Techy Tales - Brain dead Ted

[Richard Freeman]

I started writing up some techy Tales based on my experiences over the years
to keep the folk over at iprimus.users entertained while their newsgroup
access was having problems and figured I might as well repost them here as
some people may enjoy them. I am also interested in any tales other folk may
have in a similair vein......


Well way back when I worked for that Organisation known as The Fascist
Beaurocracy ( FB for Short - A rather large Australian Telco) as a band 5
kinda 1 and 1/2 level field support Data Techy, Fault Dispatcher (when it
was my dreaded turn at a month in the orifice) and fill in Team leader when
the regular team leader was otherwise indisposed....
But I digress anyhow we got a band 3 (assumes he knew enough to diagnose and
repair most Faults) techy dumped upon us (in the nicest possible way)
following the closure of the equipment refurbishment centre.
Anyhow this guy whose original name was unpronounceable (so he choose an
anglicised name with the same surname as an infamous punk rocker) we called
Ted, this after a short term of time (when we got to know him better) we
changed to the endearment 'Brain Dead Ted' for reasons which will become
clear.

Now Brain Dead (or BDT for short) had originally been employed to clean up
equipment before returning it to the Field. In short he was a Telephone
Sanitizer - nominally a Band 1 position but due to the interminable
Restructures which occur in an organisation like The Fascist Beaurocracy,
Power plays amongst the especially incompetent (Managers) and the Public
Service Mentality He clawed his way to a Band 3 position, Still cleaning,
Polishing and Buffing those Telephones folks. Unfortunately this info was
discovered later on....

************************************

The Introduction ...... (in which I meet BDT for the first time and get to
assess his Technical expertise)

Anyway come forward a year or two (and about 15 Restructures) and the
decision was made by lord High management to close down the sheltered
workshop where the likes of Ted could claw their way up to the giddy heights
of a band 3 position. Now this meant that the existing employees needed to
be redeployed and well we were a band 3 short so we had BDT foisted upon
us......
At the time I had been happily in the middle a 3 month stint out in the
Field* when I got a call from the Team Leader to tell me that a new Techy
called Ted had now spent 2 Days trying to Fix a Fault for an Eftpos Service
at a Service station (Out Blacktown way if I recall) and the Merchant was a
bit peeved and the Bank was Irate and could I go out and provide a bit of
assistance ?
Well never being one to turn down a challenge I rang Ted and arranged to
meet him on site (a rather small Service station - sure you know the kind of
place one small building with a workshop out the back).
When I got on site and intros were over I asked Ted what the story was he
started telling me about the Results of the Exchange testing etc etc etc. I
Stopped Ted's flow at this point to ask what testing he had done with his
multimeter (very simple, Basic Techies tool) anyway he kept telling me about
the exchange Tests. After a few minutes I interrupted him again to ask "What
do you get with your Multimeter Ted ? ... You do have your Multimeter don't
you ?" He admitted that his multimeter was still in the car and he had not
actually used it yet. So he went and got the meter out of the car and we
tested the line (from the socket). Much to my complete lack of surprise the
line tested open Circuit. Next question "what does the line look from the
Building Main Distribution Frame (MDF) Ted ? you do know where the MDF is
don't you Ted ? " after all he had been on this job for 2 Days now and the
shop/Office area was about 20 square meters tops and the MDF in this case
was an ugly brown box about twice the size of a shoe box. Well Ted scratched
his head and admitted that he had not found the MDF yet, Well the cabling
from the Socket was stapled to the wall so I showed Ted that really it was
not at all Difficult to trace the cable as it was clearly visible for the
whole run you know up the wall across the wall over the Door and down
another door were it ended swinging gently in the breeze next to the MDF
which it had been pulled out of !

* My Business card used to say I was a Field engineer I never could figure
out if this meant I was a Farmer or a Backhoe operator

************************************

What do you do with Brain Dead Ted ? (or the Ted two step)

Well it was my turn to spend a Month in the dreaded Orifice as Fault
dispatcher, First in Tester, Telephone support etc etc etc and I had this
Techy called Brain Dead Ted (BDT) well what to do with him ? he had proved
his incompetence by now time and time again and in fact we were starting to
wonder how he had the intellectual capacity to breathe. It seemed unfair to
leave him idle but OTOH he stuffed up just about any job he did.
while I was pondering this very question I got a call from a band 4 ( no I
think he was band 5 by then) Tech we shall call BG. Now BG was a good bloke
to have on your side and he would not put up with shite from anyone, He
called a spade a spade and was the bane of Senior management everywhere in
short in ideal Supervisor for BDT.
BG had a problem he had been chasing up a fault at a small Supermarket out
west and discovered that the Cable from the MDF out to the cash Register was
completely stuffed and would need to be rerun, a job which would require two
people. This seemed like an answer to prayer as it sounded like a nice
filthy job (not that I am always vindictive mind) and BDT would be under
supervision.
So I sent BDT out to meet BG and provide the much needed assistance, sat
back with a sigh of relief and got on with the real business of the
day.........

