Haha... so you've seen my work! Hey, I needed those coffee breaks after coming to work in the morning still drunk from the night before. Ah, your stories bring back those nerve-racking memories! Oh yeah, and that 255lb fiberglass ladder? That was a hoot to carry when working alone wasn't it? I lived for those days!
Still, bet you never encountered cable installs and maintenance by the lowest biding contractors on military bases have you? Well, maybe you did. I'll never forget doing contract work in Turkey. Every time the contract went up for bid they got a different contractor. By the time I inherited it, it was an indescribable nightmare (and I also inherited all the VERY pissed-off and home-sick military personnel and embassy employees who couldn't get their AFRTS AFN channels). My first month on the job I was out to prove myself worthy and isolated a huge signal drop injecting terrible noise from a buried 500 cable. Well, no wonder the signal sucks! I can fix this! Stop! Not so easy. This is Turkey. First, red tape and bureaucracy! After 6 weeks of paperwork and 4 bottles of Jack Daniels as "gifts" to Turkish Labor Union, I was able to sub-contract a local crew of Turks to dig up and replace the bad section of cable. It was then I learned that the previous contractor broke the cable with a backhoe, and so to restore it they spliced in a 4 meter section of 500 using solder and electrical tape (no connectors!) then buried it back up in a tangled heap. The hilarious part to this story is that the Turks I sub-contracted were the previous contractors who broke and repaired said cable! They were happy to tell me all about it and we became great friends.
It took me a year to get the db signal levels within reasonable specs and win the trust of my subscribers. Then, George Bush decided to have his war in Iraq, pissed off the Turks who rightfully refused to support the US, and Bush made the Turks so angry they ordered all contractors out of Turkey asap - thus leaving me jobless (as I handed the contracting job back over to the same Turks who broke the cable). Still, it was an interesting experience. Well, we all have stories to tell don't we? I have photos of it all. Laughable experiences. I guess should post them. In fact, maybe we should have a sub just for our stories.