Excitement for the Day

This afternoon, we got a flurry of calls of dead phone lines at one of our other campuses. More than a dozen were called in. So they asked me to go out and check them out, thinking that it might be our digital PBX, which usually doesn't have a lot noisy or bad lines, the old timer usually just fails completely. :o( So I had to drop everything and go out there. This alone was enough excitement for the day.

So I get out there and go into the closet, and I about stepped in a big sticky trap with not a rat, but a little field mouse in it. Next to that was a big rat trap, the kind that can take a finger off. Well, it also had a field mouse in it. I dunno how he managed to trip the plastic paddle, which was bigger than he was. Both were pretty dried out, been dead quite a while. So I took them out into the room, and immediately a half dozen ladies were grossed out by the sight of the critters, "EWW! Get them out of here!" was the general response along with hands over their eyes.

I checked the lines with my buttset and found a couple okay but 8 had no dialtone, some were really hissy and noisy. I called the help desk and said that they were going to need to get a SBC tech out there. She said that there were a couple more that were just called in as dead - oh well. I got ready to leave, and luckily here comes the SBC tech walking in the door. I said, good luck! There are 8 lines dead. He said he had a trouble ticket for only two. I figured that the problem was probably caused by last night's rain, and water getting into the cable. So I figured that if he found the problem with one, he would probably find and fix the problem for all of them. But he said that if he had a major problem he would't do it and he'd have to call cable repair. That usually means another couple day's down time. :-(

Well, I left soon after, because the problems were all out there in the street somewhere. I had had enough excitement for the day. The ladies gave me a very dirty look as I left, as if I still had the rat traps in my hand. But that's alright, I only go out to this campus maybe once a month, and by the time I'm out there again, they will have forgotten about the critters in the traps. I hope...

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You'll be glad you did! Just when you thought you had all this figured out, the gov't changed it:
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Reply to
Watson A.Name - "Watt Sun, th
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I read in alt.binaries.schematics.electronic that "Watson A.Name - \"Watt Sun, the Dark Remover\"" wrote (in ) about 'Excitement for the Day', on Wed, 23 Mar 2005:

So much for the feminist movement! And that's what I say when I'm confronted by that stupid behaviour. I've managed to escape unharmed so far.

Reply to
John Woodgate

You probably throw a few rubber mice at them and run for cover! ;)

Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

I notice that you did not say whether you told the SBC tech about the mice, although maybe he saw them! I could easily be that mice had chewed into some cables, causing almost any kind of problem.

Reply to
Rick Merrill

Reminds me of one of my dad's TV repair calls. Opened up the high voltage cage and found a dead mouse, that appeared to have made the mistake of pissing against the HV flyback transformer.

When the home owner was told, she went ballistic... "I don't have mice!" ;-)

...Jim Thompson

Reply to
Jim Thompson

Mice chew up anything they can get their mouths on, they build nests, and piss in them. The fun part is when they build a nest over some important circuitry, and piss all over everything. The corrosion is impossible to fix.

I was talking to a telco guy one day, and he was telling me a story about a woman that called complaining her service was out. Well, he opened up the terminating box in front of her house (buried service), and inside the box, all over the punch blocks, was a huge mouse nest.

He killed the mice, and replaced the punch blocks, and had everything ready to go when the woman came out and asked if he found the problem.

He told her about how he removed the nest, and "disposed" of the mice, and she went ballistic!

Anyway, she called that other PETA organization (not the People Eating Tasty Animals, the other one... you know, the fruitcakes.) By the time the telco guy got back to his station, there were picketers marching on the sidewalks our front.

Everyone got a chance to go through an "animal sensitivity" training seminar. Which mostly consisted of ways of offing the mice so that no one will notice, and being instructed not to talk about such things.

-Chuck

Reply to
Chuck Harris

Oh yes indeed. I once had a mouse for some odd reason decide to chew a hole in the distributor cap in a Jeep an make a nest in there...

THAT was dramatic, so say the least. Fuel line caught fire (dunno exactly how, but it did)... Engine block actually melted. Vehicle was a total write off.

Reply to
T. Sean Weintz

I read in alt.binaries.schematics.electronic that Rick Merrill wrote (in ) about 'Excitement for the Day', on Thu, 24 Mar 2005:

Do mice do that? I know that rats do. I suppose Texas mice would.

