Thursday, March 06, 2014

Early Start: Late Blog

     Got paged into work early--

     Seems some of the junk connected to this mess done blowed up.   I didn't wire it and the guy who did responded to offers of help with grunts.  Somehow it's my job to sort it out.  While he takes the credit.
     Oh, this is fun.

21 comments:

John Peddie (Toronto) said...

A small localized fire, confined to that equipment room, might be your best solution.

You could then rebuild it the way it should be.

Roberta X said...

Noooooo, that would be disaster. You're looking at the very heart of how my empoyer makes money. Pushing $10K a minute loss when it is down.

pdb said...

I will never bellyache about a poorly wired server cabinet again.

Keads said...

Wow, how did you get into my wiring closet?

Fuzzy Curmudgeon said...

That rack looks like it could use some serious cleaning up.

That said, it looks a lot like the wiring closet where I work. So I'll just stop short of throwing stones whilst living in a glass house. :)

rickn8or said...

"done blowed up" as in "was working and quit" or "done blowed up" as in "was working, changes made, now no worky?"

Good luck in any case.

May the Tron God smile upon you.

New Jovian Thunderbolt said...

I WISH the stuff around here were as neat and organized as that...

TriggerFinger said...

Oh come on, Roberta! I've seen a lot worse than that. You have carefully-velcro'd cable ties for groups of related cables, everything looks pretty much sized to fit rather than leaving loops of extra cable all over the cabinet, clearly the cables are color-coded to indicate their purpose, and you have clear access to the whole thing once you take the door off the rack.

About the only thing you could ask for beyond what you've got are nicely printed labels on each cable and maybe a more stable place for the mysterious gray boxes.

Larry said...

reminds me of spaghetti lab back in Avionics Class A school...

Phillip said...

I have seen worse. Still isn't fun to try to troubleshoot, but not the worst situation I've ever been in.

I've gotten a lot better about labels, cable ties, and organization since the one that broke me. The rat skeleton was the tipping point.

Anonymous said...

Cut the purple wire first...

Anonymous said...

Does the guy sound like Marlin Perkins? "We'll send Jim in for a closer look. While Jim deals with that python, let me tell you about..."

Been there. Sometimes the ultimate reward is longevity...


Jim R

Roberta X said...

But-- purple is SDI video!

Cincinnatus said...

Years ago someone tried to dump responsibility for a far worse wire tangle on me. I just indicated I would recable it with a chainsaw.

Unknown said...

It's the cable on the left.

Seriously? First thing I'd do is make sure all the cables were seatedproperly. And I have certainly seen worse.

Roberta X said...

I've seen worse -- I have sorted out worse. The trouble is, my paycheck goes through that mess; it is online, 24/7. One untangles it at his or her peril.

The mysterious-gray-boxes (distribution amplifiers) are part of the present idiocy, done by an alleged tech who likes to dangle standalone devices from the cabled connected to them in the rats-nests of wires he creates. It will come as no surprise that he was also the last hold-out on using "clothespin" type strippers on coax, preferring to "trim by eye" and pocketknife. The SWR bump the resulting mess creates does disturbing things to high-speed serial video data and that's before the steady weight pulls the cable out of the poorly-crimped BNC connector.

Stretch said...

Were I on the jury and saw that photo I'd vote for acquittal.

Unknown said...

looks like it might be safe to cut the blue wire...

Old NFO said...

Rats nest comes to mind... sigh...
At least the wires are different colors!!!

Ian Argent said...

The responsible authorities at my employer would reject at the loading dock any cabinet arriving in that condition from a vendor. Anyone found rubbing cables like that in an in-service cabinet would have their careers shot at dawn pour encourager les autres.

Ian Argent said...

Slightly off topic, but I find out today that the FCC is apparently trying to get the incumbents to tighten up on the current 600 mHz band with the intention of auctioning the resulting available spectrum to, among others, cellular data... Sic transit gloria OTA TV. (can't find the post where I made my prediction concerning the impending transfer of spectrum from OTA TV to cellular)