About 40 Minutes after BDT left to assist BG I got a rather .... well .....
lets say ..... Annoyed call from BG if memory serves it went something like
this :

"Hi Richard here who can I help ?"
"THAT ^%^=#WE^*+ IDIOT &%^><|%T# F^#*@I*&@ TED &^^*&*(#E*&%#*&( AND
*^Y&*&(^* BLOODY !!!$#>^*(@! AND **&^#@^(!!! AND F^&amp(#)(! AND THE CUSTOMER
WANTS TO KNOW WHO IS GOING TO PAY FOR IT!!"
"what was that BG slow down mate take a deep breath I had a bit of Trouble
following that. What does the customer need payment for ?"
"THAT BDT IS A &^%*%&( AND &^T(*()())(*&9 AND HAS SMASHED THE CUSTOMERS
*!#@$%&(&%$# ROOF !"
"OK OK bob slow down a bit you say the Customers roof has been smashed ? by
BDT ?"

Well to keep further obscenities to a minimum I will cut to the chase. It
turned out that the cable run was going to be through the ceiling of this
supermarket and BG decided to send BDT up into the ceiling while he fed the
cable up to BDT and pulled it out at the other end. Anyway after checking
several times that BDT understood what was required of him BG sent BDT up
the ladder into the manhole...... Unfortunately BDT reappeared unexpectedly
through the Gyprock ceiling about 2 feet away from the Manhole bringing a
significant portion of the ceiling with him. To this day I am in two minds
about wether it was a good or bad thing that the fall was not Fatal......

************************************************

two more brief tales on the stupidity of BDT.

That looks like a nice pager.....

BDT lived near Cabramatta a Suburb with a reputation for being the haunt of
Drug addicts, Thieves, Rapists and other general low lives. One day BDT
comes in saying he has lost his pager.
"yeah righto Ted you have looked for it I presume"
"well actually it has been stolen"
"Have you reported it to the police ?"
"Not yet do I have to ?"
"Yes Ted report it to the police and then come back and fill in the
paperwork"

Well it transpired that what had happened was this :
BDT had had a sneaking suspicion that his Brain cells were coming back so,
He had decided to stop off at the pub and have a few (don't know what he did
with the car) anyway while he was sitting there his Pager went off. I can
just see the scene know BDTs lips moving as he tries to decipher the page
and some shady type watching realising that BDT was about 3 tons of wheat
short of a Picnic. After BDT has grappled with the complex process of
deciphering the message this shady type taps him on the shoulder
" That's a nice looking pager mate could I have a look ?"
"yeah sure mate"
" Thanks actually my mate is interested in a pager can I show it to my mate
outside ?"
"yeah sure mate"

well after a couple of hours sitting at the bar BDT realises that this shady
character has disappeared for good and taken the Pager with him.

how do you fix a flat tyre ?

once again in sunny down town Cabramatta BDT left his FB Car in a car park
while he went shopping. Now if you are not a thief you need to know a couple
of things about FB Vehicles.
First FB management reckon that security systems : Alarms, Security grills
etc etc etc cost to much and as result other than what comes standard with
the vehicle there is no Security on a FB Vehicle.
Second FB employees often need rather expensive tools even the lowest lineys
van will have nice drills etc etc etc. In fact my car used to have about
$2-300,000 worth of Test equipment in it bit still Lord High Management
reckoned that Security for my car cost too much (a simple alarm cost $300
and Security grills $1500).
Thirdly just so no Thief can miss the opportunity FB Vehicles are clearly
marked with a logo (known as the flying Baked bean) on every side, front,
back and the bonnet too ( so it is visible to any flying thieves as well)
that beckons the average car thief with the call " expensive stuff inside !,
No security !, Rob me, Rob me, Rob me" *

Anyway when BDT came back to his car he discovered that the tyre was flat,
now BDT was supposed to be a Techy right ,supposedly used to swinging a
spanner etc etc etc so changing a tyre should have been straight forward
right ! ... nope wrong this is BDT we are talking about here. He caught the
bus home leaving his car overnight in a public car park in
Cabramatta............


* FB management some years ago payed a bunch of consultants a bunch of money
to decide wether their cars should be marked or not. The consultants advised
that :
The only publicity you get from marking a car/van is bad publicity.
Marking cars makes them obvious to Thieves.
Marking cars attracts road rage
Marking cars is a really really really bad idea for these reasons don't do
it Just DON'T do IT!

So of course naturally FB management decided that since it was such a bad
Idea they would go ahead and do it .......

