So, I unsuspectingly stroll into work this morning, and stop by my boss' office as usual to see if there's anything urgent that needs to be taken care of. The company I work for is in the process of moving the tool crib and purchasing office into a new location, and he informs me that he'll need two network connections in the room for the crib and purchasing computers. I'm thinking this'll be no problem, since the room used to house two CMMs, so there were at least two network cables (the room wasn't originally wired for wall jacks, so they just ran down from the ceiling, tied to pipes and stuff). We never pull back cables that we've ran, incase we need them in the future, so I figure they must be sitting in the suspended ceiling.

I get up in the ceiling, and find only one cable, which has been cut. I crimp a connector onto it and test it, doesn't work. I figure when QC moved out of that room someone must have disconnected the cable. So I think, okay, the tool crib is right next door, and won't be needing a network connection anymore, so I'll just bring that cable over and throw in a switch so the two computers can each have a connection. I get into the crib, and there are two network cables coming down from the ceiling, from two different spots. That's weird, I think, since there was only ever one PC in that room and no other devices that need a connection. I follow one back, and it leads to the room I'm trying to wire, and has been cut. Looking at the insulation of the other cable, I can see that it's relatively new (1-2 years, tops), since it's the kind we used when we added on to the building. I follow it back up through the ceiling, and find that at some point it goes from the newer type of cable to the really old stuff that's been there for 10+ years. It makes this incredible transformation under a mass of electrical tape.

So here's what probably happened. They got some of the guys from manufacturing (the company I work for does sales, estimating, engineering, manufacturing, and quality control all in the same building) to clear out the room when QC moved out, and probably told them to get rid of the cables coming down from the ceiling. Rather than preserve them, these guys thought it would be best to just cut them. They then realized that that was a dumb idea, since one of the cables goes over to the tool crib. So, rather than tell someone involved in IT, such as myself or my boss, they thought they'd cover up their mistake by twisting and taping the wires in another piece of network cable to one of the ones that they cut, then running it into the crib.

So obviously we're not going to have part of our infrastructure twisted and taped together, so I'm going to cut the cable back to the orignal portion, crimp an end, install a switch, and run two cables into the new room. I could have done that in under an hour if whoever had done this had come clear, instead I spent 2.5 hours sorting out this mess, and still have to wire the room.

It really bothers me when people screw up and try to hide it.

Even IT people sometimes don't know jack about craftsmanship. I was wiring a new wing of my highschool one summer and wanted to string some wire from the basement level up to the ground floor. I was in the basement and I asked my incompetent partner to send a fish wire down, to which I would attach some cable that he could then pull back up through the pipes. I tell him that when he feels a few tugs on the fish, stop pushing.

Sure enough, I'm down there and the little metal head pokes through from the ceiling and I give a few mighty tugs... and he just keeps on unwinding the fish wire down, and it goes past me and starts to snake towards an open conduit box...

Another engineer on the scene dropped everything and pushed the wire out of the way. He said that if it had gotten into the box, there probably would have been an explosion...

Well, electrical tape can solve many small problems. "Solve" can mean "hide" too!

I hate that. If you make a mistake and don't know how to fix it, chances are, unless you just launched a nuke, someone can help you.

fixed

*sigh*


Ive seen worse. Much worse. Much, much worse.
Anyone recall the classic "Massassi server room" image with the sign that reads "Do not touch!"? Ive actually seen wiring closets that looked like that. Its never a good day when you need to trace a bad line through something like that.


Or even worse; small wiring closets that have been through 5 or 6 network overhauls, and still have all the old equipment and wiring intact, and there are no visual indications whats old and whats new.

Over the years of me being an apprentice electrician, I have seen some, well let's just say, creative wiring done by other electricians. Most of the time dad and I just look at each other with this "What. The. ****??"

I really hate it when they cut the wires in the box too short. LEAVE 6 TO 8 INCHES OF WIRE YOU DUMBASSES!!

I'm not a plumber, but in my house the guy who built it was quite the crook. We kept getting clogs in this shower, and a snake wouldn't go through. It turned out that whoever he had do the plumbing couldn't get two pipes to fit, so he wound up putting two or three traps to get one to reach the other.

At work we have three racks, two were installed within the past couple years, while I was working, and are well organized. The third is the original, and has three switches and two patch panels. It is an absolute freaking disaster. The idea (from what I can gather) was each spot on the patch panel was supposed to correspond to a labelled wall jack, but somewhere along the line they just stopped using that system and ran cables wherever they needed, installing small 5 port hubs and switches when they needed more jacks. The main rack is a freakin' rat's nest, tracing a cable from the patch panel to a switch (a distance of like 3' at the max) is nearly impossible because it's so choked with wires. I'm seriously afraid whenever I need to do anything near it because if a cable disconnects or something I'd never know until someone (or a group of people) can't access the network, and even then it would take hours to figure out where the problem is.

I mentioned in my original post that two of the cables in the area I was working on were dead. I can't disconnect and get rid of them at the rack because I have no way of figuring out which ones they are. I keep talking to my boss about reorganizing it, but the problem is we can't have that kind of downtime.