Unsuprvised comms personell

This reminds me of a story, I need to trot out again:

The year is 1988, and I am working for an IXC in Cambridge, MA.

Due to a long, painful political battle, that we easily could have won, had the owner been less of a weasel, we had 3,600 pair of copper that needed to be re-terminated.

You see, we bought a switch in-situ - and supered ONE trunk group from the previous owner, so there was continuity of service at that location. The switch was installed without any official RJ -- the 6216 cable came off a distribution frame at Bent Street (CMBRMABE - next door), down three floors, into a street vault, up in our basement, and up one floor to OUR frame, where it terminated on 3600 black heat-coils.

Now, under MY interpretatin of the rules, because we maintained continuity of service, the facility was grandfathered - and we didn't need any jacks.

Well, the powers that be (and - this was our fault - if we had let sleeping dogs lie, none of this would happen ) decided that we needed 144 RJ-21s installed to demark the line between our switch and their switch. I put forth the argument that two panels of heat coils, one at each end, provided demarcation superior to that required by tariff, but engineerings' hands were tied - the order had come down - Make their lives terrible.

So, the Stupid Construction Project of the Decade begins -- we rent some space in the basment near the cable vault, and install 144 punch blocks with pigtails, with spaces marked out for telco to mount THEIR 144 punch blocks with RJ21X.

Fortunately, the switch was nowhere NEAR capacity, and I was able to wire up 250 pair near the middle of the count (a lot of the trunks were split by 1000s -- i.e. the transmit pair was BP 36, the receive pair was BP 1036, and the E-M pair was BP 2036 ) so we could swing trunks over without disrupting service (too much). Everything about the project had disaster written all over it.

Now, there were three cables feeding that building: a 3600 count (6216) that was "ours", a 900-count (6212) that fed Rochester Telephone, and a 1000-count (6208) that served all of the OTHER tenants in the building. So, we moved a bare minimum of service over onto new pair on the house cable, with some highly Not-Carrier-Grade jumpers of 25p run over the ceiling between our new termination closet and the closet where 6208 terminated. Which, by the way, meant that the building, until our cutover was complete, was now totally starved for pairs.

I get a call in my office from building security that a guy from Bell needs to be let into the riser room, so I come down with my key. He's carrying a cut-off saw and a work order. I greet him in a friendly manner (my *boss* might be trying to pee off the entire New England Tel infrastructure, but *I* know what side my bread is buttered on.) "Oh, so you're hear to cut the 6216 today?"

"Yea -- no .. I've got an order to cut 6212," says the phonie.

"Ummmm .. I think that's in error -- 6212 is Rotelecom - you should be chopping our old cable, 6216 -- Why don't you call the order desk and make sure."

He puts on an atbreastude, "Look, punk -- the day I take orders from some snot nose kid is the day I leave The Company." (I was 22 at the time.)

"But look!", I say, "... your order is to cut a 3600 pair cable. 6212 is only a 900 ... you really are going to cut the wrong one!"

"Kid -- my orders say `cut the 6212' and the 6212 I am going to cut". (His exact words -- I couldn't write poetry like this.)

I told him, "well - I think you're making a huge mistake, and one phone call to the station manager will keep you from making it. There's a 1MB you can feel free to use on BP 22 of that first block there -- you do what you have to do."

He starts setting up his tools, and I scurry up to my office, and call the transmission supervisor for Rotelecom - their Cambridge facility is unmanned, and warn him that Fred Flintstone is about to give him a few thousand trunks of trouble, and they should get someone on the road to Boston ASAP. (You see, RTC was much wealthier than we were, and their 900 pair cable was chock full of about 375 T1s, and a few dozen other buttorted circuits.)

My office shared a wall with their tiny facility, and I can hear the growing cacaphony of dozens and hundreds of little sonalerts beeping as carrier group after carrier group go into trouble.

I then pick up the telephone and call the station super at Bent street to tell HIM what happened.

A few minutes later, I go down to the basement, and there were three hard-hats and two suits from Bell standing around surveying the damage, and there was a lot of shouting. I walk in to hear the tail end of, "... fine -- take it to the shop steward -- get out of here, and don't come back tomorrow."

It turns out they didn't have any 900p cable lying around, so they made the splice with a chunk of 600 and a chunk of 300. There were two splice crews squeezed into the tiny space, one at each end of room, doing the fastest job I've ever seen. To this day, I'm sure, you can go to that closet and find a chunk of 900 pair cable, come to a big splice bag, then go six feet as two smaller cables, into another splice bag, and off into the distance.

I had a really pleasant conversation with the facility manager, explaining what I told the first hard-hat - especially the line about "the day I take orders .." This made the suit actually smile, "Well, it turns out by not taking orders from you, it WAS the day he left The Company."

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Computer software consists of only two components: ones and zeros, in roughly equal proportions. All that is required is to sort them into the correct order.