It is easy to take many things in life for granted, and I'm certainly guilty of that is many ways. As I deepen more I know that details are important and that everything happens for a reason. We all know the moon is responsible for the changing tides on Earth but many know little more than that. It isn't about the knowledge, it's more about awareness and appreciation.
Likewise, between the full moon and the new moon when only half of the moon appears illuminated from our perspective, we are at the third quarter of the cycle. The terms chosen for these major phases represent the position in the cycle not what it looks like. There are another four minor phases of the moon cycle when the moon has an intermediate shape between those listed above. The diagram below shows the complete cycle with all eight phases. Unlike the four major phases mentioned above that occur at a specific time (moment) on a specific date each cycle, the four intermediate phases occupy a period of time between the major phases. For example, the first minor phase after the new moon is called the waxing crescent and is the whole period from just after the new moon till just before the first quarter. In other words, when the moon appears to be illuminated anywhere between 0.1% and 49.9%. The term crescent is obvious and the term waxing means increasing, as in, increasing the amount seen to be illuminated by the sun. The moon is waxing between the new moon and the full moon.
Between the first quarter and the full moon the name changes to waxing gibbous as the moon no longer appears to be crescent shaped. The term gibbous means convex, humped, or bulging in shape. After the full moon the area of illumination starts to decrease and the preface waning is used before both gibbous and crescent shapes as shown in the diagram above. For reference I use a website and app called timeanddate.com which can be customised for your location and gives very accurate data and is full of interesting information.
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After 22 years with Telecom Australia/Telstra it became clear that it was time to leave that job and look for something new. The equipment that I particularly liked working on (ARE-11) had all been decommissioned and replaced with more modern digital exchange equipment. As such we did very little or no diagnostic work and just changed circuit boards as directed by operations staff in Melbourne. We became the arms and legs while somebody else did the thinking part, analysing data and alarms. I did some work in another area installing business data systems which itself was ok but the behind the scenes systems that allocated work to us left a lot to be desired. It was not uncommon to arrive at a business and be unable to complete their work as the necessary pre-work done by other areas had not been completed. It became common to go home at the end of the day frustrated at not being able to complete tasks the business customers were expecting, not being able to deliver them the phone or data service they were wanting. I would wake up in the morning and not feel like going to work as I knew it would be another day of frustration. Also at this time Telstra were down-sizing and each year we had to re-apply for our jobs with one person missing out and becoming redundant. I knew this could not go on and looked for a new career. I applied for two jobs in the railways, Trainee Network Controller and Trainee Driver. Both roles had extensive psychometric testing and there was a lot of interest in both positions. For Trainee Network Controller there were about 600 applicants for 30 positions and in the end I was somewhere in the top 60 applicants. The selection panel wanted to take 60 staff as they knew the demand would be there in the future and we had already proved our capability. Management stood firm and only took 30 but put the next 30 on a waiting list in case more positions were required within the next 12 months. More positions did indeed become required but outside the 12 month limit so a whole new selection process would have to take place.
The Trainee Driver role testing was taking place at a similar time although I had no idea of how well I was or was not doing in the testing phases. There was a vast array of tests, many carried out at Morningside in a very large room with people coming and going all day. Observation tests, repetitive tests, logical progression tests, maths tests, English tests and more. Weeks later, out of the blue, in early November 2007 I received a call from QR Careers offering me a position as a Trainee Driver, the only catch was that the only place they wanted to send me was Bluff, near Blackwater in Central Queensland. I was hoping for something closer to home but by the end of the week I had accepted the offer. Basically I didn't need to buy or rent a house as accommodation in the railway quarters was provided at a very reasonable rate. Emerald was only an hours drive away, Rockhampton was two hours drive away, and on the long weekends I could drive home to Ipswich, spend a few days at home, then drive back to Bluff - it was all do able. So I packed up the bare essentials and loaded up the car to start part-time living in Central Queensland. On the 19th of November 2007 myself and 10 others arrived at Bluff station to sign the relevant papers then head into Rockhampton were the initial training courses would be held. We were accommodated in the Central Park Motel for a number of months with all meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner) paid for, seven days a week. You could opt to eat elsewhere which I did a number of times as the limited motel menu got a bit monotonous after a few weeks. The most significant day was the day we were sent to the pass office to have our photo taken for our new identity cards. As I held the new QRNational identity card in my hand I felt like I had made it, although there were plenty of theory and practical assessments still to follow. For some time now I have noticed that different sources quote different dates for the full moon, sometimes they agree, but many times there is a one day difference between the dates listed. Pondering the discrepancy and how the Earth and Moon revolve around the Sun it came to me that the varying dates quoted were dependent on the location on Earth the information originated from, and also that it was not 100% accurate. So how is the date of the full moon calculated or what governs its date? The full moon occurs when the moon is directly in line with the Earth and Sun, with the Earth being between the Sun and Moon. The orbit of the Moon is slightly off-level (by 5 degrees) which is why most of the time we see the full moon, and on more rare occasions we see an eclipse, either partial or full. The question of “what day/date is the full moon?” is where the errors begin. The Earth is always in motion around the Sun, and the Moon is always in motion around the Earth. With the Earth and Moon in constant motion there is only a specific moment when the Sun, Earth and Moon exactly align – so the question of when is the full moon should really be “what is the moment of the full moon, and from where I am located what is the corresponding date and time?”. Given that the moment of the full moon lasts just that long, a single moment, the actual full moon could occur while we are on the opposite side of the planet enjoying a warm winters day. For other people it could be morning, for some it could be evening or midnight. The actual moment of the full moon should be quoted as a date and time (generally based on GMT). The next question is - when do I see the full moon? Before going there let it be said that due to the 5 degree tilt in the lunar orbit, the full moon as we call it is actually only 99.9% fully illuminated by the sun. It is so bright the small amount not illuminated is not discernible. The date for the full moon quoted at different locations around the world will be given as the night closest to that ‘moment’ of the full moon, some may include that moment, others will be the night before or after. The moon will still appear to be full, but will either be waning (decreasing) from the 99.9% or waxing (increasing) towards the 99.9% fullness we observe. The next full moon occurs on the 14th of July 2022 at 4.37am Brisbane time (GMT+10) which is fortunately during the night so it will be possible to observe the Moon at the moment of actual fullness. When the moon rises in the evening of the 13th July it will appear full, as best our eyes can observe, but will still be waxing (increasing) in fullness until 4.37am on the 14th of July. From that moment it will then start waning (decreasing) in fullness as the cycle continues. To summarize, the actual full moon occurs at a given moment when the Sun, Earth and Moon are in a straight line. As the Earth rotates we see the moon fairly close to the moment of fullness but it may be the evening before or after. With the Moon 99% illuminated by the Sun it will appear full although the moment of fullness may have passed.
