Participants in the North American Network Operators Group email
discussion list -- the primary shop talk forum for telecom and ISP
engineers -- have been bandying about ideas for a new T-shirt.
The backhoe is the usual suspect. And this week the U.S. government
is launching its Y2K awareness campaign. Texas network facilities
are still drying out. None of which I really want to think about at
the moment (my brain is fried on appletalk and who cares about CLNS).
But does anyone have predictions for next year's Rodent Of the Year?
A couple of years ago it was a wayward Stanford rat which blacked
out a bit of the net in San Francisco. Although some conspiricy
theoriests claim the rat was made a scapegoat. The rat did get
a T-Shirt.
I think this year's winner was a hungry gopher which gnawed through
some fiber optic in New Mexico.
Do sharks still like to chew on trans-oceanic cables?
LessonsLearned: Did you know standby generator makers have a universal key
for the maintenance hatches on your generator sitting outside your
building. All 'authorized' service people all over the country have
it. How many folks knew there was a black market for generator starting
batteries? How many folks have ever gone outside to their generator
and found the battery gone? When was the last time you checked?
How many folks have tamper switches on their generator panels? How
many folks just picked up the phone to have their facilities people
install some?
Alabaster, AL -- Alan Cost could have just suspended his son's
driving privileges after the boy got his third speeding ticket and
stayed out way too late. Instead, he suspended his son's pickup truck
-- in a tree.
There's a sign in the vehicle's window: ``This is what happens
when a teen-ager does not mind.''
And in smaller letters it says: ``May be for sale.''
Cost used a backhoe to hoist the back end of 16-year-old
Stephen's 1986 Chevrolet pickup truck several feet in the air, and
used a chain to suspend it from a tree in front of their house along
one of the Birmingham suburb's busiest roads.
That was on Aug. 29 and it'll stay there, where all of Stephen's
friends can see it, for another week or so.
``I hate being that rough on my boy, but if he ain't going to
listen to me, I have no other choice,'' Cost said.
The three tickets all came within three months after Stephen got
his driver's license. After the second ticket, Cost chained the truck
to a tree in the back yard for about a month and a half.