Re: Any Verizon datacenter techs about?

[Larry Sheldon <larrysheldon () cox net>]

On 6/26/2015 20:31, Larry Sheldon wrote:
> On 6/26/2015 19:44, Joe Hamelin wrote:
> > On Fri, Jun 26, 2015 at 5:40 PM, John Musbach <johnmusbach1 () gmail com>
> >   wrote:
> >
> > > .
> > >
> > > P.S. If there was any way to get a tour inside of there at least I'd
> > > totally sign a NDA for that. :) Never been inside, let alone near, a
> > > CO before.
> >
> > http://museumofcommunications.org/?page_id=12
>
> There are three parts of a #5 Crossbar switch for which I have a special
> fondness:
>
> The exerciser routine--late at night in a (sometimes spooky) dark, quiet
> office you hear a clicking  noise that come up from behind you and
> passes on into the distance in front of you,  After a bit, you realize
> that it is approaching again....and again, each time a little lower down
> as the exerciser operated EVERY crosspoint in the office, one at a time.
>
> The Transverter -- a monument to the Perfect Kludge.
>
> The Trouble Recorder -- a card-punch that punches a card every time a
> call fails, to record all of the equipment (and some other stuff) that
> was involved in the call.  The cards were BIG (4 inches by 16 inches,
> maybe) and I have no idea what the number of possible hole locations was
> and had printed on-the card a cryptic notation as to what each hole
> meant.  The most interesting thing was the fact that there were
> notations on both sides of the card--a given hole had two meanings
> depending on which side of the card the hole had been punched it.  Thye
> first thing you looked at was two holes (I forget what one of the
> markings was, bit one hole said "AMA" on one side and "Turn Card Over"
> on the other side.  (I was not a switchman, so the number of errors
> possible here us huge.)

I didn't realise that there was a relevant picture in the museum set -- 
http://museumofcommunications.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/DSC_7116-1024x680.jpg 
shows severak of those cards on shelves, and in the near fore-ground is 
the bins used for sorting cards for further investigation (one of the 
"investigation" steps was to take a deck of cards for a similar failure 
and hold the deck up to the light to see if a single piece of equipment 
had been involved in every failure (hole goes through the deck).
>


--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)