Right place, right time

We've been trying to figure out a phone problem in the office for about a month now. Occasionally, someone will call into the office and we can hear them, but they can't hear us. We call it "the one way audio problem." Network Admin has been working with the phone vendor to try to figure out the problem. WireShark and other cool tools have been unveiled to track all the traffic from the phone server back and forth to the phones. The problem doesn't happen consistently, so it's a little hard to have the "sniffer" going at the right place at the right time.

Praise God for today! Tony's phone had hiccupped a time or two, so I called him to tell him to restart his phone so he wouldn't have any weird phone problems. Except I couldn't hear him when he answered. So I IM'ed him. But he could hear me.

"Uh, Network Admin?" I hollered over the cubical wall. "I think we have a one-way audio in process!"

Network Admin was estatic! Tony stayed on the line with each other while the sniffer was set up. I talked. Tony IM'ed. Then we hung up and I called him again. Miracle of miracles (seriously)- the same problem happened again! 20 minutes and three more phone calls later, Tony and I finally hung up and Network Admin was jumping out of his skin with excitement.

"I'm going to go give Tony a bear hug!"

Praise God for answered prayers! Now we just gotta get this figured out!

Oh... and it was really weird being on the phone with Tony and not being able to hear him. We both had our phone headsets on and were working on other projects while Network Admin was testing. My headset was silent, but Tony could hear everything -- my keyboard, my exclamations, the helpdesk visitors, my sighs, my laughter. Then he would IM me and I would laugh. or groan. He heard that too. Happy Six Month Birthday, Ava!