Paladin Roaming

Friday the 13th

Right smack dab in the middle of the week! Ruint the whole thing. I was wondering why everything was going worng.

Wednesdays jes' gotta be the worstest day of the week for a Friday the 13th. Got into work this morning and John is looking to pawn off another trouble ticket onto me. "Trouble proven into Carson" "can't hear" AND it has a circuit ID rather than a telephone number. It's a ring-down point to point private line.

Now, back in the good old days of mechanical switching, a point to point private line was just that -- you had a dedicated circuit from point A to point B. With that circuit taking it's share of the bandwidth even when idle. Nowaday we sinply give people a pair of pots lines and program the switches to autodial the other end.

But these PL circuits are for use by the switching control people when (more like if ever!) the switch goes down -- so you really don't want to use the switch to fake a PL circuit. You run an actual point to point PL circuit on it's own dedicated channel. Problem being this is now something few people run into, let alone run into trouble on. So I get ready or a long sit down with ears glued to two phones as we try to isolate the trouble. I'm camped on one end of the circuit; Lee, my counterpart in San Diego, is on the other end; Miguel, the tester in L.A., is on my second phone.

I'm talking to Lee, no problem, line is just fine. Miguel steps away for a moment and Lee announces she can no longer hear me. Being a Tech, I don't believe her so I start singing -- my singing is prohibitted under the Geneva Conventions as extreme torture.

OK, the trouble actually exists. Lee notices that the trouble comes and goes as she moves. Ends up being a bad handset on the phone in San Diego.

Sometimes the troubles are far easier to fix than you expected.

Posted by Paladin at December 13, 2006 06:40 PM