A
Cable Monkey is a person, often an
intern or
student system administrator, whose second
duty is to
run cable (
power,
twisted pair, what have you) from one part of the
machine room to the other. In
nifty setups, this involves removing
floor tiles, which allows
access to the sub-floor and the
cabling beneath. It is arranged as follows:
| |
| Machine |
| |
====+========+========+==o=====+========+========+========+===
| | | o | | Duct sp|ace |
oooo|oooooooo|oooooooo|oo | | | |
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
where:
- ooooo
- is a cable
- ========
- is a floor tile
- +
- is a floor tile intersection piece
- |
- is a pole supporting the raised floor tile structure
- ////////
- is the actual floor
Today, it was my turn as the
student system administrator present, to play
cable monkey. I was to move two power cables from where they were currently
located to a
new location.
Let me tell you,
pulling cable is very, very
annoying. The fact that the tiles are
removable is nice, but it's still annoying. The cables get caught on other cables,
support pipes, other pipes, or get
twisted up under the
floor.
Laying cable under a floor, on the other hand, is a breeze. That was actually kind of
fun.