This web site (www.timeanddate.com/moon/phases/australia/brisbane) gives accurate dates and times for Moon phases and can be customized for your location. The Winter Solstice, in the southern hemisphere, occurs on or very close to the 21st of June each year. It is part of the yearly cycle as the Earth orbits around the Sun and was one of the four times of the year closely observed by people such as those who lived in what we now call Egypt many thousands of years ago. The diagram below shows the position of the Earth with sunlight shining from the right of the image, and how the number of daylight hours is effected depending on where you are. Australia has the Tropic of Capricorn running across the country just south of Rockhampton in Queensland. Ancient people in Egypt paid great attention to cycles and little or no attention to time - perhaps we could learn something from that. They were masters of understanding how the Earth moved around the Sun, when the Equinox's and Solstice's occurred, how the stars moved in the sky at night and how their positions changed over time. They understood and observed the constellations and what they represented. It is clear they understood what is known as 'precession' which is caused by the slow wobble in the Earth's axis and represents a cycle of approximately 25772 years (different sources quote slightly different figures). I'll write another blog about precession another time. The Winter Solstice in the Southern Hemisphere marks the day with the least number of daylight hours, and the most hours of darkness. The further south you are located the smaller the number of daylight hours becomes. The Winter Solstice marks the day when the sun rises in its most north-easterly position, and sets in its most north-westerly position. The sun is also at its lowest point at midday as the diagram below hopefully indicates. Interestingly, the Winter Solstice with it's smallest number of daylight hours, does not mark the middle of Winter or the coldest days of the year. This occurs during the following month and is probably the subject of another blog.
The last thing to note regarding the Winter Solstice and the Summer Solstice in six months time, is that by observing the position of the sun rise on the horizon on both occasions, and dividing the angle between these two positions in half gives you exactly due East. Continued from: Jobs I've Had - Telecom Australia (5) After completing the training in Sydney it was back to Sherwood EMG to begin a period of preforming maintenance work on the equipment I had spent months learning about, combined with connecting new telephone services, connecting special services for banks etc., and fault finding on these as well. This was the most enjoyable period of my 22 years with Telecom Australia. The telephone exchange equipment, known as an ARE-11 exchange, was fascinating to work on. Any time on any day I could be chasing obscure faults which could be physical wiring faults, worn out or poorly adjusted electro-mechanical relays, software faults in the processors which controlled the exchange, or hardware faults with the electronic components or circuit boards. The image above shows one suite of equipment, made up of multiple racks, and each rack could have multiple crossbar switches (glass covers), or multiple relay sets (grey metal covers). There is also a front and rear side to each rack. This is a subscriber stage which connected 1000 phone lines to others phone lines either within the same exchange or to junction circuits to other exchanges. If the exchange had 7000 phone lines connected to it there would be seven of these suites. In addition to that there were suites dedicated to incoming circuits from other exchanges, outgoing circuits to other exchanges, group switching stages, the processor control equipment, electronic interface equipment to link the processors with the relay-based technology, and more. As the image below shows with multiple suites needed for all the equipment, these telephone exchanges were quite big, and usually full of equipment. At the end of each suite of equipment there were coloured lights to show the status of the equipment in that suite. Red indicated a fault requiring urgent attention, yellow was a less urgent fault to attend to and white indicated some equipment was manually blocked out of service. There were also alarm bells for various urgent faults.
I hope these images build a picture of just how complex an ARE-11 (processor controlled crossbar) telephone exchange was. Literally thousands of relays, thousands of metres of cabling, hundreds of circuit boards and more... Despite this complexity I found it easy to locate faults when they occurred. I used to joke that a 'good technician' used all his senses when fault finding. You could listen to the exchange switching a call and hear at what point the call failed (generally speaking); you could see a badly adjusted relay when you removed the grey metal cover; you could smell a burnt out component like a resistor or capacitor; you could feel with your fingers a relay that was sticky and slow to operate. The only sense I could not incorporate was taste..!!
There were supplies of most spare parts at each exchange, sometimes you would have to travel to another exchange to find the right part, and failing that you would have to drive to the city and visit Hesketh House in Elizabeth Street where a larger pool of spare parts was held. We had to manage our own supplies of spare parts and re-order items when stock became low. Faulty circuit boards were sent away for repair and replaced with new items.
