One day, you're all going to die.

[reddragdiva]

• NotN: Inexplicably low ratings for digital channels, Hugo Chávez speeds up Bolivarian Revolution.

I am going to be 42 some time this week. As such, I propose a visit to The Pub™ — Pembury Tavern, Sunday 7pm until chucking-out. I understand many others will be there with the intention of celebrating their own lives, so it's only fair to give them the opportunity to celebrate mine too.

Today I performed athletics in the Spaghetti Shite Olympics. The name comes from the sobriquet one of the machine room guys gave the horrible temporary cabling I put into place ahead of a switch upgrade (100Mbit to 1Gbit). On Friday I was using crimpers at work! Well. A crimper. A cable crimper. It's not clear how in eight years' system administration I evaded making my own cables. But I'm good at it now! White/green, green, white/orange, blue, white/blue, orange, white/brown, brown. (check) Yep, remembered it right. This is burnt into my brain forever, or at least another week.

I trashed my boot sector aborting an install of WUBI, so I'm now recovering by installing an ancient Ubuntu 6.06. I'm writing this from the live CD. With Linux, you can LiveJournal while you install!

Comments

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

It sure would be nice if Zombie Simón Bolívar rose up and fucked Hugo Chávez in the ass before eating his brains.

[baljemmett.livejournal.com]

Now I'm wondering why I use 568B instead of 568A (swap pairs 2 and 3 -- orange and green); there must be some reason I decided to burn that version into the old noggin years ago... Hmm.

[hazyjayne.livejournal.com]

I suspect damerell and I will make it as it is out third anniversary this weekend and it is All Your Fault ;-)

[reddragdiva]

\m/

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on surviving another year!

With Linux, you can LiveJournal while you install!

Sounds like a standard working day :)

[txtriffidranch.livejournal.com]

A significant number of US television stations went from analog to digital yesterday, with the results that could be expected from the general education standards in my country. After a solid decade of warnings about the switch, and incessant advertising noting that the switch would happen no matter what, the stations that switched over are now inundated with phone calls from alter kokkers and other morons who knew that the switch was going to happen but couldn't be bothered to get conversion boxes. Oh, I take that back: most of the callers were screaming about how the conversion box plan was a ripoff that's "just trying to steal my money!"

[stilkil.livejournal.com]

Hrmmm.....notice of gathering......good,

- 3 days before payday....bad

Sorry, I don't have train fare, so will not be able to attend.

i will be flush the following weekend - not that this is helpful ;-)

I completely blew my budget for the month by going to Italy for my 40th last weekend ;-)

[heliumbreath.livejournal.com]

Only 42? I'm *cough* 46 *cough* and had always though you were a bit older, or maybe it's just my ongoing attempt to not grow up.

Crimpers are evil and fiddly; I'd rather be punching down to the back of the panel, and premade patch cords are a wonderful thing. Most of the major outage tickets at $TELCO had a root cause involving some datacentre monkey's attempt with a crimper finally working its way loose.

[mjg59.livejournal.com]

Sup dawg, etc.

[reddragdiva]

It was either order cables and have them take weeks to show up, or get out the crimper. Cables have held up ok so far.

[gothgeekgirl.livejournal.com]

Hm. Nearly 18 years as a sysadmin myself, and I have yet to so much as handle a pair of crimpers, much less make cables. I have, however, changed out both toner cartridges and disk drives without confusing the two.

[xlerb.livejournal.com]

Huh. I do the orange first and the green around the middle (unless it's half of a crossover, but most of the time I don't need those anymore).

The Towel of Babel

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

Aha! The Towel Birthday.

I will be there, trains permitting.

[damerell.livejournal.com]

Likewise (well, ten years or so). I have friends who can crimp and occasionally need wheels built...

[reddragdiva]

The UK did it very gradually (since 2001) and really quite successfully. The digital picture is so much better, never mind the poxy extra channels. Satellite TV has remarkable market penetration too, and Freeview boxes are basically free with cereal now.

[pndc.livejournal.com]

I'll bet that colourblindness has something to do with it.

The cable colours are of course white/brown, light-brown, white/brown, blue, white/blue, shiny-brown, white/brown, dirty-brown. Handily, they wrap the three identical white/brown cores around the light-brown, shiny-brown and dirty-brown cores so I can identify them.

Amazingly, I've yet to make a cable that didn't work. I've had to remake quite a few cables done by people with full colour vision, mind.

[baljemmett.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure, to be honest; I remember deciding to use 568B explicitly when I wired up my house in student days. It's possible, I suppose, that it was something as mundane as the wall plates I was using had the 568B colours printed on the PCB and 568A as a sticker to put over the top if you wanted the other aide memoire instead.

Strangely I'm the other way around with the colours -- I find I have to use the white/brown cores to tell the brown ones apart. I can't tell the light-brown and shiny-brown apart without the stripe; luckily the dark-brown is easy enough to spot. Luckily that means I just make inadvertant crossover cables occasionally!