Well anyway that is tonights stories I will have to see If I can remember
any other Brain Dead Ted stories to relate . But come on now surely someone
else has some bedtime stories to contribute. Come on Mr Random sounds like
you could have a go! or Fredderic!

Regards
Richard Freeman

 

[Mark Hathaway]

Richard,


I can sympathies, I'm a cinema tech, and have a level 1, but should really
be a level 0.5 BDT trainee technician under my care. Nothing like being
handed a resistor when you ask for a capacitor. Mine cannot make a hole in a
piece of ducting to fit a 20mm anaconda connection without making a 100mm
hole from 400 drill holes laid out in a not so round pattern, when I had
given him the hydraulic hole punch. Grrr. What he is good at is impact
testing of 60 inch plasma displays, man its hard telling the boss $15K just
got smashed into a million bits. This wanna be tech cannot write the address
correctly on a box to be delivered to a customer, so we also wonder if
breathing is a constant battle. Common sense just cannot be taught. This one
will never rise above trainee, its been six months and its like running a
child minding service.



Unlike the massive evil FB, there are only 2 of us on the road in Victoria,
the boss and myself, (i'm not going to count BDT level 0.5, its just not
right his name being followed by the word "technician") and finding half
decent trainees who don't lie on their CV's, (We discovered electronics
experience and knowledge equates to plugging a dvd player into a tv) is very
hard. Last advertisement placed in the media netted a lot of applicants with
a Masters in Electronics or the like, who had only ever worked at 7eleven
and didn't know how to solder. Now I don't have a engineers suck,
technicians are superior complex, its a BA of Applied Physics for me next
year.


Is it just me, or are there less and less people technically capable, and
more and more paper engineers?


The empire I work for also believes security on company vehicles is a waste,
over 100k of tools in the back of mine, the funny thing is the only time
someone broke in, they took the fuel card thats linked to the rego. haha



Mark Hathaway
Melbourne


"Richard Freeman" <deletemerichard@atps.net> wrote in message
news:3f4c490e_1@news.iprimus.com.au...

I started writing up some techy Tales based on my experiences over the
years
to keep the folk over at iprimus.users entertained while their newsgroup
access was having problems and figured I might as well repost them here as
some people may enjoy them. I am also interested in any tales other folk
may
have in a similair vein......


Well way back when I worked for that Organisation known as The Fascist
Beaurocracy ( FB for Short - A rather large Australian Telco) as a band 5
kinda 1 and 1/2 level field support Data Techy, Fault Dispatcher (when it
was my dreaded turn at a month in the orifice) and fill in Team leader
when
the regular team leader was otherwise indisposed....
But I digress anyhow we got a band 3 (assumes he knew enough to diagnose
and
repair most Faults) techy dumped upon us (in the nicest possible way)
following the closure of the equipment refurbishment centre.
Anyhow this guy whose original name was unpronounceable (so he choose an
anglicised name with the same surname as an infamous punk rocker) we
called
Ted, this after a short term of time (when we got to know him better) we
changed to the endearment 'Brain Dead Ted' for reasons which will become
clear.

Now Brain Dead (or BDT for short) had originally been employed to clean up
equipment before returning it to the Field. In short he was a Telephone
Sanitizer - nominally a Band 1 position but due to the interminable
Restructures which occur in an organisation like The Fascist Beaurocracy,
Power plays amongst the especially incompetent (Managers) and the Public
Service Mentality He clawed his way to a Band 3 position, Still cleaning,
Polishing and Buffing those Telephones folks. Unfortunately this info was
discovered later on....

************************************

The Introduction ...... (in which I meet BDT for the first time and get to
assess his Technical expertise)

Anyway come forward a year or two (and about 15 Restructures) and the
decision was made by lord High management to close down the sheltered
workshop where the likes of Ted could claw their way up to the giddy
heights
of a band 3 position. Now this meant that the existing employees needed to
be redeployed and well we were a band 3 short so we had BDT foisted upon
us......
At the time I had been happily in the middle a 3 month stint out in the
Field* when I got a call from the Team Leader to tell me that a new Techy
called Ted had now spent 2 Days trying to Fix a Fault for an Eftpos
Service
at a Service station (Out Blacktown way if I recall) and the Merchant was
a
bit peeved and the Bank was Irate and could I go out and provide a bit of
assistance ?
Well never being one to turn down a challenge I rang Ted and arranged to
meet him on site (a rather small Service station - sure you know the kind
of
place one small building with a workshop out the back).
When I got on site and intros were over I asked Ted what the story was he
started telling me about the Results of the Exchange testing etc etc etc.
I
Stopped Ted's flow at this point to ask what testing he had done with his
multimeter (very simple, Basic Techies tool) anyway he kept telling me
about
the exchange Tests. After a few minutes I interrupted him again to ask
"What
do you get with your Multimeter Ted ? ... You do have your Multimeter
don't
you ?" He admitted that his multimeter was still in the car and he had not
actually used it yet. So he went and got the meter out of the car and we
tested the line (from the socket). Much to my complete lack of surprise
the
line tested open Circuit. Next question "what does the line look from the
Building Main Distribution Frame (MDF) Ted ? you do know where the MDF is
don't you Ted ? " after all he had been on this job for 2 Days now and the
shop/Office area was about 20 square meters tops and the MDF in this case
was an ugly brown box about twice the size of a shoe box. Well Ted
scratched
his head and admitted that he had not found the MDF yet, Well the cabling
from the Socket was stapled to the wall so I showed Ted that really it was
not at all Difficult to trace the cable as it was clearly visible for the
whole run you know up the wall across the wall over the Door and down
another door were it ended swinging gently in the breeze next to the MDF
which it had been pulled out of !

