response 525 of 561:

Oct 16 17:54 UTC 1996

   If we get another delay I will personally esclate things to
the level of the president of Ameritech in Chicago.
   The people in Ameritech know how irratated I am with them
in general.  Thats one of the reasons why we got the good account 
rep (Ken)--to lessen our complaints about them.  Ken knows that
I will go through the roof if they screw up again.
   But sure, someone go ahead and call the city.  It won't do any
harm, but I think I'd prefer to leave on the 22nd no matter what.

response 531 of 561:

Oct 18 02:50 UTC 1996

We need to get a phone cable.  It should be maybe not much less than 25 feet
long and something like a 25-pair cable would be nice.  My brother suggested
that I could try Weidmayers and Purchase.  (I'll call them tomorrow, if I can
find a phone number for Weidmayer, which doesn't seem to be in my phone book.)
Likely, he though, such a cable would be pretty expensive, and that many
conductors hard to find.  Maybe several parallel thinner cables?  He thought
we might be able to get the phone company to give us one from scrap.

I don't think we could canniblize the old cables very well.  They don't look
quite long enough.

Anyone have any better ideas about where to find this?  I really know
nothing about this stuff.

response 533 of 561:

Oct 18 02:58 UTC 1996

Re 531 - I don't even know what a "25 pair cable" is, other than something
to do with a phone connection.

response 535 of 561:

Oct 18 05:28 UTC 1996

I saw the room for the first time last night.  That is indeed a neat paint
job.

I'm not sure how interested we woudl be in in an old cable of unknown origin,
given the problems that line noise can cause for us.  I'd prefer to go with
a new cable, which we can probably assume is good.

RohH -- each phone line needs a pair of wires, which are generally twisted
to avoid inductive coupling problems (and thus called twisted pair).  A 25
pair cable has 25 wire pairs in it, and can hold 25 phone lines.

response 537 of 561:

Oct 18 14:00 UTC 1996

Let's see:  Wedonthaveitmeyer's phone No. is 665-8611.

response 539 of 561:

Oct 18 15:52 UTC 1996

I called the Recycle Ann Arbor Reuse Center.  They apparantly don't do cable.

Purchase radio says they can set me up with somehting for not much more than
$1 a foot.  Sounds like they are going to get a bit creative, which may well
be OK.  I'll go over there and talk to them some more.

response 541 of 561:

Oct 18 16:06 UTC 1996

Puchase is a pretty good place, if they have it.  They'll make a good deal
on it per foot.

Also possible to call a phone installer?

response 543 of 561:

Oct 18 17:00 UTC 1996

Well, I got a 20-pair cable from purchase, though I paid $1.50 a foot for it.
Oh well.  Communications out of sync.

response 545 of 561:

Oct 18 17:38 UTC 1996

25-feet may be a bit hard for people to take back.  It's a short length, not
so easy to re-sell.

response 549 of 561:

Oct 23 00:48 UTC 1996

No big surprises.  As much of the move story as I can remember:

Our dungeon landlord, Nick Contaxes, found the new location for us.  His
support for Grex has been wonderful and we owe him a debt.  Bill Van Fossen,
the pumpkin landlord, has been very friendly from the first.  STeve and
Valerie have been our main contacts with Bill, in negotiating the lease and
making sure that everything was set up before the move.  Lease was drafted
by SRW and various board members, and Valerie took care of getting it signed.
STeve, STeve's kids (Stacy and Damon), Valerie, and I hauled a lot of junk
out of the room, cleaned and vacuumed.  Kami did some painting (with some help
from Valerie).  Valerie and I figured out how to run a new phone cable into
the room.  Valerie and Bill checked out the electrical circuits.  Bill
replaced the lock.  Valerie got duplicates of the key made and distributed
to the staff.  STeve spent a lot of time negotiating the new phone connections
with Ameritech, and making sure they were on the ball.  He also located a
phone cable.  Valerie and I bought supplies for new shelving for the new room.

On Monday morning, I went to the pumpkin and started putting up shelving, with
help from Robh.  We spent a lot of time figuring out where the studs were,
but seem to have found them.  The Ameritech people showed up right on time
and started the new install.

At the same time, the rest of the gang went to the dungeon:  Valerie, STeve,
Ajax, Scg, and Blh (Scott's dad, Ben).  I don't know the details (wasn't
there) but they shut Grex down, did some mapping of what cables where plugged
into what, and pulled the whole thing apart, even disassembling the desk
(which was too big to haul up the stairs in one piece).  Blh and STeve dragged
the Sun up the stairs and everything was loaded into the back of Blh's truck.
The arrived while Robh and I were finishing the shelving, and started
unloading the truck.

STeve headed straight for the basement to conspire with the Ameritech guys.
He got the cable from them, and with Valerie's help pulled it through from
the phone closet to the pumpkin.  Valerie left for an interview.  Blh and I
reassembled the desk while Ajax and Robh finished unloading.  Blh and I left.
Ajax started putting Grex back together, plugging this into that.  STeve
went off seeking cable ties.

When I came back, Robh was just leaving to go to work, and Grex had mostly
been reassembled.  STeve left to fetch kids, and Marcus arrived.  I mounted
the plywood board with our phone connections on the wall over the trap-door,
and put a hole through the wall for the phone cable.  Marcus went to work
plugging more cables together, and bringing Grex up.  Gregc arrived and
started hooking up the pumpkin end of the phone cable to Grex's phone block.
He did quite a bit of checking and testing of the phone connections and hooked
up a bunch of extra pairs so adding future lines will be easy.  Marcus noticed
that the power conditioner had a T-plug that didn't fit into any wall socket,
so Ajax and I went back to the dungeon to scavenge an appropriate socket from
there.  Valerie and STeve found Bill and got him to turn off our circuit
breaker while me, Marcus and Gregc took turns trying to install the new wall
socket.  This delayed Bill enough so he had to drive home in the dark in a
car with a broken alternator (so the headlights run off the battery and tend
to get dim).  Gregc unplugged some fuses from Bill's car to disable some
battery- draining components, and Marcus and Valerie escorted him home.  Scg
and I sawed some shelves for Grex's little closet.

By this time the phone were up and we were able to bring Grex up.  The
instant Scg put it on the net, we were socked with hundreds of sendmails,
as every computer in the world that wanted to send mail to Grex simultaneously
discovered that we were back on the net.  This was expected, of course, and
we left the system up for several hours before we let any users log in, so
the mail could catch up.  We hung around as people gathered and then went
off to Cottage Inn for lunch, leaving Robh behind to open Grex to the users
when the sendmail flood had calmed down.  Vanessa, and the rest of the Andre
family joined us for dinner.

Scg, Valerie and I returned to the pumpkin after dinner.  Robh phoned from
work immediately to tell us that many of the modems didn't seem to be
answering.  Marcus had earlier expressed some doubts about whether the ALM
card had been hooked up correctly.  Valerie discovered that at least one
modem was plugged into the wrong slot, and Scg discovered that at least
some of the phone cables were plugged into the modem's PHONE plugs instead
of the LINE plugs.  We disconnected the modems and redid all the wiring.
None of us had brought a laptop with a modem, so Scg called Shepard and
asked him to try dialing into each modem in turn.  They all worked.