[rescue] I'm not an EE Q - clarification

[Skeezics Boondoggle]

On Fri, 19 Jul 2002, Dave McGuire wrote:

> On July 19, Fogg, James wrote:
> 
> > I know some crufty old electricians who check 110/220 for liveness by
> > grabbing hot and neutral in one hand and feeling for the "buzz" (if
> > you've played with A/C long enough you'll know what the buzz is). Since
> > they DID make it to old age I guess it doesn't kill you, but I WOULDN'T
> > TRY THIS AT HOME KIDDIES!!

a friend who was an oiler in the merchant marine for many years said he
learned early on to always test for a live circuit with the back of your
hand - if there's voltage there and your fingers clasp shut, you just
make a fist - you don't clamp *on* to the source of the shock and get
crispy (with a silly look on your face).

>   That reminds me of the "good old days" in the ISP world, before we
> could afford to bring them in in groups via T1s...row after row of 66
> blocks on the wall.  How do you find that line you're looking for?
> You could either spend an hour tracing it, or just call the number
> with the ever-present test phone that's mounted on the backboard, and
> lay your forearm across each 66 block in turn.

damn that's funny.  we did the same thing, usually by accident... we had
standing orders with usworst at one point for 32 new lines a week for 36
weeks... so that meant that every week one of us would trudge down to the
mpop (always hot and cramped - "but it's a dry heat!") and drag cross-
connects from the demarc (fixing the polarity problems and off-by-one
errors of the installers) to our riser cable, and then go upstairs to our
telco closet where we punched them down onto 110's in groups of 8 for the
microcom modem racks.  that plasticiser from the cross-connect wire made
your hands all waxy...

sometimes it was relaxing.  if anyone was bored/frustrated/pissed off at
something (handling 2200 new accounts a month in 1995 was no small task
and there was always something to be pissed off about :-) we could go
stand in a phone closet with this week's list and punch down some pots
lines.  kachunkachunk.  kachunk.  kachunk...

>   It will also make you "wide awake" when you find it. :)
 
we called it "getting bit by the angry crickets". :-)  it wasn't that bad
after you got used to it (or the numbness set in).  since many of our 1000+
lines were all intertwingled with other customer pairs in the building, we
were always getting zapped trying to fatfinger one of our new pairs onto
blocks that were almost fully populated... snap, crackle, pop!  those of us
who didn't swear proficiently before taking that job sounded like sailors
when they left it. :-)

ah, the "good old days".  if only those ingrateful bastards knew what we go
through to deliver their porn and spam for a lousy fifteen bucks a month...

:-)

-- skeez