1. Fashion Designer ( Read more... )

Water's coming into our basement; not much, or at least it wasn't when I left. Just a trickle flowing across the basement floor, south to north (our neighbor to the south is at a higher elevation, and he drains onto our south wall).

Wonder what it'll look like when I get home tomorrow afternoon... I'm feeling kind of happy we left the floodplains ( Read more... )

I just set a Nintendo Wii for the kids. They're been busy preparing Miis (little cartoon avatars), and now they're playing tennis.

Excited little tikes!

One of the cluster nodes rolled over and died last night. I still don't know why...

It seems to be an error state associated with the motherboardThere are 4 banks of DDR SDRAM DIMMs distributed among 6 DDR slots. Only certain configurations are letting the system get into past the POST state, suggesting that some slots are funky ( Read more... )

I just finished repairing my UPS device1) I carefully cut open and de-riveted the side struts ( Read more... )

Since yesterday's update from APC, I decided to change the rules. Screw the warranty; APC has implemented planned obsolescence ( Read more... )

I just ended a phone call with APC technical support. I had called about the swollen battery in my UPS. My UPS is no longer under warranty, and I had hoped for a bit of advice ( Read more... )

It's kind of ironic: we're in the middle of an arctic freeze, and I'm whining about the excess heat in my lab.

Sometimes it sucks having a window-less lab in the center of a building.

All of my posts since the start of 2007 have been about things somehow breaking... dying... going belly up.... frying...

This post is not the exception.

Since January 1, my server has been emailing me (at 9 hour intervals, 8 emails every 3 days). It was telling me that the battery for the UPS needed to be replaced.

While I was taking the burned ( Read more... )

No, not a post about global warming.

The air conditioner unit in my lab failed again.
It appears to be the same fault as before: the motor on the exhaust fan has failed, so the compressor is overheating and shuts down.

This time, though, it's not a warranty repair; the warranty expired back in 2004. I've already placed a call to Windchaser's ( Read more... )