How I spent my New Year's Day of 2006As has been mentioned before, I have been having noise problems with the phone line that has severely hampered and then eliminated by ability to connect on-line. I first noticed the problem on December 26th (Boxing Day), as time progressed so did the severity of the problem.
I reported the problem to the phone company and was given a lecture about how it was my fault. The excuse kept changing: The wiring in my house was bad (the pattern of the problem eliminated this possibility) . My modem was broken (already eliminated by me). My coupler was faulty (don't have one). My phone was bad (already eliminated by me). etc. Since they kept blaming my end of the link, they were less than helpful.
When the problem got bad enough, is when I sent the email to Uni. Sending that email took about one hour then It got so bad that I could not connect again.
The last time I contacted the phone company, they agreed to send someone out, to prove that it was my fault and not theirs. It was not a pleasant conversation. I remained polite, but person on the other end of the line did not. I kept having to ask her to repeat herself and speak louder so that I could hear her over the noise. I could not understand her enough to know if there was a fixed date for the service visit. It sounded like it would be in a couple of weeks or more.
Then one night, I picked up the phone and I heard a clean dial tone. Yea, they fixed it! Or did they? I assumed that they fixed a problem reported by someone with a higher priority and as a side effect it fixed it for me. I was wrong. Next day, the link was almost useless and then it did become useless. That was the last time I was on-line until last night.
During this time I thought I had noticed a pattern to the problem. I had mentioned it to the phone company person on the phone during our last conversation. My observations and conclusions were rejected. The pattern was that in general, the drier the weather the worse the problem was. My conclusion was that there was a break in the line. The break is outdoors, the phone company's domain and responsibility. When it is raining the water shorts out the open, thereby acting like a temporary patch and restoring service until the damaged location become to dry again.
During my time off-line, I did some work on some renders.
During all this time we have been having storm after storm. On New Year's Eve there was wide spread flooding through out many parts of this state. The emergency alert system was activated there were evacuations ordered. The news was filled with details of the flooding. Thank goodness we don't live in those parts of the state.
NOW COMES NEW YEARS DAY!
At the stroke of midnight the loudest barrage of illegal fireworks (and perhaps gunfire?) was to be heard. It terrified my pups and it always does. My youngest one was the most frightened. She is a good watch dog, she alerts us to trouble but then expects me to protect her. With sound of that racket, she lost control of her bladder as she leaped through the air for me to catch, comfort and protect her. I was not expecting so I was not prepared to catch her and I hurt my back. When she realized what she had done she was miserable. I tried to console and it took her some time to feel better.
I was near the end of the composition of a challenge render. In the morning after doing a few chores, I started working on the picture some more, it came together better than I had expected. The weather was stormy with high winds. Just as I was about to turned on the television so that we could see the parade. There was a loud crash that could be felt. It was like something big had struck the house. It was the wind, the strongest single gust that we ever had around here had struck the house. A second latter the power failed and the picture I was working on was lost.
I checked the fuses, and all seemed to be fine, but no power.
It was not safe to light the gas, since the wind coming down the smokestack kept blowing out the flame. Electric heaters were not workable, due to the blackout. The storm was blowing down from Alaska, it was COLD! Right now it is 19:32 and the temperature outside is 58[sup:588ea268f0]o[/sup:588ea268f0]F 14.4[sup:588ea268f0]o[/sup:588ea268f0]C . Yesterday outside at noon it was 36[sup:588ea268f0]o[/sup:588ea268f0]F 1.1[sup:588ea268f0]o[/sup:588ea268f0]C
Did I mention that we are not in a flood zone? When I went to get something from the basement, I found that it was flooded. Great just what I needed, another holiday spent bailing water. Not this time, because of the blackout and the heavy overcast, it was too dark to see what I was doing; meanwhile from the cold...
I got the battery powered radio and heard an emergency broadcast ordering us to shelter in place. Then a thunderstorm hit, there was a nearby lighting strike and its EMP killed the radio.
