From power surges and dubious diggers to Tahitian travails, Art finds trouble Ticaboo, Utah, was built some 16 years ago to house workers at a Utah uranium mine. The electrical distribution was laid three feet deep. One foot of dirt covered it, and pursuant to REA specs, up to 400 pair copper shielded telephone cables were laid on the dirt over the power and covered. Eventually the high-voltage, aluminum-shielded cables failed. Every time, the associated power surge would jump to my copper shields and flow back to the main distribution frame onto associated switch cards. The massive surge would also find the master ground bar, which became a fair ground back to the street. The CDO is a stone’s throw from the generators for the town. The fault currents liked us a whole lot better than the dirt. US Energy, owner of the town, doesn’t understand why I want my juice fed through an isolation transformer. Up to now, I’ve not billed them for the labor and costs of flamed line cards. But now I’ve built a brand new building replete with a new Taqua switch. Special effort was devoted to get a near zero ohm ground system. One more power surge, and the town is on notice for all costs plus an isolation transformer. Taqua approved Speaking of which – on Sept. 24, after a one-year field trial, the Rural Utility Services placed Taqua on its list of approved CO switches. It is the only DMS-10 replacement, plus it’s CALEA-compliant with 100% line and trunk hot stand-by (call it redundant). We’ve got 10 online. Night vision You all remember that photograph of the INS guys extracting the Cuban kid from his relatives’ Florida house. The automatic weapon was right smack at the kid’s head. What damn few of us realize was that the small device on the bottom of the barrel was an infrared flashlight and the guy’s goggles let him “see” what was illuminated by the “night light.” If it’s dark, the only way one can see is to point the gun (with flashlight) and look. A year ago when my sister-in-law visited from New Zealand, she brought a list of goodies her husband wanted. This cool stuff ain’t available at the local gun shop. Seems batteries want special packing as the gun recoil can make short life of conventional batteries. And some users want to nail intruders that make it as far as the bedroom on a dark night. Others want to see at night while hunting with a shotgun or higher velocity. I learned battery reliability is a major concern. She packed the goodies around and in her baggage. When she got home, husband spent the next few hours playing with his new toys. Eventually he asked, “How was your sister?” New Zealand As I write, my wife Rita and two older daughters are visiting said sister in New Zealand. The kids have US passports. My wife runs on her Russian passport mostly because American immigration is years (and years) s-l-o-w. The travel agency is owned by Tahiti Airline, which is partly owned by the country of Tahiti. So it’s logical for Tahiti Air from Los Angeles to New Zealand to stop at its hub at Tahiti. Four hours layover to New Zealand and two hours layover on the return. The frustration begins. You see, non-US citizens must have a transit visa to pass through Tahiti. They are only obtainable from a French Consulate. Although the NZ visas are free, they won’t issue until you show proof of a French visa for the Tahiti Airline layover. Takes two weeks and $9.80 credit card or euros only to get the transit visa (need tickets first). That stuff must be sent to the New Zealand Consulate, which also needs two weeks (don’t buy tickets until approved and no charge for Russians). Aside from $120 for FedEx charges, plus phone bills and associated bureaucratic baloney – let me just say there are a lot of places on the planet I recommend before you consider New Zealand or Tahiti. Washington County Road folk These folks don’t think they need to comply with law to call before they dig. So four of my guys, with two sleds and a back-hoe in a pitch black forest with one foot of new October snow are slogging around at 8,000 feet trying to find (again) where these road guys punched several fence post holes right smack into the fiber toll cable earlier that day. Angry is hardly the word.   Copyright 2002 by A. W. Brothers and Americas Network magazine. All rights reserved.   © Beehive Telephone Co.