[time-nuts] How the "nut" bug bites (was oscillator choice question)

[Michael Sokolov]

Niels Lueddecke <idkfa at abwesend.de> wrote:

> Don't do it, it may drag you deep into nut territory...
>
> All i wanted was a clock based on a cheap LPro rubidium.
> Next thing i knew were strange things piling up on my desk.
> Now theres a custom power supply, 7 AVRs on a couple of boards,
> an FPGA running a 1GHz counter, a lump of metal and some rather
> nice blinkenlights.

A bit OT, but from my experience it isn't just the time nut bug that
bites in this manner, it's pretty much the same with all forms of
nuttiness.

My personal story of becoming a DSL nut also started as a "all I wanted
was..."  In my case back in 2004/2005 "all I wanted" was a V.35 hand-off
instead of Ethernet for the new SDSL service I was getting at the time.
Now 5.5 y later I have 2 different test DSLAMs in my lab and one more
possibly coming, a -48 VDC power supply to feed them, a bunch of Cisco
routers to create various test network configurations, at least one of
each type of pre-existing SDSL CPE ever made, etc.  I have built my own
SDSL CPE device, learned a heck of a lot about copper loops, DSL
techniques and politics of the telco world in the process, and made
technical acquaintances at all major DSL service providers at least in
my part of the world.  (I suspect that the senior network engineers at
the major ISPs think of me the way NIST etc engineers think of TVB.)
The DSL nut bug has bit me hard.

I assume that my experience of getting into DSL is probably quite
similar to how a lot of folks here have got into T&F.

MS