A couple of hours latter the wind had calmed enough to light the gas, after preparing a fast hot meal, coffee and chocolate, the wind returned but not quite as bad as before.
An hour latter, there was a pounding on the front door. It was an irate repair man from the phone company. He was irritated that I had not answered the door sooner when he was ringing the door bell "like forever".
I explained about the blackout. His reply was, "so!" me: "So with no power, the door bell does not work." "Oh...".
He became less unpleasant but was still determined that I was wrong about everything. He was not advised as to what the complaint was, so I had to tell him was was happening to the phone. He wanted to prove that the house wires were where the fault was. I mentioned again about the correlation between the weather and the level of the line noise; as well as my conclusion based on it. He told me that it was the most idiotic thing he had ever heard; and that it was obvious that I knew nothing about electronics.
Oh really!
He wanted wanted access to the box that holds the device that divides our private wires from the phone company's wires, so that he could prove to me that it was in my wires and not theirs that the fault was. I told him that we don't have such a box. Resulting in this exchange: "You must have one." "No." "All houses have them." "Not this one." "It has one!" "No" "YES <censored>" "I know this house very well, I am familiar with the wiring in it. I have no seen such a box...." "Show be the wires! <censored>" I did. He turns on a light switch, no light goes on (blackout). "Hey you have something wrong with your lights too." "Yes, Like I told you we are having a power failure." "SO, you weren't lying about that?" "No." Then we had to go through the flooded basement. "<censored> What the <censored> do you keep your house like this for with all the water on the floor!" "Look at the weather, we have been flooded overnight" "<censored>"
Not finding the box, he determines that it must still exist but is hidden in the walls or ceiling. He goes to his truck to gets a crowbar to tear open our walls starting with the outside wall. "What are you doing?" "Have to open that wall and keep opening until I find that box." "No." "I have to..." "NO! I am not granting you any permission to inflict any damage on this house." "Listen you idiot I have to find that box." "What for?" "To isolate the house from the company wires so I can show you that the problem in right in the house...."
"It was wired before those boxes came into use. At that time the phones were connected to the wire that was run all the way to the telephone poles without a break or box on the premises. The box came into general in the around 1980 when the phone company was broken up by the antitrust suit of the 1970's. Prior to then the phone company own all the wires and telephones too so there was no need for a box to divide our wires from he company's wires. Look at that building there, see the boxes you are looking for are attached to the outside wall not inside, because like this house, that build was wired before the use of the boxes. Latter when a service call was made, the boxes were added as retrofits at the time of the service call." "Right! so this house has one that was retrofitted into it, the same way." "Wrong, this house has never had a problem with the phone line before that needed a service call like this, so there was no retrofit. Now follow this wire from the house up to that telephone pole over there. See those boxes on the pole? THOSE are the boxes that were in use back at that time. THAT is were you can disconnect this house from the rest of the system." "BUT! then the wire running to the pole will be on the wrong side...."
Then I had a solution, "If all you need to do is isolate this house from the rest of the phone system, cut the wire right here where I am pointing, then you can test each side of this break separately. After that install one of the outside boxes to reconnect the wires through."
He glared at me without saying anything for a short while. Then he told me that he had to go check something down the street, got into his truck and drove off. About a half an hour latter he drove back stopped and got out for a moment looked up at the wires crossing from the house to the pole got back into his truck and drove up to the pole. Set up his ladder and climbed to the location were the boxes on the pole were. (By this time the wind had died to an uncomfortable breeze). I could hear him snipping some wires then he called down for me to check the line for noise. I went in and did so. There was no noise on the line any more, just a clean dial tone. As I reported that to him, he came down the ladder carrying a length of cable that had a very visible break in it. "There was your problem. that broken wire caused the noise." he haded me the cable and I replied, "Right since that wire was exposed to the weather when it got wet the water would complete the circuit and cause the fluctuation in quality that I reported, so..." "You really are an idiot! This wire comes from inside the box it is air tight, no water get into it, so you were wrong!". "No, this cable was not inside of the box, see the fade pattern on the insulation, that is sun bleached. See these white and black stains, they are from bird droppings." "That's SH...." "Yes I suppose you can call it that too."
