May 18, 2006
The Bat Cave
The basement equipment room. Back in the dawn of time operator services required a room full of central office equipment to support their phones:
The equipment is retired in place. The racks of wet-cell batteries are gone. The MDF (to the right in the picture) still holds /enamel coated / cloth covered cross connect wires. The building is a block away from the Central Office, but the cable connecting the two is considered to be a "house cable" -- the two buildings are electricly one even to the point of a common ground buss
The cable is terminated on old style blocks. Connections are made by wrapping the cross-connect wire around a lug and soldering it into place.
I'm there 'cause they are adding eight telephone lines, with eight DSL circuits riding them -- for training purposes. I get to wire from the house cable to the jacks in the training room.
Unfortunately, the order was written with the telephone lines assigned to the wrong cable. My dial tone showed up next door at the back of a restaurant. Tried to move them myself with the GCAS, but the cable I needed to cut them to doesn't exist as far as my access went. Drop back to plan B and call the Line Assignment Center. Judy says my N- (new) order has been completed; which is why I was having trouble doing anything with it. The eight C- (change) orders are still alive, but that means she has to do each line separately.
Unfortunately by end of day my dialtone hasn't shown up on the house cable, so the orders are JU'd (job unfinished) until tomorrow. I can't complete the paperwork until the dialtone is at the jacks in the training room.
Time wasn't wasted. I ran the cross connects on the MDF in the Bat Cave to the tie cable to the first floor terminal room. Feed wire to the vertical side, terminate, solder. Walk around to the horizonal side, terminate, solder. Repeat seven more times. Once the dialtone is extended to the first floor it's just a matter of a couple of punches on 66-type blocks to extend to the training room.
Posted by Paladin at May 18, 2006 10:47 PM