On Fri, 29 Dec 2017 08:55:01 -0500, Michael A Terrell
wrote:

Larry Jaques wrote:
On Fri, 29 Dec 2017 01:30:15 -0500, Michael A Terrell
wrote:

Larry Jaques wrote:
Michael A Terrell wrote:

If you've ever worked around a tower that was struck by lightning,
you'll know first hand what that induced magnetic pulse can do to
unshielded circuits. I spent hours on cross country phone calls
arranging for replacement parts, and had one of the techs waiting at
the airport for them to arrive after losing audio on every satellite
delivered channel on a CATV system because o the manager's attitude
of, 'It's just audio, why waste money on shielded cable'? The $20
he saved caused us to spend over $1000 to repair.

Ya gotta love "upper" management, don't ya?


They hired an expert in RF system design from a college, since it was
their first 'Million Dollar Headend'. It looked like it was laid out by
a drunken teenager who had only seen an I-pad.

The room had it's own air conditioning, yet equipment was
overheating. The audio and video wiring was crap, and anything as
grounded, other than through their power cords or several hundred feet
of RG6/U, and then through 130 feet of tower.

I moved all the racks slightly, and some of the equipment
temperature dropped by over 40 degrees. Some of the moves were for the
improved grounding, while the others were done to improve airflow.

The 'man' who replaced the designer was even worse. He was the one
who hired me, and he bragged about all of the stupid things he'd done at
other CATV systems, including how many bucket trucks that he'd wrecked.
His name was 'Bliss', and he was an idiot. He would set the video levels
without terminating the waveform monitor. The Collins had 4 Volt
unterminated output, instead of the 1 volt terminated that was industry
standard. He insisted that Tektronix knew nothing about video test
equipment, even though 95% of all video waveform monitors were built by
them.

I also caught an overheating three phase power panel that he tried
to brush off as not important. That cost us a couple thousand dollars to
repair. The neutral was undersized for electronic loads, and the
harmonics had the wire too hot to touch. You could feel the heat, just
by walking past the panel.

He refused to replace the desiccant cartridges in the pressurization
system for the Heliax to the 5 meter dish. We ended up wit gallons of
green water inside that expense cable.

One of the "Here, hold my beer and watch this. I is a Injuneer!"
types, eh?


No, it was more like, 'They hired me to run this place, and you just
want to spend money.' One year they announced that due to the purchase
of a large competitor, there would be no bonus checks that year, except
for the managers. He was waving a ?$50 check in our faces as another
check fell out of the Fedex envelope. It had my name on it. He laughed
and said, If I only got $50, your check must just be $5. I opened it and
said, You're right. it is $500.00. Mine was ten times what he got,
because of the extra time that I put in, and the money that I had saved
the company.

Beautiful. LOL

--
Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplacable spark.

In the hopeless swamps of the not quite, the not yet, and
the not at all, do not let the hero in your soul perish
and leave only frustration for the life you deserved, but
never have been able to reach.

The world you desire can be won, it exists, it is real,
it is possible, it is yours.
-- Ayn Rand