Faults occurred any time day or night and we were called out when required at night or on the weekend to attend to faults that could not wait, or that could not be remotely managed by the Brisbane After Hours Centre. Much of the exchange equipment was duplicated so that if a fault developed the suspect equipment could be blocked out to prevent telephone calls failing. Other times when exchange equipment failed it was a case of find the fault and fix it as soon as possible as every failed telephone call was a loss of revenue - that was when the pressure was on. I am pleased to say I always succeeded and it was satisfying quickly analyse the situation, change a part, then listen to the click of the relays and know by the sound alone that everything was returning to normal. Every now and then I would be at an exchange and the normal click of the relays would suddenly increase to a chaotic rate. This happened when radio stations had a quiz, or when concert tickets went on sale. There was a specific number range allocated to this (223 0xxx) and the telephone network was designed to handle this sudden surge in telephone calls without impacting regular phone calls. The problem was that some businesses just advertised regular phone numbers and with many hundreds or thousands of simultaneous calls to the same destination the entire exchange and telephone network would be thrown into massive congestion. My only regret was that this type of equipment was later phased out in preference to fully digital equipment which required far less maintenance. There was a strange fault that existed at Jamboree Heights in the 376 1xxx group prior to it being upgraded to digital, something that caused a massive but short-lived chatter of relays, but did not effect phone calls. I was somewhat progressed in identifying the cause when the equipment was decommissioned and changed over to digital. I never got to solve that mysterious fault - and I still think about it to this day..!! I had a delightful dream last night which I need to share as it is directly connected to some of you and is certainly a story worth telling. The dream takes place in a variety of places, there are several different scenes, and there are a number of different people featured. The places are not important but the people are. The vast majority of the people in the dream are men that I know or men that I have known and who have passed over.
There wasn't a whole lot of dialog in the dream, and in some cases we just seemed to be walking together. The stand out feature though is that all the men that featured have a very similar quality but it is not a quality that is universally held or displayed by the majority of men. There is no single word to describe the quality these men hold so I'll have to describe their characteristics further. These men are the men who have mastered temporal life, their lives are stable, they have or had good jobs that they did well, they don't have emotional up and downs, they are sensible, reliable and trustworthy. These are the men you know you can 100% rely on if you need them; they are generous, kind and caring to those they know and even those they do not know. I will mention a few people who appeared in the dream - my father in law Tony was one of the first to appear near the beginning of the dream as were Nigel and Noel from Rockhampton. Jim from Bundaberg featured near the end but these few names only represent some of the men I know who have these qualities. Another man who springs to mind is Frank, not me but another Frank described by others as 'the gentleman of Bundamba railway station' or 'the elder statesman at Bundamba station - his quality was and still is certainly felt by myself and others. There are other men who didn't feature in the dream and I haven't named but certainly have this quality - some of you reading this will know who you are. I woke up this morning with a strong feeling of appreciation for these men, and the reflections they have provided for me over the years. They reflect to me the qualities of a true man, qualities that matter, qualities that make a difference..!! Continuing from Life Lessons (1) this is my second realisation of things I wish I had known earlier or perhaps more truthfully, something I did actually know but wish I had put into practice earlier in life and consistently through all aspects of life. If you are looking at the image below, some of you may recognise the actors as Benedict Cumberbatch (left) and Martin Freeman (right) and the address of 221B Baker Street. The TV show is Sherlock which is based on the popular stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I hear you saying - what does a TV show have to do with a Life Lesson..? Well the character of Sherlock Holmes is perhaps the best person or character to try to illustrate my point. For those that do not know, Sherlock Holmes has an uncanny ability to see absolute detail in just about everything. He uses that skill to solve the unusual mysteries by examining some very subtle clues others do not see, puts it all together, and seeing the big picture discovers the truth and catches the criminals. You could say that he takes nothing on face value, even what appears to be obvious is given a very discerning look before he makes any decision, comment or action. So to relate this to Life Lesson (2) that same level of discernment in all things, at all times, and in all places is something we should all do. It is very easy to read something in a newspaper, see something on the news, hear a story from someone and take it as 100% factual.
Mainstream media is renowned for presenting a particular angle or perspective which may suit their own agenda or that of another person or organisation. A person telling a story may without even knowing it, distort the facts or leave out a key piece of information which means you will only receive a percentage of the whole story, or their version of the truth. It seems the only way to be sure you know the truth of any matter is to examine several sources, cross check information, be open to the possibility that what you are being told or presented isn't the complete truth before making up your own mind. Or, to make it simpler, just feel what is true and what is not true - follow and trust our own inner knowingness. I am talking about other things too, far beyond just media, true personal discernment in food choices, food sources, clothing, purchases of any kind - in fact anything we purchase or any activity we partake in. We need to be far more discerning about our choices across the board. Continued from: Jobs I've Had - Telecom Australia (4) After completing my six months of field training at Sherwood EMG it was back to Chermside and the Telecom Australia Training School. If this phase I completed the common theory and practical courses, and started into job specific training. For the job specific courses I was sent to Hesketh House in Brisbane. This is probably not a building many have heard of and the entrance we used was actually through Telecommunications House which was at 283 Elizabeth Street - opposite Edison Telephone Exchange.
