My Day With a BellSouth Lineman Written by: HoppingGoblin Intended for use by the Telco-Inside at http://telco-inside.spunge.org/ 1 - Introduction/Background Info 2 - The Beginning 3 - On the Job a. Installing a New Line b. The Two Jobs In the Middle c. The Last Stop 4 - Wrapping Things Up 5 - Reflections (pretty deep stuff!) ######## 1 (one) ######## About a year has passed since I was given the opportunity to spend a day with a lineman as part of a job-shadowing program BellSouth has to show high school students what it's like being a lineman and what exactly it is a lineman does. I'll start with how I found this and ramble on a bit at how excited I was about it. I was sitting in jazz band (I play electric bass) getting my amp set up and whatnot while the school's morning "news" show was on. Luckily I was paying attention that day because what I heard next really woke me up and if I had missed it, I would have been left out of a great opportunity. In between the normal boring school news I happened to hear that BellSouth was offering to let interested students ride around with a lineman for a day, or as they like to call it Job Shadowing. This REALLY made my day! I made a point to skip lunch and head down to the guidance office to confirm what I had heard and get my name on the list as soon as possible. I was sent down to the Occupations Specialist to sign up and get information on the important dates, etc. Well, it was almost a month before the day would come but trust me, it was worth waiting for! ######## 2 (two) ######## After all that waiting the day had come for the information session! All participating students were called down to have a fifteen minute information session where we would get some paperwork and a little bit of a briefing about what we would be doing. It was kind of funny because other than myself, the only people who showed up were foreign exchange students and the Occupational Specialist's son (I later found out his dad made him go). I was relieved when they confirmed that we could bring my camera, because I wanted to do some heavy photography that day. I took so many pictures I have towonder what the lineman was thinking. At the information session I recieved the following things: - A really, really 'fruity' neon pink and green huge ass BellSouth pen - A list of all the COs and truckyards within around a 40-50 mile radius of the school (with the truckyard we were supposed to meet at circled for us) - A BellSouth folder with some random information about the salaries of the different types of BellSouth employees. (and if you ever wondered why operators can be so irritated with you, ask me what they get paid sometime, you'll understand!) - The consent form saying that in the event I should die while with the lineman, BellSouth wouldn't be held responsible Now, on to the good part! ######## 3 (three) ######## Well, the day has arrived! I woke up in the morning and was wide awake (very unusual) and ready to go. I showed up pretty early and was given a pretty neat BellSouth T-shirt. We sat around a little while waiting for everyone to show and then we spent about 10 minutes talking about who was riding with who to the truckyard. Personally I didn't care, I just wanted to get there. After we left it was only a short drive and then we were there! Walking towards the main building I surveyed the area and was freaked out about being surrounded by a whole parking lot full of vans and trucks. Right before we went inside I caught a glimpse of the supply garage where all the linemen stock up on their goodies that they might need before going out on the job. We were escorted to a meeting room and all took a seat while the linemen gradually sifted in. When it was time to start we were told to just pick a lineman to go with, and let me tell you, this was a hard choice! I got up and looked around pretty fast in an effort to get a "good one" before someone else chose him (they were all men). By the end of the day I was glad I chose who I did because he was extremely nice and willing to tell me all about his job. Well, it was time to go so we walked out to his van and I hopped in while he went to check something. Needless to say I busted out my camera and started taking pictures and also got a good look at everything around me. When he was ready he started the van up, cranked the AC (this is Florida, it's always hot and humid), and pulled out of the truckyard. It was kind of awkward at first but he began telling me all about his job, what he liked and even disliked about it (proof that he wasn't a brainwashed BellSouth zombie) and showed me how they receive their jobs. Inside each van is a laptop running a stripped down version of Windows 95, on a lovely monochrome touch sensitive screen, and connected wirelessly to the BellSouth network. He explained that the laptop simply gave him a job when he was ready. Now what really surprised me was the fact that there was a printer in the van that spewed out the job details (address, type of job, etc.). a. Our first visit was to some weird guys house to install a new line. This was probably my favorite part of the day because I got to see exactly how a new line is installed. We pulled out in front of the house and I took a few shots of the lineman getting his stuff out of the back of the van. We headed over to the side of the house and popped open the T.N.I. and he got all his tools ready to put in the new line. It only took a few minutes for him to connect the wires to a new phone jack. During this he talked about the alarm system that had been installed and told me that whoever did it did it the correct way and didn't slack off. I might talk about this sometime but for the sake of space will skip it for now. He also showed me this pretty nifty tool made by 3M (I forget the name of it, but it can be seen in some of the pictures I took). With it he could see a plethora of information about the line. Unfortunately I forget the exact details, but it was mostly things like the length of the line, whether it detected any faults, etc. Now that the hardware was installed, it was time to configure this bad boy and get it set up. Now a lot of people have asked me about those boxes and 'cans' you often see up on the telephone poles. The one he