The Technology Manager for our Renaissance Faire is about to learn one of those hard lessons. The lessone is that they know jack-diddly about running network cables.
:blink: A Renaissance Faire has a technology manager? Who knew? Well, this one will even have WiFi so merchants can do online credit card processing.
Here’s where it gets fun - a ginormous two-way satellite system is installed at the site as this place is well beyond the reach of DSL, cellphone data service or even a reliable wired telephone line. Cat 5 is strung to connect the satellite system to the faire office. Lots of Cat 5. Gobs of Cat 5. There’s roughly 800 feet of the stuff from end to end. Guess what? No repeaters. (The distance limit for ethernet cables is a smudge over 300 feet.) Throw in a grubby telco “66” punchblock near one end, some sharp 90 degree kink/bends and that it’s all zip-tied tightly to a chainlink fence.
Stir that all together and bake until one tasty LART* is done.
I’m just waiting for the howls when someone discovers that they’re going to have to go shopping for two hubs or repeaters to push signals through all that wire, and then puzzle over how to get power to them. It’ll also be fun seeing them trying to cut the cable into thirds, crimp plugs on the ends and discover that since the jacks are side-by-side on most devices, that the cable’s suddenly too short.
aka Clue-by-four or Luser Attitude Readjustment Tool - in this case, it will be a fairly expensive lesson.
I’d help with launching this person, but my trebuchet’s only big enough to fling peanuts and acorns.
The best part is that I got the distinct impression from someone else who also had the “They didn’t ask me and I’m not stepping into this!” stance was that there’s fresh ink drying on some sort of computer certification, possibly an MCSE. It would be really ironic if they’d gotten a CCNA.
If knowing jack-diddly about the subject of the OP is what it takes to be a Technology Manager, than I’m qualified because I didn’t understand a word of it.
umm… whichever one was running about fifteen years ago, that may have gone buns-up because the manager put most of the profits up her boyfriend’s nose?
Short chronology… She formed a faire 30+ years ago, and a few years back, sold it to a corporation out of Colorado. Corporation does what corporations do best - run things into the ground and jigger the books to make it appear that Northern Faire is the money hole. They decide two years ago to close Northern Faire. A hardy band of misfits (us) buys Northern Faire and whatever the corporation doesn’t want to pack and move for a buck.
She Who Started The Faire got into Victorian England and the writings of Charles Dickens and formulates a new fair. (No e on the end) A non-compete contract she had with the corporation she sold the Faire to expires and she starts up an even farther northern renaissance faire. This is all getting very expensive, and last year, the production company for her new Faire and the Dickens dealie goes out of business and sells its assets to a new production company operated by the same people. It’s widely speculated that the sale price was one dollar and other good and valuable consideration. :dubious:
Are you thoroughly confused yet?
At this point, we have about as much relationship to the original founder and her boyfriend as this board has to AOL. Sure, we were intimately involved at one point, but that’s ancient history, and we’ve had a few significant revisions along the way.
As for cheapness of fiber vs Cat 5, well, fiber may be getting cheap, but it’s still not something you can just pop into the local computer shop and buy. Not to mention, at Faire, dirt is considered a seasoning for your food, and fiber (its ends, at least) wants to be clean. It’s real easy, though to grab a box of Cat5 and start pulling.