Hesketh House by the 1980's was owned by Telecom Australia and had some sections of the training branch located there. The job specific courses I attended were in the operation and maintenance of the crossbar telephone exchange equipment, which is what I had seen at Inala and Wacol. In fact a very large proportion of the entire Brisbane telephone network was at this time crossbar; the next generation equipment known as AXE was just entering the scene. The crossbar exchange equipment at Inala and the other four exchanges in the Sherwood EMG area connected the 27000 telephone lines for private customers and businesses in that area with the rest of Australia and the world. In the basement level of Hesketh House there was an entire 'model' exchange that apprentice technicians could work on, finding faults and learning the complexities of the equipment, without any interruption to public telephone calls. The photo below shows the back of some crossbar switches and hopefully gives a small sample of the complexity of the equipment and wiring involved. The crossbar telephone exchange was largely electro-mechanical in design, in other words, relays - and there were thousands of them each with a specific function and designation code. There were several courses to attend here as each section of the crossbar exchange was explained in great detail. The block diagram in Jobs I've Had - Telecom Australia (4) gives an idea of the complexity, and there were nine courses in total with each lasting at least a week and involving theory and practical training. We had to know how every section of the exchange worked:
That is putting it all very simply as even the first stage, the subscriber stage, had a number of steps to work through. Firstly the hundreds digit of the number making the call was identified, then the tens digit, then the units digit - this information, along with the thousands digit, was transferred to other equipment as the connection process continued. If two people lifted the handset to make a call at the same time the equipment would have to process one request first then the second. Considering the telephone lines were grouped into sections of 1000 phone lines, several people could lift the handset at the same time - the circuitry was designed to deal with each phone call in a fraction of a second so even if it was very busy the customer hardly noticed any delay. The final course was conducted in Sydney at the New South Wales Telecom Australia Training Centre at North Strathfield. This particular piece of equipment that apprentice technicians needed to work on and learn about only existed in Sydney so apprentices from all over Australia visited North Strathfield for this course. I decided to stay at Strathfield, near the railway station, and catch the train each day to North Strathfield where a short walk was all that was needed to get to the course venue. I stayed at the Strathfield Hotel, near the railway station and Strathfield Plaza shopping centre. The later place would become famous in August 1991 when a gunman killed 7 people and injured 6 more before killing himself. I had certainly walked through this shopping plaza on several occasions during my visit in the 1980's as it was just a three minute walk from where I was staying. To be continued..... When we get older we often look back at our lives and find things we wish we had been told about earlier, or things we wished we had learnt or realised earlier. This series of short articles describes my top 'Life Lessons' and they are presented here for anyone open to the possibilities. One of the most important lessons I could have learned earlier in life was to listen to my body and respect my body. I never did anything too extreme but often pushed myself too far, for too long, without considering the consequences. I never broke any bones but even feeling sore the next day is a consequence. You may think that feeling sore the next day is nothing and that after a day or two everything is back to normal - but is it? We think that it is okay to push ourselves hard then have a day of recovery, and we do feel normal again, but does it really end there? Is it possible that all these events where we push ourselves too hard and end up feeling worse for wear have a cumulative effect, or catch up with us in older age? The medical world knows a lot but it does not know everything, and we are all individuals with different physical capabilities and qualities. My point here is that I wish I had known when to stop and not kept pushing on to the point where I was super tired, fatigued, worn out or just plain sore and sorry. Actually I did know as my body would have been telling me but I chose not to listen and chose to over-ride that feeling. This is the point where I could have and should have been more discerning, respected my body saying time to stop, and actually listened. An example might be getting sore arms from lifting heavy objects; I could have either stopped the activity, or got somebody to help, or used some mechanical assistance of some sort. But no - more often than not I would have pushed on until finished or found it impossible to continue.
Our bodies have so many ways to tell us when things are not right but we rarely pay too much attention to them or just blatantly ignore them. Sometimes it is an image thing where we don't want to appear weak or soft, that's a big one for men, other times we are in the grip of time and an imposed deadline we feel we must fulfill. Often the deadline is an unrealistic one we have set for ourselves and hos no real basis for existing at all. So, in summary, my No.1 Life Lesson is: 'Listen to your body' Continued from: Jobs I've Had - Telecom Australia (3) The diagram below, which I will go into more detail another day, is a very basic diagram of an ARE-11 exchange. The top part above the dashed line is the original crossbar exchange with relays and electro-mechanical switches, the bottom part is the processor control and interfacing electronics which, in the case of Inala, was brand new in 1985 when I started working there. The ARE-11 system as the whole exchange type was known was implemented in Australia from 1976. The bottom left corner of the diagram has a box marked 'SCS' which stands for Subscriber Category Store. This was an electronic data store which held information about every phone number in the exchange - if it was connected or disconnected, what type of dial tone was required, was the phone line allowed to make local calls and long distance calls, and so on. A very basic terminal (keyboard and screen) was connected to the Operations and Maintenance Processor (OMP) which is where we would type in commands to connect, disconnect or change the phone line characteristics - this was called the telephone numbers category. The command to display the subscribers category was DISC: 372 4586; and the result would be something like C5 40 C3 - a set of hexadecimal codes which meant the phone line was disconnected and could not be used for outgoing phone calls or receive incoming phone calls. To change the subscribers category the command was CHSC: 372 4586 C6 40 A5; - with that hexadecimal code meaning the phone line could make outgoing calls and receive incoming calls. Hexadecimal was to become a second language for me..!! The last part of the phone line connection process was to test the line, to make sure it had a dial tone, and that there were no faults in the cable heading out into the street. Staff from other sections dealt with the street cables and the actual phones in peoples houses and businesses - my work was strictly in the telephone exchange. So this was my first task for a while - connecting and disconnecting phone lines in the exchange, manually running the wires to connect the phone number to the cable pair on the MDF, writing out the record cards, reading the meter, and programming the category on the terminal connected to the ARE-11 exchange. The Senior Technical Officer at Inala was Jeff and the Technician was Merv - both very nice people to work with. With Andy and I both working at Inala we got through the work on connecting or disconnecting phone lines quite quickly, so it was not long before I was also taken to visit Wacol exchange where Jim was the Technician. It also became apparent that I was entitled to a driving allowance if I had to drive the company car during the day. It was not much in dollar terms but my day was soon arranged so that I had to drive to or from Inala, Wacol or Sherwood most days. The cars we had were Nissan Bluebird station wagons and there was a distant photo of one on the first blog page - Jobs I've Had - Telecom Australia (1). The big orange Telecom Australia stickers on the side of the car were quite obvious and the red letter Z number plates also quite distinctive. I don't know exactly when I started to learn more about the ARE-11 telephone exchanges but I suspect it was quite soon. There were special services in addition to the normal telephone lines at exchanges, and there were also rotary groups which was the term for a business which had one advertised phone number but several phone lines working directly off it. I was soon taught by the Technicians how to connect the rotary groups which entailed special wiring in the equipment room, and also how to connect special services for bank data lines or fire alarms. Special services often needed additional wiring either on the MDF or in the equipment room to connect amplifiers or splitter/combiners into the circuit.