opened he called an aerial splice. He also told me that before opening these it's wise to tap them first to check for wasps, bees, homeless people, etc. When he was up there he checked some of the pairs to see if he could find a dial tone. He explained that this would either be easy or hard, depending on whether or not any previous linemen had correctly labeled whether or not a line was currently using that pair. He found one but due to the age of the lines, it wasn't crystal clear, a little static was on it, but it would do for now. I apologize because I can't seem to remember whether or not he did this before or after we visited the crossbox. But I'll talk about the crossbox while I'm here. He attached a pretty nifty device (he called it a "noise maker") to the T.N.I. and we headed out to the local crossbox. He sat down and used (what he called) a tone detector to hunt down the line that led to the T.N.I. The tone detector was also pretty neat because when he found the line, it emitted a high pitched warbling sound. We actually had to make one or two visits to it, but nothing of note really happened. With the lineman's part of the job done, he logged it into his laptop and received a new job. b. Now I'll be very brief here and give you a summary of the two jobs in the middle since they were pretty boring and not much was done. Job two was to check out a bad line at a small business but when we got their, it was working fine and everything seemed in order with the lineman so that was that. Next up was a stop to someone's house. They weren't home and the fault was coming from inside the home so nothing could be done...blah. Anyways, on to the last job! c. The last job was..well, pretty funny. It turned out to be at a trailer park with (I'm exaggerating) streets that seemed to be no more than three feet wide and could only fit one car going in one direction. Now, as you can guess, a BellSouth van is nothing short of a whale so the lineman got to demonstrate his m4d driving skillz. At first we couldn't find where in the world the place was until we realized that the trailer wasn't even there, it was just a T.N.I. attached to a stake in the ground. This might actually be my favorite job now that I think about it. He ran a variety of tests on the line by dialing up the local D.A.T.U. and there appeared to be a short in the line so he had to refer it to the cable technician. Now, by pure chance he used his cell phone to dial up the D.A.T.U. and guess what? Cell phones just so happen to display the number that's being called so I was able to shoulder surf the number and password! I had been searching for this number for quite a while so this made me VERY happy. The only other thing to talk about was how his tone detector probe broke while he was there so he popped the sucker open and sent me to the van for a 9V battery, I took the time to jot the D.A.T.U. number down before I forgot it and grabbed the battery. Turned out it wasn't the battery that was the problem so he opened it up and fixed a broken wire inside it. Unfortunately, our time was just about up. We had to head back to the truckyard for lunch and then we would be sent back to school. We spent the ride back talking about the day, I thanked him profusely for explaining things to me and taking time from his day to do this. ######## 4 (four) ######## Well, the rest of the time was used for lunch. They ordered a ton of pizza while we each took turns talking about what we had done during the day. I found out that the lineman I was with was quite a hard worker by the reactions of his co-workers when I was asked how many jobs we had completed. He also explained to me during the day that he thought that it was his duty to do his job to the best of his abilities. What a guy, huh? Now to the stories he told me while we were cruising around! He told me about the various creatures he had encountered while on the job, some of these things included a rat sleeping in a crossbox, snakes, lizards (he caught it for his son), and very large and VERY creepy looking spiders that had inhabited a tree very close to a pole he had to climb. He showed me a picture he took of one of them and it was something from a nightmare. When I asked him if he ever had to go down into the manholes he said no, but told me a story about how some workers were cutting metal near an open manhole. Now normally this wouldn't be too much of a problem, but these happened to be some very antique phone lines, back when they were wrapped in paper...now when you cut metal sparks shoot out...I think you can guess what sparks plus old dry paper equals. Lets just say quite a few people went without phone service for a while until it could be repaired! He also said that they were expected to complete a certain amount of jobs within a month and that if they received a job, but didn't show, the company would be fined $1000 for each time this happened. Also, don't forget that you will be charged if the problem with the phone line is from inside your house when a lineman checks it. ######## 5 (five) ######## This is it my friends! Now it's time to talk about my thoughts on the whole ordeal. To put it simply, I had a great time! Now this was on a school day, but I would have done it even if it had taken up a whole Saturday. I actually wished it wasn't for just a half day and instead a full one because I really wanted to do more. I also would recommend checking with your guidance counselor if your still in high school and see if anything like this is offered, you'll enjoy it. Now, I'm not sure if I was lucky to have such a nice guy to show me his job or if it's somewhat of a rarity, but I'd give it a try anyways. Oh, I also got a BellSouth CD case at the end of the day. Whoo. But anyhow, any comments, suggestions, corrections, etc. are very welcome. -HoppingGoblin HoppingGoblin@theswampthing.com Ah, and the pictures can be downloaded from here: http://theswampthing.com/phrk/phreak2.zip Be warned, it's over 6 megs. Or you can check out the highlights of them with Cuebiz's excellent commentary here: http://telco-inside.spunge.org/lineman.html I don't like linking directly to that (and may remove the link eventually) so I encourage you to check out http://telco-inside.spunge.org/ while your there.