[conspire] Safety at CABAL meetings: NO UNCOVERED CABLE RUNS

[Rick Moen]

This will be slightly irritable, because I have just gotten injured and
am in pain.

Early in the CABAL meeting, I was busy replacing the house's ethernet
cabling that various parties had incompetently abused physically
(smashing and compressing the cables) to the point that the cables had
been spewing garbage onto my LAN and interfering with everyone's use of
the LAN and everyone's Internet connectivity.

While I was busy doing that, Bruce and Ross were kind enough to set up
the long AC power cables.  Suddenly, as I was working indoors to feed
ethernet under the house, Bruce came in and said (paraphrasing) 'I have
more bad news.  Your bicycle fell over and broke your bicycle helmet.'  
More precisely, Bruce had clumsily fed the AC cable through the porch
door without paying any attention and knocked down my bicycle, which
then finally smashed my old Bell bicycle safety helmet.  Deciding I'd be
damned if I'd run safety risks on my main means of transportation (my
bicycle) just because of clumsy guests, I left, and spent an hour
finding a new good helmet (about $75).  

When I came back, I noticed to my slight disgust that there was a long
AC cable draped across the back patio, with nothing covering it -- and
thought, Jesus Christ, people, does NOBODY LEARN ANYTHING?  How many
frelling times do I have to say, for how many frelling YEARS in a row,
NO GODDAMNED DANGEROUS CABLE RUNS.  However, I was still busy recabling
my house, so I didn't get around to fixing that or having the
discussion.

This is that discussion.  However, after seeing everyone off, including
Ross, who said on his way out 'Ah, well, at least we had adults who
could set things up', I walked back because my 24x7 on-call duty had
kicked in.  I was going indoors, telling my remaining guests I was going
to be busy, when, yes, I goddamned well got tripped by that goddamned AC
cable.  Both of my knees are bloody, and I'm hurting quite a lot.

That could have been somebody breaking a bone.  Bruce, Ross, what the
hell were you thinking?  What the HELL were you thinking?

I appreciate your trying to help, but don't injure my guests, and don't
injure me.  If you can't be bothered to pay attention, then don't try to
help.  Really.  This could have been a whole lot worse.