After my six months of field experience had finished the next main phase of my apprenticeship was back at Chermside but there was also a trip to Sydney. To be continued..... My first trip overseas took more than 40 years to eventuate. I had considered it earlier but was always put off by the lengthy flight times to travel to places far from home. In May 2012 however, Victoria and I decided to visit the United Kingdom, but to break up the journey we spent a couple of days in Dubai to rest in a proper motel in a proper bed. It was also an opportunity to explore a place Victoria's dad had visited and made several recommendations about. For part of our visit we hired a driver to take us to a few places of interest - there were plenty to choose from and I only mention two that I have a picture to accompany. The photo below shows part of a large shopping centre which includes, of course, a huge aquarium with all manner of small and large sea life swimming in it. One side has a vertical glass wall and another part has a tunnel so visitors can walk through/under the water for a different point of view. Dubai is full of extremes and things you would not expect to see in a place which is essentially desert and built literally on sand but also from great wealth. Some city buildings are ultra-modern and reach dizzying heights. Just about everything seems to be air-conditioned which is welcome and needed. The photo below shows the Burj al Arab Hotel which at one point in time was the only sever-star hotel in the world. It has its own helipad sticking out from the side of the building at the top. Other internet photos suggest the helipad can also be used for weddings and playing table-tennis - when your helicopter isn't in the way of course. The 321 meter tall building is built on reclaimed land just off the coast and is only one of several such features on areas of reclaimed land. We didn't stay here naturally - our accommodation was at the Sheraton Dubai Creek Hotel which was about a 30 minute drive from here. The Sheraton was more within our normal price range and being located on the creek, gave pleasant views and the ability for a morning or evening walk by the water. Another place we visited was the Dubai Gold Souk which was very close to the Sheraton - amazing to see but no purchases I'm afraid. Next stop - The United Kingdom...
Continued from: Jobs I've Had - Telecom Australia (2) As mentioned on the previous post the task of physically connecting the pair of wires in the telephone exchange was only the first part of the job to connect a telephone service. Manual records were kept at the exchange and were either written by hand or typed on to small cards. As I said before, Inala had 7000 telephone lines so there were roughly 7000 small cards each with the subscribers name, address, phone number and cable pair on it as well as space for other details if needed. The cards were kept in drawers in numerical order for later reference, other similar but larger cards existed to record what was connected to each cable pair. So if you knew the phone number you could look at the small card to find out the cable pair it should be connected to, or, if you knew the cable pair you could look at the bigger card to see what phone number should be working on that cable pair. These local records were essential for fault finding when a telephone service stopped working, such as when a street cable was damaged. Another small part of the task was to read the subscribers meter for billing purposes. Unlike water or electricity meters which are in or outside peoples homes, telephone billing meters were at this time at the exchange. A special room was sometimes dedicated for the racks of small meters for each and every phone number. Inala exchange had a meter room, which I must add was a nice quiet room if a nap at lunch time was needed..!! Below is part of a meter rack with each panel holding 100 meters, each vertical rack holding 10 panels or 1000 meters. Inala exchange had seven of these racks to accommodate the 7000 phone numbers that could be connected there. If you were connecting a phone service for 372 4586 you would go to rack 4 (four thousand), panel 5 (five hundred) and write down the number on meter 86. This meter reading was recorded on the small subscriber record card and also sent to a central office for billing purposes. Each time a person made a local phone call the little meter would tick over and advance one number. For a long distance call the meter would tick over periodically based on the distance of the call and the time of day. When the monthly phone bill was due a person from the billing area visited the exchange and took a photo of each panel of 100 meters. The photos were developed and somebody in the billing area had to enter each and every number into the billing system. The billing system would subtract the previous meter reading from the current meter reading to determine the total number of calls made that month. Sometimes the little meters would jam meaning a subscriber would not get metered correctly and would get some free calls. If this was detected in the billing process the technician at the exchange would get asked to open the panel of 100 meters and replace the defective meter with a brand new spare part. There were also occasions when the billing area suspected the meter was working but not counting reliably, again giving the subscriber free or discounted phone calls. In this case the technician would make five test calls from the subscribers phone line and make sure five meter registrations were recorded. A little form filled in and sent to the billing area accounted for the test calls made by the technician so the subscriber was not charged for them. To complete the connection process for a telephone line there were a couple more things to do. A little bit of data needed to be entered via a terminal and a test made to make sure that the subscriber now had dial tone. I'll explain that further next time as it involves talking about the type of telephone exchange. The equipment was all Swedish and manufactured by L. M. Ericsson. The type of exchange switching equipment was called crossbar but it had been very recently upgraded to processor control - the system was known as ARE 11 - and I loved working on it..!! To be continued.....
