The trouble with cables

Today is Saturday and yesterday, late in the evening, a customer called us for service. If I was still in my previous company, my reply would be a big haughty, "I'm sorry we do not work on Saturdays anymore. Perhaps if you pay us more and beg, we might come and see you on Monday." Ha ha ha

But four years later, having dropped out of La-la-Land, any business we can take, we'll take. And so, because its one of our most loyal customer, we promised to be there first thing in the morning. As hindsight, I requested the customer to contact Terrorkom first to see if they could help. One thing about these guys are that they are now very efficient. Maybe because its an ISDN line but one call to them and they're there an hour later. So, with their verdict, it seems that the cable is suspect.

Which is a worrying thing for the both of us. To lay a new set of cables from the basement to the twentieth floor would take days. What caused this was still unknown and we hope it has nothing to with the other floor's renovation where contractors usually cut cables accidentally or not. Anyway, after testing the connection, I decided to start from the beginning, which means going to the Basement MDF room.

I hate doing this because of security issues. It took me more than an hour in total to gain access to the MDF door. I had to go from 20th to 4th to get a maintenance form to issue to the security at ground floor before they can get the key at Basement. Sheesh. Finally, as luck would have it, I discovered the fault, which is mostly due to a weak solder joint which came loose as more ISDN cables were interwined and pulled. All in all, this was an exhausting three hours work of climbing floors and 15 minutes of actual repairing work. Ha ha ha ha!

The lighting in this air-con MDF room
makes me feel so at home. The feeling
of loneliness and isolation encourages
me to do my projects, buy a large TV,
a Playstation 3 and even a bed there.

Can I call this the ISDN post?

Finally, one of the solder joints caused this. And these
are the connectors which connects to your PABX up
in your office.