Looking back at 2018
With respect to work…
I switched the workplace from Srivilliputhur to Madurai, from BSNL broadband to Airtel broadband, from ADSL to VDSL. I have had a lot of downtimes with BSNL last year. Fortunately, I had JioFi, as a backup, at that time (I was one of the early adapters of Jio 4g in general). However, as more users joined Jio 4g network, the overall speed reduced after each passing month. I used Airtel around 10 years ago (when Airtel had only ADSL), when I was in Madurai. Never had any issue with Airtel.
I still go home (to Srivilliputhur), mainly on weekends, primarily for trekking on Saturdays. Srivilliputhur has one of the best places for trekking and it allows us to be closer with the nature, that in turn helps me to sharpen my saw at work. Trekking is allowed only on weekends. So, I still use BSNL broadband at home, along with JioFi as a backup. At work, I solely rely on Airtel broadband for now. However, I might opt for ACT Fibernet at any time in the near future. The main caveat with ACT Fibernet is that they only offer shared public IP and they use double-NAT. Their network isn’t reliable in general, either. The packets are lost at random. Their customer support isn’t as good as Airtel’s, to solve any technical issues. So, I might use it only for heavy downloading and uploading, not for series work.
Apart from the change in workplace, I bought the following items to improve my workflow…
Mikrotik router/s: I bought two hAP ac2, one for work and another for home. In general, Mikrotik products are hidden gems. They offer enterprise grade hardware (and software) at a nominal rate. I already use the work router as a VPN server to connect to it whenever I am away from work. I plan to use both routers as load balancers with automatic failover. If you’d like to know more details on how to achieve this, look forward to more detailed info at my tiny web page blog.
Jabra Elite 65t: To speak with more clarity when on call with clients. It has 4 mics, btw.
BenQ GW2480 monitor: Initially, I bought it to have it for the dual-monitor setup. But, it ended-up on its own desk and computer at home.
Raspberry Pi: I bought Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ (with NoIP camera), mainly to remove ads from my network using home based pi-hole.net server. I already use pi-hole for BSNL. With BSNL, it is easy to filter the IP range. With Airtel, the range was widespread. So, I quickly turned to Raspberry Pi for help. It works well as a simple pi-hole.net server.
Looking forward to 2019
My wishlist or goals for 2019 are…
- Writing regular blog posts, at least once per month.
- Sharing more of my thoughts and tips through social media.
Nothing more for now. I’d like to keep it simple so that they could be accountable when I look back at my goals at the end of the year.