Verizon Dumping Usenet Servers

Somehow you must live on a different planet :-)

Yesterday I looked at all this stuff during our dog walk, because of this thread. Almost every pole has the steps, including ones they've replaced recently. But the steps don't start until 10ft up or so. They also do not reach past the telco/cable height.

Sigh. I believe they are built with a poorly designated right of way, and only to be serviced by a bucket truck. I stated that, and you questioned the cost difference. Are you developing Alzheimer's?

They never did.

What you see in one city doesn't mean everything is like that. Most telehone service is fiber to within a mile of homes. There is no large central office, just a small number of buildings acattered around the county that are about the size of a two car garage.

It sounds like your city is 30 years out of date if they are still using steps, if there is no room to use a ladder to reach them.

Obama has a pole czar ?:-)

...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona Voice:(480)460-2350 | | | E-mail Address at Website Fax:(480)460-2142 | Brass Rat | |

Around here we have buildings, scattered thru our neighborhoods, that look exactly like a regular house, until, up close, you notice barred windows. These house the "local" central office.

...Jim Thompson

No, but I don't quite believe your cost assumptions. Our utility is PG&E, not exactly a small mom and pop utility. I don't think they have Alzheimer.

I get around a bit. I have never, ever seen anyone climb up all the way to the lines with a ladder. Always bucket trucks. And why not? They need those anyway to prune back vegetation.

No 2-car garage buildings around here either. There is the occasional large cabinet, maybe the size of an old-style projector TV but those are mostly DSL cabinets.

Around here barred windows can be a good hint that there's a pot growing operations going on ;-)

Where I grew up there were no alleys but the electrical service was still on poles in the back of the house. It made it fun when the power company came through and replaced things. Homeowners were irate when they tore down fences and shrubs (they tried to spare trees). The answer was always, "Did ya' read your deed?"

Shouldn't every polecat?

That must have been a really old neighborhood. Wonder what they did when uncle Leroy decided to head back to his house, all fuming and cussing, and return with his rifle.

me.

Never seen one of them. Maybe because they did such a good job at camouflage. ;-) The one's I've seen are like bunkers; huge brick and mortar buildings with no windows. There are cabinets spread around the neighborhoods that look like small metal sheds, always next to a large pole, sometimes in the air bolted to it.

It wasn't then. ;-) My parents house was built in '59 and the houses on the road behind them in the late '60s.

Nah, I grew up in a weenie university town. The farmers carried shotguns on their tractors though.

Ok, that is quite old :-)

The old part of Folsom, CA has a few alleys but then people started building houses on the back parts of the lots, or splitting lots. So they became de facto streets.

The worst can happen if the poles are in the alley/yard and then people have a pool put in. One of the very few times where I yelled at someone else's kid at the top of my lungs was this: Power lines over the easement of the back of the yard, kids in the pool, they had those pump-action water guns and one decided to play "Let's make it rain". This boy never realized how close he came to death.

Then you are ok. But sometimes such quaint parts of towns later become a bit run down. You know, old Chrysler New Yorkers cruising up and down the street with mag wheels and tinted windows. I wouldn't want that utility job there.

Hey! Watch that!

Our house backed up onto a corn field, which was subdivided about ten years after we moved there. Everything by then had gone underground, unless the wires were already overhead.

I wonder really how close. Water isn't all that conductive. Pool water is pretty nasty though.

This was the area of town, where all the university professors lived (my father was one). It's still a nice area of town, though it looks like no one ever trimmed any of the vegetation planted back then. ;-)

I don't know. Just imagine if s.e.d. was replaced by a web forum. Much easier to post pictures or look through archives.

No, that was Joerg's one and only attempt at engineering design work for a utility. Sometimes putting the poles behind the house is a great idea. :)

Sorry that you misunderstood. The creosote that was used to treat phone poles and railroad ties in the US in the past used oil refuse from refineries that contained PCBs. Yours likely did as well. Until it was found to be the big problem that we know it is today, and now the creosote used to treat lumber is decidedly "cleaner" than it was in decades past.

PCBs are the most potent carcinogen known to man. Only two parts per million are all that are needed to mutate a cell.

Creosote impregnation IS a pressure treating method.