* My Business card used to say I was a Field engineer I never could figure
out if this meant I was a Farmer or a Backhoe operator

************************************

What do you do with Brain Dead Ted ? (or the Ted two step)

Well it was my turn to spend a Month in the dreaded Orifice as Fault
dispatcher, First in Tester, Telephone support etc etc etc and I had this
Techy called Brain Dead Ted (BDT) well what to do with him ? he had proved
his incompetence by now time and time again and in fact we were starting
to
wonder how he had the intellectual capacity to breathe. It seemed unfair
to
leave him idle but OTOH he stuffed up just about any job he did.
while I was pondering this very question I got a call from a band 4 ( no I
think he was band 5 by then) Tech we shall call BG. Now BG was a good
bloke
to have on your side and he would not put up with shite from anyone, He
called a spade a spade and was the bane of Senior management everywhere in
short in ideal Supervisor for BDT.
BG had a problem he had been chasing up a fault at a small Supermarket
out
west and discovered that the Cable from the MDF out to the cash Register
was
completely stuffed and would need to be rerun, a job which would require
two
people. This seemed like an answer to prayer as it sounded like a nice
filthy job (not that I am always vindictive mind) and BDT would be under
supervision.
So I sent BDT out to meet BG and provide the much needed assistance, sat
back with a sigh of relief and got on with the real business of the
day.........

About 40 Minutes after BDT left to assist BG I got a rather .... well
......
lets say ..... Annoyed call from BG if memory serves it went something
like
this :

"Hi Richard here who can I help ?"
"THAT ^%^=#WE^*+ IDIOT &%^><|%T# F^#*@I*&@ TED &^^*&*(#E*&%#*&( AND
*^Y&*&(^* BLOODY !!!$#>^*(@! AND **&^#@^(!!! AND F^&amp(#)(! AND THE
CUSTOMER
WANTS TO KNOW WHO IS GOING TO PAY FOR IT!!"
"what was that BG slow down mate take a deep breath I had a bit of Trouble
following that. What does the customer need payment for ?"
"THAT BDT IS A &^%*%&( AND &^T(*()())(*&9 AND HAS SMASHED THE CUSTOMERS
*!#@$%&(&%$# ROOF !"
"OK OK bob slow down a bit you say the Customers roof has been smashed ?
by
BDT ?"

Well to keep further obscenities to a minimum I will cut to the chase. It
turned out that the cable run was going to be through the ceiling of this
supermarket and BG decided to send BDT up into the ceiling while he fed
the
cable up to BDT and pulled it out at the other end. Anyway after checking
several times that BDT understood what was required of him BG sent BDT up
the ladder into the manhole...... Unfortunately BDT reappeared
unexpectedly
through the Gyprock ceiling about 2 feet away from the Manhole bringing a
significant portion of the ceiling with him. To this day I am in two minds
about wether it was a good or bad thing that the fall was not Fatal......

************************************************

two more brief tales on the stupidity of BDT.

That looks like a nice pager.....

BDT lived near Cabramatta a Suburb with a reputation for being the haunt
of
Drug addicts, Thieves, Rapists and other general low lives. One day BDT
comes in saying he has lost his pager.
"yeah righto Ted you have looked for it I presume"
"well actually it has been stolen"
"Have you reported it to the police ?"
"Not yet do I have to ?"
"Yes Ted report it to the police and then come back and fill in the
paperwork"

Well it transpired that what had happened was this :
BDT had had a sneaking suspicion that his Brain cells were coming back so,
He had decided to stop off at the pub and have a few (don't know what he
did
with the car) anyway while he was sitting there his Pager went off. I can
just see the scene know BDTs lips moving as he tries to decipher the page
and some shady type watching realising that BDT was about 3 tons of wheat
short of a Picnic. After BDT has grappled with the complex process of
deciphering the message this shady type taps him on the shoulder
" That's a nice looking pager mate could I have a look ?"
"yeah sure mate"
" Thanks actually my mate is interested in a pager can I show it to my
mate
outside ?"
"yeah sure mate"

well after a couple of hours sitting at the bar BDT realises that this
shady
character has disappeared for good and taken the Pager with him.

