...I was ready to take down the "Snowventures" banner, 'cos the snow has been melting...until this morning, when the melting stopped and we picked up another inch of the stuff.
...If you have noticed I was posting a little less recently, it may be because I have been working more; after five eight-hour days of removing dead wires from the computer floor at The Skunk Works on my part, and several helpers adding at least 40 more hours of effort, it is, you guessed it, barely started. It's the Alice's Restaurant theory: the boys figured they were not gonna have to pull out any unused wiring for a long, long time. Guess what? Time's up! In related news, I am the cause of much resentful muttering. Awww, too bad.
And on that note (laaaaaaaaa!), I must depart.
I have been wondering how you made the letters so white!
ReplyDeleteOg, Og, Og.... You do only know the one way of writing in the snow; I should have expected that.
ReplyDeleteNot being equipped for the Og method, I used a stylus.
Aaaah, the joys of a leadership position...
ReplyDeleteAnd of course Roberta has a Snow Stylus! Probably a rare antique snow stylus at that!
I know thousands of ways, but only one really fun way.
ReplyDeleteWell, using a green laser pointer is kinda fun too. Slower, though.
Just tell the guys that removing the old wiring is like doing an archeological dig through their own careers.
ReplyDeleteFirst there's the old fiber, then comes the old CAT5, then the BnC, then the Token Ring. Of course, woven through all of this will be power cables, old SCSI, and maybe even serial cables from the old dumb terminal days.
Then, you can adjourn for adult beverages and reminisce about all of the old servers and projects that used all of those cables.
Ahhh, memories.
And if they continue to complain, explain that the savings on HVAC given by the larger area under the floor might fund their jobs for a couple more years.
Just tell the guys that removing the old wiring is like doing an archeological dig...
ReplyDeleteAnd when you get to the cloth-jacketed-braided-shield twisted-pair, well, you've probably dug too deep!
Silly og, she used a white china marker :-), one of her favorite implements of destruction as I recall.
ReplyDeleteWhen you get to the cloth-shielded, rubber insulated, tinned solid conductors STOP !, you're done unless you've some knob and tube in a run by itself somewhere...
Actually, I found a little '50s-vintage audio wiring at the North Campus, years ago, but the Downtown site was new in '82.
ReplyDelete...However, the multiplicity of devices and their wide variety and differing ages means it's a braided mess of RS-232, -422, twinax and data coax, STP audio wire, video coax (four different kinds!), twisted-pair house 'comms (three kinds) and honkin' big multicables that trace intricate mazes, recapitulating a kind of streamlined version of the location of every piece of equipment they were ever plugged into.
The mess is genuinely staggering. Another day, another thousand feet of cable.
Oh, and fiber and cat5, 5e and 6 on top of all of it, too...
ReplyDeleteSweet Jeebus, I just love me all that "abandoned in place" wiring. I was plant engineer in a building that was a popular spot for political campaign headquarters (lots of vacancies and a landlord willing to take the hit when the candidate tennis-shoed the rent bill - wrote it off as "political contributions" on the taxes, I guess).
ReplyDeleteI used to come in on my own time to pull out the AIP wiring. MAde my life easier every time I had to go into the plenum, and it was MONEY IN THE BANK!
Hope you have salvage right on the copper. It kept me in gas, beer, and lead for months!