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

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Fri, 19 Jul 2002, Dave McGuire wrote:

>   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.

"Good old days"?  I did this in Februrary. :(  Out here in bubbaville,
POTS are about all you can get without waiting forever for the local telco
to provision something as complicated as a T1 or PRI (the last one I
ordered took about 2 months).

And let me just say that it's -FUCKING ANNOYING- when $dumbassPHB hands
out the new dialup number while you're wiring it (as in: he email-blasts
the number out while I'm on the road to do the installation).  Dammit, but
it's hard to punch down and tone-test phone lines when some of them are
ringing and shocking the hell out of you, and some of them are dead for no
apparent reason.

Oh, and no, it wasn't a simple matter of just unplugging the 25-pair
connector from the demarc.  Verizon brought all fucking 48 lines in
separately.

> 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.

I just put a paper-tape label on each pair, with the circuit ID (and
channel ID[1], where appropriate).

[1] Yes, this implies exactly what it sounds like.  We did that because of
    "necessity of costs[2]".  I am ashamed.
[2] $CEO bought $bignum dollars' worth of ancient useless kit on ePay.

-- 
Jonathan Patschke
  "gnu: we aim to fuck up everything with the potential to not suck"
                                                   --alex j avriette