how do you fix a flat tyre ?

once again in sunny down town Cabramatta BDT left his FB Car in a car park
while he went shopping. Now if you are not a thief you need to know a
couple
of things about FB Vehicles.
First FB management reckon that security systems : Alarms, Security grills
etc etc etc cost to much and as result other than what comes standard with
the vehicle there is no Security on a FB Vehicle.
Second FB employees often need rather expensive tools even the lowest
lineys
van will have nice drills etc etc etc. In fact my car used to have about
$2-300,000 worth of Test equipment in it bit still Lord High Management
reckoned that Security for my car cost too much (a simple alarm cost $300
and Security grills $1500).
Thirdly just so no Thief can miss the opportunity FB Vehicles are clearly
marked with a logo (known as the flying Baked bean) on every side, front,
back and the bonnet too ( so it is visible to any flying thieves as well)
that beckons the average car thief with the call " expensive stuff inside
!,
No security !, Rob me, Rob me, Rob me" *

Anyway when BDT came back to his car he discovered that the tyre was flat,
now BDT was supposed to be a Techy right ,supposedly used to swinging a
spanner etc etc etc so changing a tyre should have been straight forward
right ! ... nope wrong this is BDT we are talking about here. He caught
the
bus home leaving his car overnight in a public car park in
Cabramatta............


* FB management some years ago payed a bunch of consultants a bunch of
money
to decide wether their cars should be marked or not. The consultants
advised
that :
The only publicity you get from marking a car/van is bad publicity.
Marking cars makes them obvious to Thieves.
Marking cars attracts road rage
Marking cars is a really really really bad idea for these reasons don't do
it Just DON'T do IT!

So of course naturally FB management decided that since it was such a bad
Idea they would go ahead and do it .......

Well anyway that is tonights stories I will have to see If I can remember
any other Brain Dead Ted stories to relate . But come on now surely
someone
else has some bedtime stories to contribute. Come on Mr Random sounds like
you could have a go! or Fredderic!

Regards
Richard Freeman

 

[Richard Freeman]

"Trevor Wilson" <trevor@rageaudio.com.au> wrote in message
news:3f4d3a15@news.comindico.com.au...

"Richard Freeman" <deletemerichard@atps.net> wrote in message
news:3f4c490e_1@news.iprimus.com.au...
I started writing up some techy Tales based on my experiences over the
years
to keep the folk over at iprimus.users entertained while their newsgroup
access was having problems and figured I might as well repost them here
as
some people may enjoy them. I am also interested in any tales other folk
may
have in a similair vein......

**Heheh. Here's (one of) my story:

About 100 years ago (ca: 1973 anyway, I was posted to the then new OTC
(Overseas Telecommunications Commission) exchange on Broadway in Sydney
(just next door to the Landsdowne pub)

Thanks Trevor I have heard many tales about OTC and the infamous Landsdowne
pub ...........
and your tale fits other stories I have heard of mindless beureaucracy over
ther including a story about a tech who in a fit of desperation went over
the road to Tricky Dicks, purchased a Transistor, got part of the exchange
back on the air and then the next morning got a dressing down from the PTO
for not using a proper Ericsson BC109 ......


any more tales ???

Regards
Richard Freeman

 

[Richard Freeman]

"Mark Hathaway" <u5678a@unite.com.au> wrote in message
news:3f4c96c9_1@news.iprimus.com.au...

Richard,


I can sympathies, I'm a cinema tech, and have a level 1, but should really
be a level 0.5 BDT trainee technician under my care. Nothing like being
handed a resistor when you ask for a capacitor. Mine cannot make a hole in
a
piece of ducting to fit a 20mm anaconda connection without making a 100mm
hole from 400 drill holes laid out in a not so round pattern, when I had
given him the hydraulic hole punch. Grrr. What he is good at is impact
testing of 60 inch plasma displays, man its hard telling the boss $15K
just
got smashed into a million bits. This wanna be tech cannot write the
address
correctly on a box to be delivered to a customer, so we also wonder if
breathing is a constant battle. Common sense just cannot be taught. This
one
will never rise above trainee, its been six months and its like running a
child minding service.

Plenty of management positions beckon for him at
FB..........................

