Thoughts from a weekend emergency

This weekend there was an event on campus that involved a presenter bringing their own laptop. I got a panicked call on Saturday night, because it was not working. Luckily, I was only minutes away from campus, so I was able to stop by and see what was going on. The VGA input for the laptop had been damaged by a previous user and therefore was not working. As I scrambled to find a solution, a couple thoughts came to mind.

1. On the inside of every rack should be a schematic drawing. In an emergency trying to trace back a wire, without a schematic gets to be very stressful. Having a schematic would have allowed me to relax a bit and have the time to work through the rack properly. I imagine that I am one of the last people to think of this, but better late than never!

2. Is all the Cat5 we are using for installations really an advancement? On Saturday, my saving grace was disconnecting the VGA from the rack, at the wall plate and plugging the laptop in there. In all of our new installations, this connection would not have existed. All that would be at the wall plate was a Cat5. I could try all night, but I don't think I could have plugged the VGA into the Cat5. While these installations are certainly easier to install and design, they also take away a lot of our learned experiences on how solve problems in emergencies!