Many thanks to Pete Kruckenberg for helping me to get started and for inspiring me to do this.

My occupation is building and operating large Wide Area Networks. I've been doing that since 1989 while working for Intermountain Health Care (IHC) in Salt Lake City.

Prior to IHC I worked for ITT Busiiness Communications (originally TerryPhone based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.) I got my start in 1975 in the Salt Lake City Branch.

The orginal promise was that we would only work on paging systems and not get into the more complicated key systems. That lasted for about a month before we installed a 512 KSU (the style with punch down blocks in the cabinet and 400e line cards.)

That was a good time and I learned a lot.

I lived through and ultimately survived divestiture. My travels at ITT took me regularly to Los Angeles and San Diego to install a variety of phone systems. These trips were usually six to eight weeks in the early spring.

After a few years I moved to Buffalo, NY to be the service manager for the ITT office. That was in 1982. My time there served as a good learning experience. Buffalo was a small branch with about 322 customers when I arrived. In 1985 I moved to Milwaukee with ITT and ran the service organization. That was a much bigger operation, about 1500 customers, and the pressure was intense.

1986 brought an end to the ITT branch in Milwaukee and I returned to Salt Lake City. Times were pretty tough for the next 2 years until I finally went to work for IHC.

I spent 10+ years at IHC and learned some things about installing and running Wide Area Networks.

Presently I'm with the Utah Education Network. It is a state funded agency running a complicated bunch of networks.

I'm interested in fly fishing, golf, hiking and camping. My travels take me every year to Idaho to get away from crowds and relax in some beautiful settings.

I feel like a stranger just moving in to a new neighborhood. I look forward to getting to make new friends and share ideas. Until then it will feel pretty awkward for me........ Jim
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