Continued from: Jobs I've Had - Telecom Australia (1) As I mentioned previously, after completing one month of general training at the Chermside Training Centre I was temporarily allocated to Sherwood Exchange Maintenance Group - EMG for short. Sherwood EMG consisted of about 15 to 20 staff who undertook operations and maintenance work at Sherwood, Jamboree Heights, Darra, Wacol and Inala telephone exchanges. Staff members were generally allocated to one of those places but a few people were mobile and had use of company cars to get from place to place. We only had 3 or 4 cars for the entire staff to share as most people went to and from work in their private cars. On my first day here I was taken to Inala Exchange and met the technician and assistant technician who spent most days there. The assistant technician was Andy who, as it turned out, was the father of a girl I was at high school with - maybe it is a small world. Andy was my mentor for this period and he showed me how to connect and disconnect ordinary telephone services, or make changes such as somebody moving house within the same area, or requesting a change of phone number. Inala exchange had 7000 telephone lines with each and every one appearing as a pair of copper wires of a large Main Distribution Frame (MDF). The MDF was where the phone line was connected to copper cables which ran underground to each and every house and business in the surrounding suburbs. Copper cables as big as 2400 pairs of wires appeared on the MDF to allow connection and testing of phone services. To connect a telephone service the first step was to connect the cable pair allocated that ran to the address where the phone was being connected, to the telephone number which had been allocated, This information, along with the persons name, address and other information was originally sent by Telex from the Sales area. Red and white jumper wire was for an ordinary telephone service while green and white was for a special service like a pay phone or a data line to a bank. The photo below shows one style of MDF block with 50 pairs on it, and the jumper wires added to connect the cable pair to the phone number. On the internal or telephone number side of the MDF the jumper wires were run vertically, while on the external or cable side the jumper wires were run horizontally. The long and tall MDF had travelling ladders on both sides to make the task easier. Sometimes only a short piece of jumper wire was needed to cross from one side to the other, other times you had to run the wires from one end to the other using one or two of the travelling ladders. The bigger the exchange the bigger the MDF that was needed for the thousands upon thousands of connections. The vast majority of these jumper wire connections were soldered and several 50 volt soldering irons were placed on the MDF for this purpose. At the beginning of the day you would turn them on, and before going home you had to remember to turn them off. There was also a pair of small metal links on each cable pair and phone number which had to be inserted to make a connection - these were normally left in, but could be removed for testing purposes. Running the jumper wires to connect the phone number to the cable pair was only the first task, there were records to be written out, a meter which had to be read to record the number of phone calls made, and some data which needed to be programmed. To be continued.....
My first job when I left school was with Telecom Australia where I was employed as an Apprentice Technician (Telecommunications). I had an interest in electronics and a basic knowledge of electricity so I didn't think it would be hard - it wasn't. My first day on the job was Monday the 21st of January 1985. The Telecom Australia Training Centre (for Brisbane/Queensland) was located in Banfield Street at Chermside which is very close to Chermside shopping centre. At this time I had no car so the process was to walk to Bundamba station, catch a train to Brunswick Street, walk to the bus stop, catch a bus to Chermside shopping centre, then walk over to the training school. At the end of the day the process was reversed to get home again. It must have taken about 90 minutes at least each way, and would take even longer if you just missed a bus or train at Brunswick Street. The training complex had a mixture of brick and timber buildings - the brick buildings were for classroom/theory lessons, while the wooden buildings were for practical work like wiring up pieces of telephony equipment and fault finding. The brick buildings also housed the administration staff and a canteen. Also on the grounds there was a large radio tower which was progressively assembled then dissembled each year by a small group who needed that skill. I think we initially spent only one month here for basic training before we were allocated to a field location for six months practical experience. The reason was to ease congestion in the training school as there were 144 new apprentices each year, the full apprenticeship lasting three years.
We had no say in where we were sent, and I don't know how they decided, but after the first month at Chermside I was sent to Sherwood Exchange Maintenance Group, EMG for short. It was actually the perfect location as it was much closer to home, and immediately opposite Sherwood railway station. To be continued.... I've owned a Rubiks Cube for a very long time and have been able to solve it since about 1982. I didn't tech myself how to do it but read a book which explained the sequences needed to move certain pieces in specific ways. I remember standing at the front of the classroom in Technical Drawing, probably in grade 10, and being timed to complete the puzzle. I don't recall the exact time but it was in the order of 3 minutes. Not a world record but very good considering how complex it is. An internet search will tell you that there are 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 possible combinations in which the cube can be configured. That big number is 43 quintillion..!! Likewise, internet searches will tell you that there is only one solution - but I disagree. It wasn't until I found a Rubiks Cube with printing on one side that it became apparent that there is more than one solution - in fact I say there are four solutions. Looking at the colours it is easy to tell if an edge or corner piece is in the wrong place or in the wrong orientation - but it is impossible to tell the orientation of the center squares. While the center squares do not shift place, they do rotate which gives another (normally unnoticeable) combination.
