When I first started working here the server "racks" were a series of old green shelving like you would see at a mini-mart. They had 1/5 inch plywood bolted underneath the shelves so they could support the weight of our equipment. Behind this was the worst jumbled up mess of cables I had ever seen. It was an 8 foot long cascade of Cat V cables pouring down the wall into a pile a foot thick where it then rebounded back up to the patch panels. The patch panels themselves were barely visible from all the extra wire poking out of the punch downs. I found out later that Dave(the guy who was here before me but got fired after I started) didn't believe in using punch down tools because he thought they would damage the cables. He "punched" all of the runs down with the back of his pocket knife. If you so much as breathed heavy behind these patch panels at least 6 users would lose connectivity.
Shortly after I started working here we bought some APC racks and me and another guy "uninstalled" the green shelves. With claw hammers. We then spent the rest of the night with a cable toner and a pair of walkie talkies re-terminating the entire network. After we cleaned up the cables we discovered a cast iron "cable guide" Dave had bolted to the wall behind the wall'O'cables. The bolts were all rounded off and I had to cut the dang thing off the wall with a hacksaw.
I've been here 5 years now and I still stumble across some of Dave's handy work from time to time. Not too long ago a user asked me if she could stop holding down the f4+shift+tab+ctrl+L keys when she booted up her workstation in the mornings. Come to find out her machine blue screened a couple of times before I started working here. Dave told her if she pressed that finger cramping combination of keys when she booted up it would stop. She's been working here 7 years.
Sometimes I kind of miss Dave. Then I'll discover something else he left for me and I'll get over it.
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When I first started working here the server "racks" were a series of old green shelving like you would see at a mini-mart. They had 1/5 inch plywood bolted underneath the shelves so they could support the weight of our equipment. Behind this was the worst jumbled up mess of cables I had ever seen. It was an 8 foot long cascade of Cat V cables pouring down the wall into a pile a foot thick where it then rebounded back up to the patch panels. The patch panels themselves were barely visible from all the extra wire poking out of the punch downs. I found out later that Dave(the guy who was here before me but got fired after I started) didn't believe in using punch down tools because he thought they would damage the cables. He "punched" all of the runs down with the back of his pocket knife. If you so much as breathed heavy behind these patch panels at least 6 users would lose connectivity. Shortly after I started working here we bought some APC racks and me and another guy "uninstalled" the green shelves. With claw hammers. We then spent the rest of the night with a cable toner and a pair of walkie talkies re-terminating the entire network. After we cleaned up the cables we discovered a cast iron "cable guide" Dave had bolted to the wall behind the wall'O'cables. The bolts were all rounded off and I had to cut the dang thing off the wall with a hacksaw. I've been here 5 years now and I still stumble across some of Dave's handy work from time to time. Not too long ago a user asked me if she could stop holding down the f4+shift+tab+ctrl+L keys when she booted up her workstation in the mornings. Come to find out her machine blue screened a couple of times before I started working here. Dave told her if she pressed that finger cramping combination of keys when she booted up it would stop. She's been working here 7 years. Sometimes I kind of miss Dave. Then I'll discover something else he left for me and I'll get over it.