Does Android 4.3 even exist?

UPDATE 12/1: After several phone calls, Tweets, and emails going back and fourth with Samsung and Sprint the update finally became available to me today on Kies. Not what I was expecting for an update that was supposed to be OTA only! Guess over the next few days I will see if the update was worth waiting over 8 days (or 10 days if you want to count the original release date)

Here is the email that I just sent to the CEO of Sprint, since his employees seem to be worthless.

I have been manually attempting to update my note 2 to android 4.3 since midnight 11/20 when it was originally released by sprint with no success. 

last night i called sprint care on the phone, and they advised me to call samsung for the update - obviously your reps were unaware that you delayed the update, this is unacceptable that your reps are not advised of changes in release dates regarding updates. 

samsung advised me to download kies and manually update to 4.3. unfortunately the update is not available to me on kies for one reason or another.

a return call to samsung and i was advised that i needed to contact my carrier, so when i called sprint care back, they WERE CLOSED!! 

so i took to twitter - and it seems each response is handled by a new person who did not take the time to read the thread and act like it is their first time learning about my struggles - and samsung had no idea that you delayed the release date!! very unacceptable!! 

i called back to sprint care today, and they give me this whole run around, one rep even told me that he has a samsung S3 running 4.2. I really dont give a fuck what kind of phone or version software your reps have or are using, i want them to resolve my issues, not talk faster than they can think. perhaps someone with fast talking and little knowledge about a product or service might make a decent salesman, but they make a terrible technical support representative. 

i was eventually advised by your reps that sprint CAN NOT PUSH THE UPDATE!!! they claim that it is samsung who needs to do that!! what a crock of horse shit! samsung delivers the update to YOU, and YOU are responsible to provide it to your customers, samsung has nothing to do with this transaction!

but just to cover all bases i contacted samsung to see what they had to say about this, and the fact remains - the update was provided to sprint, and it is sprint's responsibility to push that update to their customers. 

lets go! get this update sent out NOW! I have spent at least 10 hours over the last 3 days with phone calls, tweets, and attempting to manually update my phone OTA and with kies to no avail. at $50 per hour, that comes out to over $500 of my time that I have spent on something that should be so simple to accomplish within less than 20-30 minutes

4 door phone install + snaking wire with minimal damage to walls

BEFORE:
Everything as it existed when I arrived.
FiOS modem will be removed, and a router will be bridged in its place.

Mounted my 4 Viking RC2A devices below the rack
Wired up power jumpers.

Added jacks to connect to analog line for each device.

Mounted 2 SPA112 devices for analog lines. 

Drilled hole at an angle up in drywall to snake to the drop ceiling.

From same hole drilled out to the front of the building.

Fish stick coming thru the brick from inside.

Wire pulled thru from inside. 

As a point of reference showing how small the hole required is.

Close up of my stick fished up towards the drop ceiling. 

Loop from drop ceiling going outside, slack will be pulled back up. 

Wire in place, all that is left is a small hole,
smaller than the size of a quarter. 

Job is not complete, and additional photos may be added soon. 

This job entailed installing 4 door phones, overhead paging, configuring about 6 VoIP phones that the customer provided, as well as installing a PoE switch that the customer provided. I also will be removing the FiOS router and replacing it with an actual router. I am uncertain of if we will use the Cisco/Linksys E1550 that the customer provided, or if we will go with an E2500, or an SRP router yet. I guess it depends on how well the E1550 handles the network. 

Everything was supposed to be prewired, but of course the furthest door from the network room was not wired, and the guy who wired the door phone wiring just left everything in the drop ceilings, leaving the hard part (snaking down the walls and to the outside) for me to handle. 

Spam comments.

I have always believed in free anonymous exchange of information, thoughts, ideas and comments.

I have always kept the comments on my blogs free from needing to sign up, or jump through any hoops in order for you to come here and post a comment, and have never deleted comments unless they were blatant spam and totally unrelated to the content of the blog.

However, as of lately many of the comments that I have been getting are spam related. Some obvious, others not so much (nonsense comments that make little sense, but still provide the spammers with back links)

I will be deleting all comments that I believe to be spam. This in no way is intended to restrict anyone's free and anonymous exchange of their thoughts or comments, and I will be removing ONLY comments that are spam. So feel free to continue to comment anonymously however you feel, even if you feel the need to hurl insults, as the only thing that will be removed from the comments from here forward will be spam related comments.

More doorphones + loudringer

Seems that lately I have been doing nothing but installing doorphones for customers. I had a huge inventory of doorphones and relays that I depleted within just the last week alone. 

Two SPA112 devices.
One is for 2 separate door phones
One is for 2 analog lines added to the door phone ring group.
One RC2A - only one of the doors that got a doorphone installed has a doorlatch,
the other door is always open during business hours and did not require a relay. 

Since the analog stations were placed within the warehouse so that workers
would be made aware when someone was ringing the door phone
a loud ringer had to be added above those phones so that people could hear
from anywhere in the warehouse that someone was at the door.
The customer picked these up on their own, and I am extremely impressed
with this model. All that is required is a connection to the phone line
it is powered by the ringing voltage of the phone line it is connected to. 

More doorphones and keypads installed

Front door and inside front door get their own relay,
Share a single phone line, and activate simultaneously
Upstairs office has its own relay and own phone line,
and acts independently.

Upstairs office has a doorphone (relay in above image)
and a keypad to activate the door latch. 

Buzzing a mantrap with a single user input

I have been installing many new VoIP systems and door releases in the diamond district lately. Just about every single office within the diamond district has a mantrap at the entrance. Basically a mantrap is a set of two doors. When one door is open the second door can not be open.

Configuring multiple relays like this are not limited to mantrap applications. If both doors are permitted to be opened at the same time the magnets can be removed from the configuration, and the wire going to the magnet can go directly to the door latch. Other possibilities would be for an electronic gate, or garage door that would automatically close - timings would need to be adjusted to allow sufficient time between cycles, and should be wired into a laser to ensure that the door does not close on anything that might not clear the gate/door. 

The image shows configuration with a doorphone, but this could easily be modifiable for any relay application, such as keychain FOBs.