Reply to
John Woodgate

Watson is in California.

Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

I read in alt.binaries.schematics.electronic that Jim Thompson wrote (in ) about 'Excitement for the Day', on Thu, 24 Mar 2005:

My friend's washing machine was making a strange noise and emitting a faint odd smell. Joking, I said, 'Maybe there's a mouse in the motor.' There was.

Reply to
John Woodgate

probably

By the time he came, the ladies had forced me into putting them and the traps outside where the custodial guy disposed of them. Besides, they had been dead for quite awhile, they were getting a bit dried out.

But get this: The next morning (Fri.) we had several more lines called in - same problem. And then by noon, SBC told us they estimate the lines will be repaired by Monday, the 28th, at 9 PM! That's five full days! A guy told me SBC have had two construction trucks out in front of the site all day.

It took a lot more than a couple field mice to cause all that excitement. When that many phone lines go down and people start calling them in, it tends to get the help desk people a _bit_ jumpy! After the first half dozen, they go into damage control mode!

Yesterday, at noon, just before the (above) fit hit the shan, we walked over to The Olde Ship Pub to eat lunch. They have this British Weekly paper there, and I grabbed a copy and started reading it while waiting for a bolw of clam chowder and a sandwich (I think it was a pork and applesauce - she ordered and I ate half). I opened up this paper and started reading this story and was about grossed out myself! Eeww! What I can't understand is why they let the SOB out the first time!

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EEEWWW!

Reply to
Watson A.Name - "Watt Sun, th

Aww, that was a namby-pamby sanitized article. This one is much more graphic. EEWWW!

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Reply to
Watson A.Name - "Watt Sun, th

on

Mice? probably not. But rats chewed our fiber optic cables up to make nesting material in an underground conduit.

And they chewed right thru the black wire in the power strip under my cow-orker's desk. Without getting zapped!

Speaking of getting zapped... Check this out. Click on Not-So-Silent Nightlight - 1/12/05.

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BTW, for you Brits and others, gives you an up close look at the prongs on our wall plugs. ;-)

Reply to
Watson A.Name - "Watt Sun, th

But the rats are originally from Norway. ;-)

Reply to
Watson A.Name - "Watt Sun, th

on

I just got thru watching the last half of this on TV - Behind Prison Walls. Lotsa schizos and nuts locked up in padded cells. Pretty eye-opening statistics. I was surprised to see one woman inmate make a cig lighter out of the steel wool from a brillo pad and two AA cells(!)

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Reply to
Watson A.Name - "Watt Sun, th

We should send them all back, they are illegal immigrants! ;)

Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

I read in alt.binaries.schematics.electronic that "Watson A.Name - \"Watt Sun, the Dark Remover\"" wrote (in ) about 'Excitement for the Day', on Thu, 24 Mar 2005:

He was assessed by shrinks and considered no longer dangerous. The trouble is that people who are released stop taking medication. I know you have the same problem in USA, but I suspect your shrinks are less inclined to release people.

We also have a legal problem with people who come to the attention of the mental health people and are considered potentially dangerous but haven't committed any criminal offence. They can't be detained against their will, but the government wants to change that, because several have gone on to kill. However, a law allowing that is obviously open to abuse.

Reply to
John Woodgate
[snip]

Biggest problem we have in the USA is the release of child molesters after they've "done their time".

I'm reluctant to propose death penalties for child molestation, it's likely to result in more child deaths to hide the molestation crime.

But I could easily support life imprisonment without parole.

And for those who murder their victims, drop all the PC bull-shit and give them death by torture.

Obviously. Another big problem we have here is you can't arrest based on a threat to kill... you have to wait for an attempt, or success, before arresting.

...Jim Thompson

Reply to
Jim Thompson

Thank God for fast breakers! My oldest son, when a small child, inserted a bobby pin into an outlet. It went off like a flashbulb. Only damage... mild burn on the fingers.

Then I loaded up all the outlets with those plastic blocking plugs... hard to find 35 years ago, common today.

...Jim Thompson

Reply to
Jim Thompson

No....

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Reply to
Watson A.Name - "Watt Sun, th

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