Alright, this is all scary familiar and bringing back bad memories.
Wooden modem racks, POPs in disued bathrooms, demarcs so stuffed with
At one point, we had 200 pair installed into a two family house in rural NJ. The pop was in the basement, which had dirt floors. Or, the local phone company begging us to get lines in different CO's so that we wouldn't overload inter-office trunks and tandems. Or, the custom made racks to hold USR Sportster modems (which had to be removed from their enclosure) Or, Livingston PM3's that cost $17k for two PRIs Or, full BGP between AGIS and iMCI (note the 'i') on a 2501 Or, when you had a mail server (it was monolithic, remember) fail, and you told customers, they'd say, "OK, I'll check my mail tomorrow" Ah, the good old days.