Jan 17 - Blogus Interruptus

It's a mystery.  We have three phones that are hard-wired to the house wiring.  A patch cable from the VOIP connects them to the world.  The phones are in the den/loft, master bath and elevator. 

I just happened to check the other day and found that the elevator phone wasn't working (I care).  Sure enough, the master bath wasn't either (and I don't care), but the loft phone works ok.  It took a fair amount of testing but it appears that one of the pairs, somewhere, is compromised, somewhere in the walls.  I suspect that's behind the new work in the kitchen.  I'm not going to pull down a cabinet to check !  After much investigation and messing about, I switched to the other pair, did some extra diddling and we're in good shape now. 

The fiddling was the part that took the time.  One pair runs from the receptacle on the desk-side of the loft to the other side.  On that other side is the hard wired phone, plugged into a receptacle.  Behind that receptacle, the one pair and a two-pair set of wires is connected.  In the master bath, a two pair, different gauge, set of wires comes in and connects to a 4 pair (some not connected, obviously) and the receptacle.  From the receptacle runs a typical telephone patch cable to the wall mounted, by the toilet, phone.  Don't sit too long, is my motto !

After some checking, I found that wiring to the second pair got the signal to that junction but wiring the receptacle to that junction didn't produce a tone at that phone.  I suspect that was because the receptacle was so full of some, perhaps ?, dielectric grease (looked like vaseline but was like jelly) that it wasn't making contact once I removed and replaced.  I was then stuck with the task of baring some of the wires from the patch cable and soldering the lot together.  The patch cables have ultra thin wire clusters, I'll call them, each ultra thin wire on a side of the cluster with some coating on it, like varnish, providing insulation.  Baring those wires is one thing, soldering them is something else.  They don't solder.  They're too thin.  They melt.

Long story short, I got it fixed, but it was painful.  I'll do something better at some point.  As I suspected, that second 6-8 pair cable, runs to the elevator.  I figured that since the elevator is literally next-door to the toilet and had been added at the expense of bathroom space.  The bathroom is still larger than most NYC appartments, however, so it's not a real loss.

I was a couple of paragraphs into this treatise when I ran out of time and went to church.  Matthew was up; Zoe was fussing.  Sara got Zoe back down.  Matthew was down by the time I got home.  That's today ... this blog is supposed to be about yesterday.

Emma did some more riding.  We played with the elastic helicopters, for want of a better, name, that I'd bought from Harbor Freight, took to the cottage, realized that there were too many trees, and brought back.  The freight cost more than the toys, at about $1.50.  Zoe isn't interested in her three-wheeler here, for some reason.  She loved the one up north.  She does love running around outside though ... it's great living on this cul-de-sac.

We had tuna and crab cakes for dinner and then Sara, Jeffrey and Emma went to Wild Side by Flagler for ice cream. Zoe and I had popcorn, then Sandy put her to bed while I bounced/amused Matthew until she could take him back.  Matthew stares at my face, confused, no doubt, by the resemblance. 

I did do some more mangrove trimming somewhere in there, finally pushing my way through the thicket to some that I wanted to cut. 

That was pretty much it.  Jeffrey and Sara have planned their trip to Universal for Monday and Tuesday, booking a room at Universal for the interim night.  Zoe will stay with us. 

Onward !