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Searching for a Satellite Pager?
mcolgin asks: "I need a satellite pager! Why? I own a dot-com and as the only technical person responsible for the 7 servers needed to run the site and it's automated delivery systems, I've got to find out about any problems, before my customers/suppliers do; no matter where I am, especially when I'm: camping in Eastern-Washington; back-country skiing in Whistler; or driving down to Oregon for Mother's Day. I've tried every type of cellphone and pager I can find, but nothing gets a message to me once I get out of populated areas and away from freeways. So, I started looking into Satellite pagers; but I swear, I can't find anything in the local Seattle, WA area and only a couple listings online from Google searches. This has got to be a problem that the Slashdot community has run into, before. Any suggestions?"
I mean, it's a satellite pager! Isn't the idea that it works anywhere? A Google search for satellite pagers turns up plenty.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Hire a lackey. Find a guy/gal down at your local LUG. Seattle has lots of underemployed, overqualified geeks at the moment. Show him the ropes.
Sure, he (please substitute she if appropriate) won't know how to fix everything. But he will call your customers to let them know a technical person *is* on site, ring your cell incessantly till you pick up, put your pager on the wardialer.. And for simple stuff, IE, service didn't come up on restart, or UPS warning some of the batteries just went south, you just saved yourself a trip back to Seattle.
.sig: Now legally binding!
Any when you get your page saying all your servers are down, what exactly will you do then hundreds of miles away from the NOC?
"When they invent bitch slaps that can go through a monitor you better f'ing duck" --deft (253558)
Erm, either your site isnt really so critical you can drop everything and head from the woods to fix it.. or you can pay a PFY to do it for you? btw - i liked the combination of http://www.digitalcandle.com/asterisk.html and http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-users/2 004-January/032521.html
Brain(s): 0.0% user, 1.3% system, 0.1% nice, 98.6% idle
He does run a spamming farm, as far as I can tell. Here's the site in his info:
http://www.digitalcandle.com/
So mostly search engine spam.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
One of the spaceflightnow.com links above says...
A total of 88 satellites were launched beginning in May 1997, but several malfunctioned after arriving in orbit.
Lockheed Martin Missiles & Space built the satellite platforms and said the craft would operate up to eight years. The Iridium constellation is divided into six groups of satellites circling 421 miles above Earth.
So... 1997 + 8 years = 2005.
Are they replacing satellites that have reached EOL ?
This msg is brought to you by the letter 'W'.. for Worthless Wuss
You could do it with packet and a tower in your back yard and a few hundred dollars initial investment in gear.
1. Get your license.
2. Throw up a tower.
3. Get a pII 300 for a packet box. plug it into the network. Run nagios. There's some linux scripts for getting nagios to talk to *nearly_any* software. Such as aprs. using X.25 or similar.
4. Get a laptop for your car and an HF antenna + mobile 100w rig.
5. Have it send out automated heartbeats every ten minutes w/callsign. And warnings when it's worse.
6. Have lappy pump juice into a claxon or similar, mounted on your car under the hood.
Good for a few hundred miles.
Considering my mom talked with people around the world with 100 watrs all the time using PSK31 (about IM chat speed text data transfer.)
You could do better with directional antrenna.
-=fshalor
Ok, I would definately look into Iridium. But as a note to Exstatica, I can tell you aren't from the Washington Area. When I go from Seattle to Pullman to go back to school I usually spend 3/4 of that 5 hour drive out of cell range. When I go backpacking up in the cascades, usually you're out of cell range. I could do a speil on radio theory and talk about what the terrian is like in the Cascades, but it is more easily said that Cell coverage will never be 100%.
As for not being able to do anything, if he gets a page though he can alter whatever he's doing to start getting the problem fixed. Such as if he's in the back country, he can find the quickest route out. If he's on Hwy 26 in the middle of nowhere in Eastern Washington, he can turn around, and he'll be back in Seattle in 5 hours max. I have done it in 4, but I was driving at night with no traffic. Bottom line though, if you have no clue somethings wrong, how can you react to fix it. If you know somethings wrong and that you will be needed you can get to a place to help. If you dont know that your presence is need, and you keep taking your time in the mountains, it compounds the problem. It isn't as much as he wouldn't be able to call anyone, as it is, he can immeadiately move and react so he can be in contact.
And I hear ya man, it drives me nuts going through eastern Washington without reception. I was just lucky my accident occured where there was cell reception. And that was cause I was passing through a town on the highway. Been another 2 miles earlier, I would have had to wait even longer, and most likely I wouldn't be able to kiss my girlfriend goodnight anymore. So believe me, there is no such thing as 100% cell coverage. For an idea of where this was, it was about 30 minutes south of Spokane. So not overly far from a "urban" area.
So I wouldn't say, well I've never been out of communication for that long, so how can you be? If you live in a highly urban area you wont be, you go someplace for a small vacation, you can easily be out of coverage.
My 2 cents on the reason for a Sat. pager or phone.
-PB_TPU_40 The trick to flying is to throw yourself at the ground and miss.