Unlike the massive evil FB, there are only 2 of us on the road in
Victoria,
the boss and myself, (i'm not going to count BDT level 0.5, its just not
right his name being followed by the word "technician") and finding half
decent trainees who don't lie on their CV's, (We discovered electronics
experience and knowledge equates to plugging a dvd player into a tv) is
very
hard. Last advertisement placed in the media netted a lot of applicants
with
a Masters in Electronics or the like, who had only ever worked at 7eleven
and didn't know how to solder. Now I don't have a engineers suck,
technicians are superior complex, its a BA of Applied Physics for me next
year.


Is it just me, or are there less and less people technically capable, and
more and more paper engineers?

I have found that people nowadays seem to be getting more qualified and less
able ......
An example of this (in my Industry - Data Comms) is the plethora of people
who hold CCNA qualifications and often as not have no idea what a Router is
let alone how to set one up Properly.
When looking at potential staff nowadays (in the Tech industries anyway) I
am more inclined to give say a Hobbiyist consideration than a Computer
Science Graduate . In fact other qualifications such as Physics, Marketing
and Psychology IMO are more Valuable than Computer Science for work in the
IT Industry (combined with say an Interest in Comms/IT and/or experience) as
they at least show the level of commitment required to gain the
qualification and they have learned other skills which are often very
useful.......

The empire I work for also believes security on company vehicles is a
waste,
over 100k of tools in the back of mine, the funny thing is the only time
someone broke in, they took the fuel card thats linked to the rego. haha

when I worked for FB I did have my car broken into and a bunch of Test gear
was pinched .... The police found the gear a couple of weeks later dumped
behind a school I guess the druggies found they could not get much smack for
it.

Mark Hathaway
Melbourne

Any Stories to contribute about your BDT ??????

 

[Jim]

Back in the good ol days decent techs were a dime a dozen. Since there were
more techs than jobs, often the pay was woeful. Many decent techs left some
industries so that they could eat. As the remaining ones grew older the more
intelligent members of the younger generation looked around and said "Ya
gotta be jokin!".
I used to be a tech when Fred Flintstone, Barney and I drank at the local.
The pay was pathetic so exit stage left. I ended up in a profession earning
at least twice what I would of been earning as a tech. There were plenty of
starry eyed kids to take my place. Recently I looked at the current pay
scales in my old industry and the monkeys and peanuts thing came to mind.
When the kids of today point out that they can make more money working at
Maccas does the boss still say "Well off you go then." ?
Of course this is one experience/situation and may not apply to most techs,
I dont pretend to know.
BTW brain dead apprentices are not new. We had a 3rd year apprentice that
actually found an o/c resistor ! We taped it over his workbench as a trophy.
The same kid got out of electronics and made a fortune training greyhounds.
Makes you wonder who was dumb doesnt it

Jim

Richard Freeman <deletemerichard@atps.net> wrote in message
news:3f4eb250$1_1@news.iprimus.com.au...

"Mark Hathaway" <u5678a@unite.com.au> wrote in message
news:3f4c96c9_1@news.iprimus.com.au...
Richard,


I can sympathies, I'm a cinema tech, and have a level 1, but should
really
be a level 0.5 BDT trainee technician under my care. Nothing like being
handed a resistor when you ask for a capacitor. Mine cannot make a hole
in
a
piece of ducting to fit a 20mm anaconda connection without making a
100mm
hole from 400 drill holes laid out in a not so round pattern, when I had
given him the hydraulic hole punch. Grrr. What he is good at is impact
testing of 60 inch plasma displays, man its hard telling the boss $15K
just
got smashed into a million bits. This wanna be tech cannot write the
address
correctly on a box to be delivered to a customer, so we also wonder if
breathing is a constant battle. Common sense just cannot be taught. This
one
will never rise above trainee, its been six months and its like running
a
child minding service.

Plenty of management positions beckon for him at
FB..........................

Unlike the massive evil FB, there are only 2 of us on the road in
Victoria,
the boss and myself, (i'm not going to count BDT level 0.5, its just not
right his name being followed by the word "technician") and finding half
decent trainees who don't lie on their CV's, (We discovered electronics
experience and knowledge equates to plugging a dvd player into a tv) is
very
hard. Last advertisement placed in the media netted a lot of applicants
with
a Masters in Electronics or the like, who had only ever worked at
7eleven
and didn't know how to solder. Now I don't have a engineers suck,
technicians are superior complex, its a BA of Applied Physics for me
next
year.


Is it just me, or are there less and less people technically capable,
and
more and more paper engineers?

I have found that people nowadays seem to be getting more qualified and
less
able ......
An example of this (in my Industry - Data Comms) is the plethora of people
who hold CCNA qualifications and often as not have no idea what a Router
is
let alone how to set one up Properly.
When looking at potential staff nowadays (in the Tech industries anyway) I
am more inclined to give say a Hobbiyist consideration than a Computer
Science Graduate . In fact other qualifications such as Physics, Marketing
and Psychology IMO are more Valuable than Computer Science for work in the
IT Industry (combined with say an Interest in Comms/IT and/or experience)
as
they at least show the level of commitment required to gain the
qualification and they have learned other skills which are often very
useful.......