With the addition of words you can tell if the center square is up the right way or not as shown in the images below. I solved the puzzle four times and purposely placed the center square in each different orientation to illustrate the point. I have since been given another Rubiks Cube with words on two opposite sides and when one side has the word upside down the same happens on the opposite side which suggests rotating one center square also rotates the others. So until anyone can prove me wrong I say there are four solutions to a Rubiks Cube. One of the nearby streets is named Redarc Street which I always thought was an unusual name but gave little thought to its origin or meaning. Some streets are obviously named after people or families but this is not the case for Redarc Street. Recently it became clear what it referred to and it linked perfectly with my previous blog about Mr Wilkins and his house called 'Irvinebank' - see Exploring My Suburb (1). The photo below was taken with an iPhone early one evening with just a hint of light still in the sky and railway people will see the signals in the background on the railway line which runs parallel to Mildmay Street. But I digress - Redarc Street links to Mr Wilkins and his stores which were located throughout Queensland and also in Newcastle. Redarc is a contraction of Red Arcade which was the name of Mr Wilkins stores not an actual arcade. Red Arcade stores were located in Queen Street Brisbane near the Post Office, in Ipswich in Nicholas Street, as well as in Townsville, Toowoomba, Maryborough and Mackay.
Red Arcade stores sold various household goods as well as lamps, tools, toys, books, stationery and basketware, and Wilkins was an importer of china, fireworks, glass and earthenware fancy goods. The Queen Street store is said to have had 'a novel cash tramway...worked by electric motor carrying documents for scrutiny or change to customers.' The store also had large realistic animals that made noises. The Ipswich store opened on the 1st of December 1894, the Brisbane store opened around 1891 and Mr Wilkins original business, a stationary store, opened in 1874. So suburban Redarc Street refers to the Red Arcade stores owned by Mr Wilkins (1836 to 1905) who arrived in Queensland in 1861 from Victoria and settled in Fairfield in 1892. I'm not totally sure but I think I took this photo in late 2007 while driving from Rockhampton to Brisbane. I had just started my train driving career and needed to attend training in Rockhampton during the week. The weekends were free so a drive home was possible, but I didn't do it every weekend. I decided to not use the main highway so I turned off at Booyal (near Childers) and travelled through Dallarnil, Biggenden, Ban Ban Springs, Goomeri and Nanango to head to Ipswich. The location is Mount Walsh near Biggenden. Again with just a pocket camera I pulled over just south of Biggenden, on the road to Ban Ban Springs and took one image. It was later in the afternoon, the sun lighting the hills, a bit of cloud for interest, and a very typical country fence post and barbed wire in the foreground. I use this photo as my desktop image from time to time... Mt Walsh near Biggenden - 2007
Recently Victoria and I stayed in Brisbane for a weekend. On Sunday morning we went for a walk from the hotel down to QUT then back along the river to see where the redevelopment works are starting to take shape. A new walkway is being built on the waterfront beside the Riverside Expressway which will join up with the walkway leading towards Milton and Toowong. Along the walkway there are some open areas which are still to be developed and also some art displays and information. I don't quite recall the context of this piece but it is a very large kingfisher. The kingfisher is one of my favorite types of birds and although much smaller they are related to the kookaburra. When I was much younger I kept a kingfisher at home for a few days. I found him on the ground after a storm during which he had been blown into a wall and could not fly. I kept him in a cage I made from chicken wire and fed him insects that I caught during the day - his nickname was Fred. With nothing broken and his senses regained I opened the cage and he happily flew away. The very large version kingfisher shown below reminded me of my little friend Fred, and the unimposing "peep peep peep" sound they make. Kingfisher - Brisbane The Sacred Kingfisher (like Fred)
I'm sure I must have been an explorer at some point in time as I love walking around new and different places to see what interesting things are there. Things that are probably overlooked by many others, particularly with the now common head-down screen-focused way of life. The image below shows some houses in the neighborhood around 1910. The image is from the State Library of Queensland (negative 47394) and shows part of Wilkins 'Irvinebank' residence and estate. Given how prominent the property must have been I decided to try and find if anything remained to indicate its location. It didn't take too long to work out the property was just a few streets away, and some of the buildings in this photo still exist roughly 110 years later. Further research into the property revealed it had its own lake with carp and black swans, and peacocks roamed the grounds. On the owners birthday he would give a garden party for the local children which included a fireworks display. I am still trying to determine the exact location of the lake and also the extent of the ornate gardens which once existed here. As I discover more about my interesting neighborhood, including this property and others, or anything else interesting and unusual, I will share it here. 'Irvinebank' Fairfield ca 1910 - State Library Queensland
I've decided to redesign part of my web page and bring selected photographs into their own blogs. This way I can say more about the image, perhaps where and when it was taken, and what I like about it. The image below was taken in July 2005 on a closed section of railway line west of Toowoomba. I only had a small pocket digital camera with a small zoom lens, but still managed an interesting view. The camera is sitting on the head of the rail on a very straight and flat section of line with the railway lines and trees all making a straight line to the center of the image. The slightly wavy top to the right hand rail is magnified by the zoom lens. Closed Railway Line - Western Queensland - July 2005
I am sitting on a flat grass covered playing field and nearby there are groups of people playing hockey. I seem to be in the middle with players on both sides playing separate games. There is a lot of activity and I am just sitting observing what is happening around me.