He turned and walked away. I asked him if he was going to retrofit the house with one of the external boxes that he was looking for. He answered no. So you see, even now though you worked on it, it is still not being retrofitted, so don't be suprised when you run into another building with the same situation, perhaps the last repair man there didn't want to do that part of the job either. He answered me with silence as he went to his truck and departed.
Now with a working phone, I called the power company and check for a status report for this area. It was over four hours after the power failure began and they had no report. Not surprised since it was a weekend and a holiday. I filed a problem report with their automated system, and hoped to have power back within a few days. I could imagine how overworked they might be because of the storm and floods.
Latter I got a call back predicting that service could be restored within four hours, then it got revised to eight hours. Then I got a call with another revision for 24 to 36 hours.
It was dark, and cold, the wind and rain which never stopped was getting worse again. I was looking forward to a long session of bailing and mopping the next day, so we decided it would be best for me to do the evening chores early while it was still light enough to see a little and turn in early (late afternoon) so to save the flashlights and if needed candles for the next day while getting rid of the water.
As I was about to get ready for bed, I heard a pounding on the front door. It was the repair man from the power company! He was the complete opposite of the chap from the phone company. He asked for access to the fuse box and meter. He checked the panel it seemed to be fine and had power! Though in a pleasant way, he started to lecture me about how I could and should have checked the fuses on my own. He asked me if there were any secondary panels and if I could handle them. I started to feel chastised by the fact that there was power coming into the house. But the circuits that feed into the main living space were still to be checked again. I was puzzled though about why the power was dead when I checked these fuses--assuming that the power failure was isolated to this one house. Before I could say anything, as a demonstration, he recheck a circuit that had power a moment ago and this time it was dead!
He glanced around the corner at the powerpole and spotted the trouble, relocated his truck and used the cherry picker to ascend to where the problem was. That strong blast of wind the had shaken the house had also broken the power wires that lead from the pole to the house. The wire for the main circuits was cleanly broken, the other was not so clean. That is why all power was dead in the main parts of the house, while the ancillary circuits didn't have power when I tested them, did when he tested them and the didn't when he retested them. As the wind blew the wire to made and broke that connection while the other was broken all together.
He told me that he was in the are fixing a bigger problem, when finished, he noticed that there was a report of a minor problem (mine) so descided to address it while he was here anyway. I thanked him. Considering the cold and his nice personality. I wanted to offer him some hot coffee or chocolate but knowing how some supervisors could react to that, I didn't want to get him into trouble, so we shook hands and wished him a safe and easy workload for the remainder of his shift.
With power, lights, heat, and communications restored. It was time to reset and restart various items. My workstation came up fine, but had lost the picture that I was working on. I had saved a copy an hour before the power failure, so I could fall back to it. No I could not! That file was somehow damaged. How long does Windows take to flush dirty buffers anyway! Sheesh!
So, I descided to work on the Janurayr 3DT newsletter instead. My copy of it is kept in my webserver's html directory tree. I can access those directories by NFS and through my web browser. I fired up my brower, and found that it could not locate my server. Launching a terminal window and running tcpdump, I saw no networking packets from my server, not even the dynamic routing protocol packets on either the ethernet network or the backup PLIP network. So, I had to go and hook up a keyboard and video monitor to it to find out what was wrong. The BIOS setting were all scrambled so it could not boot. After resetting them all back to how I have configured them, I watched as the server booted, nothing was lost, it was back to normal. I removed the unneeded monitor and keyboard, returning them to my workstation where they belong.
Then the next day (today). I spent time bailing and mopping. With how saturated the soil is and the fact that it is still raining, some times light and sometimes heavy. I will be bailing and mopping again soon.
Pangor
A most unpleasant experience. I can relate to the high winds and power outages, but everything you describe is akin to a nightmare! Let us hope that the rest of the year shall bring better tidings.
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