The empire I work for also believes security on company vehicles is a
waste,
over 100k of tools in the back of mine, the funny thing is the only time
someone broke in, they took the fuel card thats linked to the rego. haha

when I worked for FB I did have my car broken into and a bunch of Test
gear
was pinched .... The police found the gear a couple of weeks later dumped
behind a school I guess the druggies found they could not get much smack
for
it.

Mark Hathaway
Melbourne


Any Stories to contribute about your BDT ??????

 

[Richard Freeman]

First a few words to catch our dedicated friend w_toms regular google groups
search.......
Lightning, Surge, Mov, arrestor, Fried, Incinerated, blown Shiteless
...........

Well my first real dealings with lightning were doing component level
repairs on modems at the Fascist Beaurocracies DERC - Data Equipment
Restoration Centre. I often enjoyed the challenge of 'Lightning Damaged
modems as they tended to have usually more than one Fault - often in fact it
was touch and go as to wether they were beyond economical Repair but this
was the mid 80's and equipment was quite expensive, it often took quite a
bit of damage to achieve BER in fact even keyboards cost more than $15 then
and were often considered repairable. But I digress - anyway doing
component level repairs I had noticed that typically damage used to be if
not confined to the Line I/O circuitry then mainly around the Line Circuitry
in fact often scorch marks could be found tracking across the PCB from the
Line circuitry and terminations to the nearest earth or chassis point. In
fact the PSU was often completely unharmed and although I often found
completely fried Line Transformers I cannot recall ever finding a dead Power
Transformer as a result of a Lightning strike.

********************************************

- In which our protagonist is introduced to the destructive force of
Lightning......

Well not long after my stint in the DERC ( which I actually quite enjoyed )
I ended up Servicing PCs, (8086s and then 80286s - cutting edge for the
time) Computer Terminals and Printers for the Fascist beaurocracy. One day I
got a call out to Chatswood Line yard they had copped a direct strike on the
mobile phone base station out the back and lost a number of machines in the
office at the same time.

In those days the mainstays of FBs Computer Systems were AWA VTE6s, 8602s
and Siemens PT89 Inkjet printers now the VTE6 was an interesting machine
made completely from 74xx series TTL ICs but in this case the damage was
confined to a PT89 printer and about 6 AWA 8602 terminals. Following the
damage the path of the Lightning strike was fairly obvious : the fried
(completely fried - the Processor board was charred and had bloody big holes
burnt in it) printer was next to the window looking out on the cellphone
hut. A Serial interface cable from the Printer ran to the first dead (very
dead) 8602.

- a brief description of its innards are probably in order here. The 8602
consists of two circuit boards and a switchmode Power supply, The front PCB
is about 35Cms by 20Cms and contains the main Processor and video driver,
The rear PCB contains two Serial interfaces. One for Comms and the other for
the Printer these serial ports both have a daisy chain input for daisy
chaining a number of Terminals together to share the data link from the
mainframe or to share a common printer

Anyway back to the first 8602 pulling the cover off the machine the first
strange thing I noticed was that a number of Ics on the rear comms board
were grey, a kind of lightish grey, the Part numbers were still readable on
the top but touching one of them caused it to crumble into dust they were
about the colour and consistency of the ash from a mosquito coil. The second
obvious problem was the large hole burnt through the comms board making this
board a write off also in this machine the processor board was also shot
however the PSU which was enclosed in an earthed enclosure had survived.
well it had shut down from driving dead shorts on the processor board and
blown a fuse but replacing the fuse brought the PSU back to life.
Following down the daisy chained cable brought me to the next dead 8602
again the comms board had those curious grey ICs and a smaller hole burnt
through it but in this case the Processor board had survived and replacing
the comms board brought this machine back to life (the monitors on all the
Terminals survived). In fact the Lightning path was fairly obvious as the
damage to the comms boards lessened the further down the daisy chain I went
and had obviously come through the window (bear in mind this was not the
main strike) blown the living s...t out of the printer and then dissipated
via the Comms boards in the 8602s into the mains earth as it bounced around
through the daisy chained serial cables . No other PCs, faxes, photocopiers
or printers had suffered any damage.

******************************

As I found over the next few years (well the best part of 20 years)
Lightning paths typically came in via data lines (rarely through the window
though !) usually through the Telephone cables even underground ones. the
dead giveaway is the fried, Scorched and often incinerated modems and NTUs
(especially around the Line interface circuitry) and the fact that equipment
only plugged into AC mains survives.

*******************************

Another case I saw was at the most inappropriately named Mt pleasant - this
place is as flat as a billiard table and a complete dump. I was called out
to a Fault on an eftpos service following a Lightning strike the bank had
already replaced the Eftpos machine and things were still not working.

