Not really a "WTF" on my part, but... Many years ago I was hand tracing a cable in a data center due to the usual lack of docs and ensuing spaghetti factory. Said cable went under the three foot raised floor, so I dove in. I'd been going for a while and was getting concerned that I'd accidentally gotten hold of the wrong cable, so I called back to my co-worker to give it a tug. No response. I decided to come up for air and try again. I had crawled under two equipment rows and into the operator area and I can only imagine what that operator thought was happening when I just popped up through the floor next to her. Judging by the yelp and the look I got it was probably not good. Still gives me a chuckle thinking about it. Jeff -----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu Sent: Wednesday, July 07, 2004 12:43 AM To: Leo Bicknell Cc: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: concern over public peering points [WAS: Peering point speed publicly available?] On Tue, 06 Jul 2004 08:46:49 EDT, Leo Bicknell <bicknell@ufp.org> said:

Everyone running their cable wherever they want with no controls, and abandoning it all in place makes a huge mess, and is one way to think about it.

While clearing out the space that eventually ended up being repurposed for a supercomputer, we encountered a small run of Ethernet Classic - the thickwire stuff. We never did figure out how or why it got there (I doubt that anybody stashed it down there just for storage stretched straight out, with 3 vampire taps still attached), as the location in question was still cow pasture when we decided that all new cable would be thinwire (and we certainly had plenty of THAT under the floor, buried under all the cat-5...) And we're a small enough shop with low enough personnel turnover that rounding up *all* the possible co-conspirators and getting somebody to admit "Ahh... now there's a story attached to that wire..." usually doesn't take more than 3 or 4 pitchers of Guinness... ;) Which almost begs the question - what's the oddest "WTF??" anybody's willing to admit finding under a raised floor, or up in a ceiling or cable chase or similar location? (Feel free to change names to protect the guilty if need be....:) ************************************************************** This message, including any attachments, contains confidential information intended for a specific individual and purpose, and is protected by law. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact sender immediately by reply e-mail and destroy all copies. You are hereby notified that any disclosure, copying, or distribution of this message, or the taking of any action based on it, is strictly prohibited. TIAA-CREF **************************************************************