I am aware that this is a somewhat dangerous place as hockey balls could come flying at me from any direction at any time and I almost need eyes in the back of my head to watch every game simultaneously. I am also aware that hockey balls are hard and when hit with force they travel fast and hurt if they hit you. A woman hits a ball and it comes straight for me, but without thinking or even looking at it I put out my hand and grab the ball in mid-air. I throw it back to her and again she hits the ball straight at me. Again I grab it without fear or thought but this time I keep it and say to her "if you want it back you have to come and get it". It was obvious she was toying with me and her actions were trying to scare me - I was not going to play that game! Then from another angle another hockey ball comes flying in my direction but again I put up my hand and stop it. The ball just hits my hand, stops dead, and falls to the ground. It does not hurt my hand and it does not even feel like it touches my hand. From another angle, this time along the ground, a hockey ball approaches at speed and this time I block it with my foot. This continues for a while, hockey balls approaching at speed from various angles, and all blocked by my hands or feet, without thinking about it or even looking in the direction they are coming from. When I woke up I felt like Neo from The Matrix, dodging and blocking bullets as they are fired at him. It felt like a message about being responsive to whatever is thrown at me, no matter what angle it comes from, just trusting that it can be stopped easily. You don't have to think about it, just feel what is coming and act accordingly. One day I stepped into the shower and closed the glass door behind me. I turned on the water as I have done hundreds of times before and turned to face towards the door. The door was not perfectly clean and had a slight soapy residue or a watermark from the previous day. As I looked at the center of the door I became aware of an image that looked like a ghostly face. It was far from perfect but had reasonably well defined features such as an outline of the head, two eyes and a crooked nose. I tried to discount that it looked like a face but could not and felt like it was indeed a face and more-so that it was watching me. I started to shower but could not continue with the supposed face watching me. I took the soapy sponge and made a number of anti-clockwise circular movements over the apparent image on the glass. The ghostly face was oval shaped and likewise my cleaning motions took the same shape to ensure all traces were gone. At the end I made one random dab, not sure why, and stood back to make sure the face was gone... When I stood back I instantly saw something that could only be described as a fingerprint, same oval shape generally made with circular motions, and one part near the bottom which was my random dab for no particular reason.
What could be better to put my imprint over the ghostly figure on the shower screen door..!! In a dream I had recently I was riding a bicycle through an area I didn't know or recognise. I wasn't with anyone else but I was riding the bicycle through areas with other people around, none of whom I knew. At one point I was riding through a park, there were people in the park walking around, sitting on benches and children were playing. I continued on to a gravel pathway which led to a more rural scene and the path went up a small hill and down the other side. I decided that it would be the right amount of exercise for the day if I rode up the gentle slope to the top of the hill and down the other side. At that point I would stop riding and go home. As I started to ride up the hill a man appeared from the side of the path who watched me ride past. No sooner had I gone past him he grabbed his bicycle, jumped on and chased after me with great speed. It soon became apparent that he was racing me to the top of the hill, even though I didn't know who he was, and that there was no need to race.
I certainly was not interested in racing him and continued at the same pace up and over the hill as I planned. I don't recall who got to the top of the hill first, and it does not really matter anyway. When I woke up I reflected on the dream.... It felt like it was showing me how, as men, we can go into competition with other men automatically, and even in the most unusual circumstances, or for the strangest reasons. The truth is that we don't need to compete with each other at all; the man in my dream did not need to compete with me for any reason at all - yet he felt the need to and acted on it. As Mr Spock from Star Trek would say "Highly illogical". So, let's be mindful as men to not compete with others, there is no need to prove you are better at anything, or to use the competition as a means of putting someone else down. Recently I had a break from work and while away I worked on a jigsaw puzzle I purchased some time ago. The puzzle has 1000 pieces and depicts a scene of the North Yorkshire village of Staithes in England. As I was getting closer to completing the puzzle it became easier to find pieces to fit the ever decreasing number of gaps in the puzzle. There were pieces however that I could not find despite having a much smaller number of possibilities to search through. As the puzzle had been attempted before and not completed, I began to question if all the pieces were actually there. I laid out the remaining pieces based on shape and colour but I still could not find some pieces it seemed. I had convinced myself that one or more pieces were missing, and there was, I thought, valid reasons for that to be a possibility. On the previous attempt to complete the puzzle, one person helping, returned from another room saying they 'found' a piece on the floor in the other room. That pretty much smashed my trust that all the pieces would actually be there. I continued placing pieces, one by one, until there were about 30 left to go. I thought to count the pieces and count the spaces to find out for sure, but could not do it based on the simple fear that there would be a shortfall. To my surprise, pieces that I could not find previously, despite there being limited choices, actually turned up and filled gaps - I don't know why I could not find them before.
Finally I got to the last few pieces and realised that all the pieces were indeed there and the puzzle was complete. That was the end of the puzzle, but not the end of the story... What the experience showed me was how simple it was to have my trust in something put into doubt. I then began to ponder more about trust, how much I either do or don't trust certain things. I discovered my trust in some things can be solid and unshakeable, while in other areas it takes very little to diminish my level of trust. If you have walked along the beach you might remember leaving footprints in the sand; if you have walked through mud or water you might also remember leaving a trail of footprints behind you marking where you have stepped. These footprints may last a short while or a longer time depending on the circumstances.
But are there other kinds of footprints we leave behind...? Have you ever experienced a person in your life who has walked past you in an angry mood? You can't see it - but you can definitely feel it in the way they walk. Are they too leaving a trail of footprints of some sort - a trail of anger? What if everywhere we walk, or everywhere we go for that matter, we leave an invisible imprint for others to walk over? And - what if others who walk through the imprints we leave behind us can, at some level, feel how we were at that time? That then begs the question - what kind of footprints or imprints are we leaving behind us as we go about our day that our friends, family, colleagues, customers and others will walk through? Do we want to leave a trail of sadness or anger behind us or a trail of love, light and joy? |
AuthorI love to understand things, how they work, why they happen - I'm always learning and keen to investigate... Archives
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