By the time I arrived on site the Lines section had also arrived, the surge
arrestors installed at the MDF (Main Distribution Frame) had literally been
blown off the wall (not one but about 50) fortunately these were plug in
modules and fairly easily replaced although a couple of the Krone blocks
were also scorched and required replacement. At the chemist (where the
Eftpos machine was) the fax machine was also fried but Cash registers, PCs
and other equipment had all survived.
The Eftpos machine now mostly worked but intermittently the Eftpos Machine
would drop out and a line test showed the Line back to the NAC (Network
Access Concentrator) was running errors.
Chasing the line back through the now repaired MDF everything checked out so
I headed back to the local exchange. The Telephone Techs were already busy
at Mt pleasant exchange (about 200 Metres down the road from the shopping
centre)as the Lightning strike had also blown the tripe out of a number of
LIs (Line interfaces) in the exchange equipment. Checking my line at the
local exchange all the connections were fine and the errors were on the line
back towards the NAC in Penrith (about 5 Kms away).
Back in Penrith testing from the Distribution Frame the errors still pointed
towards the NAC we had already tried switching to the Back up modem but I
tried that again and replacing the completely anyway with no success this
left a cable from the MDF and the Modem subrack. The subrack contained about
30 modems and I was in no hurry to strip it down on the other hand the cable
carried the lines from all the modems but what I could and did do was pull
the backshell off the connector between the cable and the subrack and there
they were scorch marks around the wires carrying the Faulty Service and was
obviously a repair that would have to wait for after hours ......

Of Course there is also the headland in Manly (up past the Hospital) but I
have gone on for long enough so I might leave those Tales for a later
date......


Regards
Richard Freeman

 

[Richard Freeman]

Sorry I realised after I posted the last tale I should briefly explain the
Terms 'Distribution Frame' and MDF for those not in the Telco industry these
are basically as the name implies Distribution Points for cables entering
the building and provide cross connections between these Cables and the
internal building cable via what are referred to as jumpers (merely twisted
pair wires).
The MDF in a Telephone exchange can be quite large often Terminating
thousands (or tens of Thousands) of pairs of wires from Various cables

Any other terms I have used that you feel need explanation please feel free
to ask.

Any other Tales out there ????

 

[Alan]

Lightning can certainly be a strange thing. My most vivid memory of it's
weird behaviour is one from some years back when I was a multifunction tech
in country NSW.
A fault was received for an out of order telephone service on a small RAX
(Rural Automatic eXchange). Jump in the truck (what ever wagon or van we had
been issued with that year), and drive 30 miles to the RAX. Manual testing
of the service revealed the same result as the remote testing had, an open
circuit. The line capacitance test showed that the fault was at the far end
of the line.
On the road again other 5 miles or so, knock on the door, introductions and
directions to the line entry point.
To digress for a moment, his part of the country sits amongst granite hills
and is well known for thunderstorms, although no storms had been seen or
heard in town for some time. Although aerial lines where common in country
areas such as this, the line to this property was actually underground.
A test at the line entry point showed that all was well to there. Time to
check the handset itself.
In side I found a chocolate brown 800 series rotary dial wall phone. The
wall it had been mounted in the middle of had been updated by a covering of
that cheap thin wood panel vaneer. Apart from the fact that there was very
little else attached to this wall apart from the phone, nothing appeared out
of the ordinary. The owner of the house ahd told me that the phone had been
working fine the morning before,but was not working when he had attempted to
make a call later in the evening.
To all outward appearances the phone looked fine, but lifting the handpeice
showed it was indeed dead. Time to open it up. Removing the cover revealed
the reason for the lack of operation. Every component inside, whilst still
basically intact was completely blackened. Removal of the telephone from the
wall for replacement showed that the nice new veneer panelling now had a
telephone shaped scorch mark. Which I might add was difficult to cover with
the newly released push button T200 handsets.
It is interesting to note that no cable replacement was required, as apart
from the scorching on the ends of the conductors and a little bit of
blackening of the sheath, the cable to the phone was undamaged.
In discusstion with the house owner it was found that there had been a small
isolated storm in the area the day before. Why the lighning had decided to
enter the underground cable, travel possibly several miles to destroy the
phone, which was not earthed or even near an earth point,is to this day a
mistery. No other appliances in the house where affected.

For those to young to remember...
A mile is a unit of measurement still used in the UK, and is approxiamtely
equivalent to 1.6Kms.
Prior to the introduction of electronic exchanges and tone signalling, open
circuit pulsing was used to signal the required digits to the telephone
exchange. These pulses where acheived, prior to the introduction of push
button dials, by a rotary mechanical device. A rotary dial. ;-)

Alan