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Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
Sprocketville
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Don't forget the Rectumfrier.
Which is really a Dieold.
Hey, how much snow in the Park?
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Majid_S
Mountain climber
Bay Area
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 10, 2009 - 12:10pm PT
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Rokjox
is there a FCC cop that checks people's license ?
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Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
Sprocketville
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Apr 10, 2009 - 01:34pm PT
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Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
Sprocketville
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Apr 10, 2009 - 01:45pm PT
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WBraun
climber
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Apr 10, 2009 - 01:53pm PT
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Rocky
I only operate at 2.4 and 5 gig hertz right now.
Microwave ....(not the oven)
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Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
Sprocketville
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Apr 10, 2009 - 02:06pm PT
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Dang, man, they had LSD in 1930?
Primitivo setup...
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Majid_S
Mountain climber
Bay Area
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Topic Author's Reply - Apr 10, 2009 - 02:10pm PT
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Some 24 hours after critical fiber-optic cables were cut at four different locations by someone who climbed down manholes early Thursday morning, phone service was fully restored to South San Jose, Morgan Hill and Gilroy and parts of Santa Cruz and San Benito counties.
"By the time everybody was up," the phone lines were back, AT&T spokesman John Britton said today, referring to South San Jose residents who had phone service restored early this morning.
Police today are continuing their investigation into who deliberately cut fiber-optic cables in two underground locations in San Jose and two more in San Carlos around 1:30 a.m. Thursday in an apparent coordinated act of sabotage. The FBI is helping with the investigation.
Thursday it was as if time turned back a generation. No landlines. No cell phone service. No Internet connection or working ATMs.
If people had emergencies, they were told to run outside and flag down passing patrol cars or drive to the nearest fire station. Firefighters perched on a hilltop to scout for fires. Banks locked their doors, issued handwritten receipts for deposits and allowed only one person inside at a time. Many restaurants, grocery stores and gas stations took cash only. Checks were made on the welfare of housebound residents and senior centers.
And here on the southern edges of Silicon Valley where the high-tech revolution was born, forget about texting.
When Cindy Gilchrist's
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18-year-old son couldn't text his friends before school Thursday in Morgan Hill, he turned to her and said, "Mom, I'm so alone."
Late Thursday, Santa Clara County officials blamed sabotage and declared a state of local emergency.
AT&T, whose cable lines leased to Verizon were cut in the wee hours of Thursday morning, offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible — which one spokesman said was the largest reward in his 17
Police are investigating whether someone intentionally cut fiber optic cables at a South San Jose location that disrupted phone and Internet service to southern Santa Clara and Santa Cruz Counties on Thursday, April 9, 2009. (Click for larger image) (Google map)years with the company. Crews in South San Jose spent Thursday fusing four separate cable lines back together, some working eight feet deep in a manhole at Monterey Highway and Blossom Hill Road and others working with the pulled slack above ground, a few feet from a sign that said in red letters, "Warning: Buried Fiber Optic Cable in This Vicinity. Call Before You Dig." Nearby, authorities later discovered more cut cable lines at Hayes Avenue and Cottle Road, which affected several hundred customers in the Hellyer, Silver Creek Valley and Tures neighborhoods. Service restored early Friday morning. Cables were also severed at two locations in San Carlos, but no disruption of service was detected. Authorities believe all four incidents are related. Service in the South County area, which was random and sporadic most of the day, was fully restored by 7 p.m. Thursday, along with most of South San Jose.
AT&T spokesman John Britton didn't want to speculate about whether the sabotage may have been an inside job, but said one of the company's fundamental security measures was obviously breached.
"One of them is to have those big, heavy covers over the manholes and special ways to get them off," Britton said. "There's a tool you use. And in this case someone obviously had access to that."
One of the smaller cables cut was a half-inch thick and consisted of 48 color-coded strands, each capable of handling 300 to 400 calls. A larger cable cut held 360 strands.
Typically, Britton said, cut cable lines tend to be accidentally caused by workers. Not this time.
"Today, we didn't have an accident, we had a deliberate act," he said. The FBI joined the investigation, but authorities ruled out terrorism as a motive, and instead called it pure criminal vandalism.
Asked if the sabotage had anything to do with the strike threats over contract negotiations between the Communications Workers of America and AT&T, national union spokeswoman Candice Johnson replied: "Absolutely not. Our members are not involved in this. That would be counterproductive."
The CWA contract with AT&T expired at 11:59 p.m. Saturday.
More than 52,000 household landlines operated by Verizon, the sole provider of landlines in the South County area, were disrupted. Because 80 to 85 percent of cell phone traffic is delivered over wired networks, Britton said, cell phones weren't working. Along with Verizon, other cell service disrupted included Nextel, Sprint and AT&T, but officials didn't estimate how many customers lost service.
People were unable to call 911 throughout the day, but access was restored by Thursday evening. Four emergency stations were set up in Gilroy. At the main fire station in Gilroy, a caregiver rushed in to report that a girl was suffering a seizure at a medical facility. An ambulance took her to the hospital.
"This is unprecedented," said Liz Kniss, Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors president, who lauded the coordination by agencies throughout the county. Kniss pointed out that although the county is ready for earthquakes and other disasters, this took officials by surprise. "We weren't ready to have cable clippings."
While no serious emergencies went untended, the outage was treated by emergency responders with all the seriousness of a natural disaster or toxic spill. Patrols doubled. Extra ambulances were deployed. Saint Louise Regional Hospital in Gilroy canceled all elective surgeries and established ham radio communication with county officials and handed out walkie-talkies to staff.
"Actually, I'm quite happy that something like this happened, because we get to test it in real life," said Dr. Amit Mathur, an anesthesiologist at Saint Louise. "Nobody's running around panicking."
Added hospital spokeswoman Jasmine Nguyen: "It kind of brings us back to the Stone Age." The hospital used "runners" Thursday to run from room to room transferring messages from patients to staff or loved ones in the waiting room.
In downtown Morgan Hill, Margaret Bianucci, 71, said a day without the latest in technology was just fine with her.
"We're from a different time, and this was the way it was before, so it doesn't bother me," she said. "Now my grandchildren, they'll have something to say about it."
In Santa Cruz County, Mike Pizzano, who runs 49er Rooter and Drain Service in Felton, was already counting his losses just hours after he stopped receiving phone calls and Internet service Thursday morning.
"What am I going to do if a customer calls? I may be missing a call for a clogged drain or a $5,000 job," he said.
For others, the effect was more than an inconvenience.
Lori Shields went to the Chase Bank branch in Morgan Hill to deposit money into her account to cover automatic payments scheduled to deduct that evening. Bank staff, who were only permitting one customer at a time into the bank, could not tell Shields if her money would be credited to her account in time.
"You don't realize how used to this technology you are," she said.
But at Baha Burgers on Monterey Street in Gilroy, owned by the Tamayo family for 41 years, the outage passed with little effect. The restaurant has never taken credit cards, let alone debit cards. A sign at the counter says "cash only."
"Everything we do here is by manual labor," said Marina Barrientez, daughter of the owner. "We like to keep things simple."
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graniteclimber
Trad climber
Nowhere
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Apr 11, 2009 - 02:47pm PT
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I was just driving past Russ Walling's house and they are raiding the place right now. Look at the pictures I took.
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