Posts by diver_dave

Ahhh the joys

Call one morning from a know err... Challenging user.

Phone not working. Apparently it just stopped and the LCD display went black.

I head down and visual inspection confirms blackness of display.

"Anything happen before it died?" Says I.

"No," says user.

I pick up phone and get half a cup of cold coffee down my arm...

"Oh yeah, I did spill that earlier."

Cue much head Vs wall action..

Ah.. the joy...

The A30 in the 80's/90's.

The M5 services closed as they were jammed.

We used to hate going down there in summer.

I live in Fife now and spring when the camper vans come out of hibernation and begin their annual migration north is almost as bad.

Aaarghhh

Not quite the same

I once watched an engineer remove a brand new master board for a Sony DXC3000 camera from it's antistatic packaging.

As he did so he spotted a static discharge from his index finger. All I heard was a sotto voce "Oh Shit" as he realised he had forgotten his anti-static band.

Board not functioning on receipt read the return paperwork....

Depending on the type of cable coupled with how poor bunny nibbled at it, it's possible he just nicked the earth (ground for our leftpondians) and nearly through the line.

That would give enough leakage to trip an RCD/RCBO.

Squirrels and rats tend to be the reason I end up crawling under decking. I don't find as many fried bodies as you would imagine.

I think it's one campus at Alabama State University that's nick named Squirrel U due to the amount of incidents.

Learned that from 'The Internet Tour Bus" back 25 years or so ago!

From the domestic side

50v L-E is something I see regularly. Normally a fluorescent fitting died

.

Having worked both sides I'm always very very careful with Band 1 and Band 2 cable separation.

On the earthing side. Several times I've seen the earth used instead of fitting 3 core cable for 2 way lighting. Plus I had the delights the other week of tracking a fault following Easter DIY work. Somehow client had managed to feed all the upstairs lighting from one of the 2 way strappers. Obviously, in the loft, on a hot day and under 3 layers of insulation.

Joy.

Great weekend all.

Dave

As an ex

Telephony guy turned electrician I get this alot.

1) well YouTube said..

2) but all you did was reset the RCD after unplugging the kettle. (I did ask you to do this on the phone before coming out)

3) Mr I know 'bout lectrics it must be something other than plugging the multiple 4 way blocks into themselves. (Regular Christmas lights problem)

4) Why £60 to connect my cooker? It's only 5 minutes work and Dave down the pub will do it for £20 [1]

The joys. Aaargghhhhh

Pint day all....

Dave

PS:. First! (Nearly)

[1] yeah but is he going to continuity, IR and Zs test it?

Longest wait

I PM'd our project to change our call recording system. 500+ users.

Was updating some permissions and accidentally deleted the source permissions file by uploading a completely blank table.

Stage 1: Panic.

Stage 2: Panic some more.

Stage 3: Try and find backup. No joy.

Stage 4: Ring supplier, who managed a remote restore.

Stage 5: Dent wallet badly at project end buying copious amounts of beer for tech who not only restored but forgot to document said restore.

I do like working with Business Systems.... Lovely company and oh so discreet!

Should have added, this was a parallel run to old system before switching over.

Ouch. Memory trigger

Mentioned it before I think.

The great Manchester Comms fire.

I was first in that day and couldn't reach anyone on the DR teams.

So took the decision myself to shift all linklines to other offices then waited for the fallout.

Luckily we were trialling Sametime so at least had some semblance of real time Comms given even mobile networks were down.

All worked out in the end.

By lunchtime I had a single working phone line courtesy of Otis lifts the floor below who were on what's now Virgin with a cable strung out the window to the floor below.

2 days later my colleague at our main site in Bournemouth had to crash a DR meeting to explain that just because the Manchester office could call ourselves didn't mean we could move everything back!

Happy days. Not...

Dave

Yeah. Been there..

Telecoms again.

Called by one of our more technologically challenged users.

Phone turret not working. One of the almost indistructable 3820's.

Get down to client [1] Ask usual questions.

Client had of course done nothing that may cause the issues. However, turret is total Dodo.

Pick it up... And.... Get a cup of cold coffee down my shirt.

Fairly simple diagnosis from that point.a few choice words were exchanged. Well actually the conversation was one sided.

She did offer to get my nice CT shirt dry cleaned.

Roll on pint time....

Have a good weekend all...

Dave

[1] Same client who took recabling every desk to the board as it was obviously cr*p because pushing her bag right under her desk was pulling extension leads apart regularly.

Gaffa tape fix.

That said

I've been headscratching with an old Meridian switch before.

Getting multiple capacity drop outs that gave every indication of a card fault. Very very intermittent...

So after hours myself and Big Dave from BT have the panels off and start testing. Nothing. Anywhere.

Fault keeps reoccurring on and off.

Eventual diagnosis and all round circular arse kicking.

We had two sites. North and South.

One team split across the two sites. North forwarding phones to South hunt group. And.. Yep Vice versa.

Telephony equivalent of the old mail out of office auto response.

Nightmare to chase down. Only found it after some very careful traffic analysis.

Pint o'clock.

Dave