable in this valley to stay somewhere you don't want to be. If you think you can stay and make a difference, then more power to you. E-mail me if you'd like...I'd pass on the NOC Lore that I have, except that there is no one left who can relate to that Lore...with my leaving, I think the position of Keeper of the NOC Lore is officially defunct. Good luck to all of you...and good-bye Netcom/ICG Netcom/PST/Netahead/ICG Communications, Inc. Britta NOCling from Dec 6th, 1996 to June 19th, 1997, and Jan 18th, 1998 to June 27th, 2000 Remember me thusly: http://www.britta.com/noc/britta/wrath.jpg ------------------------- Britta Blvd is located at http://www.britta.com