I got a call today. Some idiot on a bulldozer had sliced a fiber cable and they needed somebody who could patch it up fast. The job turned out to be a misery.

It wasn't the cable. It was cut twice leaving a gap of two and a half feet.

It wasn't the number of fiber strands. That could have been a lot worse. It was only 24 pairs.

It wasn't that the hole was muddy and wet. It wasn't. It was frozen.

It was the coldest damn hole I've ever been in.

I got there at 1 this afternoon and go to work. In a job like this, you have to terminate both ends and patch them together and test the cable.

It's very fine work. You need to use your fingers... and feel your fingers. It went slow. It took me over an hour a piece to terminate the cable ends. It took me another hour to patch the two new cables together.

Testing them went badly. I couldn't feel my fingers and had to re-terminate a number of strands that didn't work right.

It was getting dark when I put a metal case on the spliced cable and called it a day.

I left the site after five. The construction crew was happy that I could get it fixed quickly. Maybe I should have strung it out but it was just too damned cold.

I made my bucks the old fashioned way today: I did something no one else wanted to do. I went into the coldest hole in Dixie and came out the winner. :king:

And... went home and soaked in a hot bath.