Today I mostly .....

[excossack]

Discovered a dead UPS while walking past the server room...The beeping gave it away.
Found a spare UPS that was working fine last week on another site, so swapped it out. Hit the test button and splat. Dead UPS.

Back to the workshop and pulled out another spare UPS. 5U APC 3000 (heavy thing) and then back to the server room to re-rack and rack spare UPS back in!

While in the server room got a call from one of our chaps that works from home, he couldn't connect to one of the server via the on board administrative connection. Turns out the NIC was dead, caused by the fact the comms team had been removing old CAT5 cables and had knocked out a power cable into a switch that the server was connected to!

[excossack]

We use MDS Battery for APC spares, HP on the other hand appear hard to get.
Its a good excuse to phase out the old beige APCs and replace with new HP Gen2 UPS's, but given the amount of servers we have moved to VM we are buying less of the UPS's.

Also today, placed an order for 6 new Blade servers to host the new VM SQL farm. 2 x 8 core AMD 3.2ghz, 512GB ram, 2 x 120GB SSD drives 10gb NICs

[Zelandeth]

Really need to get a UPS for our router and my server. Server itself being laptop based runs long enough to shut down gracefully (preferences are set so it will power down after running on battery for a minute), unfortunately it never gets that far as the moment the power goes out, all the drives die as they are external and ac powered.

Majority of cuts here are a couple of minutes or less (or when I accidentally unplug the wrong plug!) So wouldn't need to be anything massive.

Definitely need to do that before it goes in the loft as rebooting will be more of a chore then...

Today I mostly tidied our pond up. The netting was almost entirely rotten and torn (especially after the dog knocked one of the stones around the pond through it last week), so that needed to be replaced. Took the opportunity to skim and dredge all the winter crud out and off (only accidentally netted one surprised looking Koi). Did a bit of optimisation on the filteration setup, then put everything back together and attached the new netting. Looks a lot tidier now, and hopefully more cat, dog, fox and heron proof. Count still came back at any value between 9 and 12 when counting the fish, so looks like we still have a full count.

[excossack]

Yesterday, installed an end-fed long wire in the back garden 16ft high at one end and rising to 20ft at the other.
Fired up the HF set and first contact with a station in Switzerland Happy days

[Neil Chowney]

You not got phones that far north then John?

[excossack]

You not got phones that far north then John?

Nope...Got baken bean cans and a bit of string. Phones, they be luxury...I remember when I where a kid we dreamed of phones....

[excossack]

Ahh the good old days

[rid54]

After reading the above I mostly kept staring (for several minutes) at my old ex-military HF station (Ra200) and wondering if it still works. I ought to find out someday...

[excossack]

After reading the above I mostly kept staring (for several minutes) at my old ex-military HF station (Ra200) and wondering if it still works. I ought to find out someday...

Go for it. Is that a Racoll one?

[rid54]

After reading the above I mostly kept staring (for several minutes) at my old ex-military HF station (Ra200) and wondering if it still works. I ought to find out someday...

Go for it. Is that a Racoll one?

It is a swedish-made rig from the 50's ( http://gronradio.sm7dlf.se/ra200.htm ). Worked OK a few years ago, but has since been idle. A beast to carry around on your back (did a lot of that, wearing green clothes) but a delightful, high-precision piece of work. All vaccuum tubes...

[Hannesb]

...had my Broadband from BT activated. 40Mb fibre-based-lightning-fast-browse-like-you-mean-it stuff. Totally underwhelmed. Getting a less-than-lightning-quick 9Mb at the mo.

If this doesn't train up to a decent speed over the next couple of days I will be very unhappy.

[Hannesb]

Hi GB

I can see the cabinet from the couch I'm sitting on in my lounge; it is, oooh, maybe 20 metres away from me across the road. To be fair, it may take a while for the usual training between the devices to complete so I will give it the three days they recommend before I complain in any earnest. It was only ported out from my old TT connection over copper around lunchtime today.

Regards
Hannes

[Neil Chowney]

I can see my cabinet through binoculars... does that mean the speed is also magnified?

[GvidoR]

I've been busy.

I bought a 1996 Volkswagen Vento, with the same 1.4 engine as my Golf Variant. This one, unlike the one in the Golf, runs on all 4 cylinders.


But because the Vento is rough around the edges, it may never see the road again.

However by stripping it down...


...I can acquire such luxuries as double-glovebox


(among other things)

[Hannesb]

Back on the BB subject, I am getting fluctuating results in download from 32 to 40 meg (generally around 36) now, which in all honesty is more than good enough for me. Upload seems to quite consistent at just over 10.

Can't really complain at £8 a month as I needed some way of watching the MotoGP anyway...