CableDog

Another weekend, another push for PonySky! Anyone interested, you're more than welcome to join as our community pushes ever closer to 900 members. A chill place and LGBTQ+ friendly for both pony fans and furs alike. Check the thread below for more info!
#mlp #mlpfim #furry
discord.gg/chqZSYfucT

I made it! If you see me say hi!

This goes so fucking hard dude

It may not be a big deal to most but I haven’t seen snow in probably around 7 years.

Aaaannnddd it’s snowing now.

First shift working overnight on North Texas upgrade, it’s already below freezing.

Image of hardline distribution cable damaged by multiple bird shot pellets

Image of repaired hardline cable

Haven’t had shotgun damage in years. What’s funny is out of all the pellets that hit the cable only 1 broke through the shield causing a short leaving 200ish customers without services.

Also my wrist and elbow hurt from splicing in the new cable in the cold. Contractor’s didn’t think to bring splicers with them, and of course the crew left me alone after they finished building the new lines.

This ended up being an all-nighter to fix. Only because the power company took most of the night to replace the pole. Apparently it was a drunk driver who ended up being ok.

👉🏽(snoot)

Two Moons

Merry Christmas!

watercolor sketch🌙

#mylittlepony

#2445911 - safe, artist:yakovlev-vad, nightmare moon, princess luna, alicorn, pony, g4, constellation, crescent moon, duality, duo, duo female, ethereal mane, eyebrows, fangs, female, full moon, glowi... #2445911 - safe, artist:yakovlev-vad, nightmare moon, princess luna, alicorn, pony, g4, constellation, crescent moon, duality, duo, duo female, ethereal mane, eyebrows, fangs, female, full moon, glowi...

Thanks to Yakovlev this and other awesome pieces.
derpibooru.org/images/24459...

Posting the only #MLP art I made for Luna Day. I drew this for #LunaDay 2020 so here are some different versions I came up with as I was finalizing the sketch. I'm in no way an artist so I don't know the proper terms. Also, this is a redraw of a piece Yakovlev did that I really liked, link below.

This one isn’t as interesting as the previous outage. This outage looks like old chainsaw damage to the feeder cable. In this case corrosion over time eventually caused AC power and upstream traffic to stop passing through the damage. What’s funny is this happened sometime ago with obvious no issues

Why 6.4MHz? Because that is the bandwidth of each of the four upstream channels. Not really sure exactly why the distortion repeats every 6.4 MHz rather than acting more like common path distortion which would be a flat elevation across the whole upstream spectrum.

Picture of cut of damage from BB or pellet.

Picture of repaired feeder cable

Shot of an upstream spectrum analyzer with severe distortions across the whole spectrum. So severe that it causes loss of upstream lock resulting in loss of service.

The pic of the computer is from the upstream spectrum analyzer for the node. This particular issue wasn’t strictly an AC short but also an RF short bridged by the AC path. When that bridge happens we get a RF distortion which repeats every 6.4MHz. This distortion interrupts modem traffic severely.

Had a couple of fun outages over the past week. This one was due to old BB or pellet damage to feeder cable. In all my 11 years I’ve never seen what I’m assuming is water vapor from the heat created by an AC short.

Introducing Princess Luna and Princess Celestia in a stunning parody poster that reimagines their magical sibling rivalry. Perfect for fans of Broadway, ponies, and whimsical mashups!
🖤 🌕 Luna takes on the dark and mysterious role, while Celestia shines as the radiant counterpart. #mlp #Wicked

Sounds like something a chicken would do

After swapping out the power supply BER values decreased down to nothing and also MER (modulation to Error Rate) also increased, which is good. Last time I found one of these issues it was so severe it was causing an actual outage.

The LE’s power supply has a bulged capacitor which you can hear buzzing in the video. This causes harmonic interference which will give major bit error rate (BER) issues. As a customer you may have video breakup on a cable box, or for internet service you may have slow to intermittent connection.

More cable issues! While not an outage, this issue was affecting an apartment building with roughly 30 subscribers. In your typical cable plant there are numerous signal amplifiers used to help distribute RF to subs. Here we have a bad power supply to a line extender (LE)

If anyone actually reads this and wonders how hardline coax breaks like that its most likely due to slight damage when the cable was first being built.Then over time from the swinging of the span from the wind to the changes of seasonal temps the outer shield cracks followed by the center conductor.

After removing the jacket the cable completely separated, mostly due to the weight of the ladder and myself on the span. I quickly spliced the break together with a .625 straight splice. I didn’t think to take the picture of the repair.

Picture of a cable plant map, circled out areas indicate the places I TDR’d the cable and were damaged cable was found. Other yellow boxes are redactions for the privacy of myself and the residents of the area.

I busted out my measuring wheel and measured out the footage I got from the TDR. At the 167’ mark I can see the cable looks damaged under the black PVC jacket. Getting out my ladder and climbing up on the span I cut off the jacket revealing completely broken outer and center conductors.

I started testing the run expecting to see passives around 250’ and 585’. I saw them but I also saw a small fault at 167’, most likely my elusive cause. I moved over to the next property over, luckily the owners were outside getting ready to smoke some pork or something.

Only to get called out again around 2:30am this morning. Of course, I put the outage on hold due to access issues. I returned that morning around 8am only to find that outage was already cleared. I went ahead got access at the last connection we TDR’d yesterday and I used my TDR this time.

Nothing obvious was found. I had a coworker run a trace with his TDR (look up time domain reflectometer) but as he was running it the battery died. He said that he didn’t see anything before the TDR died. So after checking everything we could we left with our fingers crossed hoping that was maybe it

So the outage has to remain off until the morning. What makes this one tricky is that by morning the issue clears. Yesterday I spent the morning hopping fences, getting scratched by thorny trees and poked by cacti, climbing poles and opening connectors and passives to find something broken.