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Today was our director's last official day. She'll be in and out for another week, I guess, but she's off payroll and officially retired now. A week from tomorrow she and her husband are heading off to Germany for a vacation.
I've worked with her for just short of eight years. That's a few months longer than I was at my previous library position, and it has almost always been cordial and collegial. She's entitled to her retirement, of course, having been at the library for 30 years and 28 of them as head librarian (which is what it was called back then.) But that doesn't make me feel less melancholy and apprehensive about her departure. We had a lot of common interests outside of work, and even though she'll still be around and I expect to see her often this is a major change.
Replacement UPS batteries arrived yesterday afternoon, and of course we had another power outage overnight so everything was down when I arrived this morning. Had they come a day earlier, I'd have had them all installed yesterday while the library was closed. Now it's going to take a few days. One of the target UPS units was offline, though, so I was able to swap batteries and charge the new ones up. It's backing up my Alpha (test server, no users other than myself) for the weekend and I will swap it for one of the unreliable units on Monday morning before the library opens. The other two units are rack mounted and provide backup power to network switches and hubs as well as routers and the firewall. Most of that stuff recovers on its own after a crash, but occasionally the firewall or one of the routers will hang on a "brownout" and lock up, requiring intervention. Once I get 40 pounds of new batteries installed, they should be more reliable.
I brought home the batteries from the Smart UPS I reactivated today. Although they no longer keep the UPS charging circuitry happy, I suspect they are quite usable for my amateur radio activities. These are two very hefty lead-acid gel cells, 12v. each at a substantial amperage (they had a 100A fuse and were connected in series to yield 24v. output.) I will try putting them in parallel instead to supply my low power radios with steady DC and no power line hash or interference. My regular transceiver draws all of 100mA with the key down, and I suspect they'll be up to that load for some time yet. I should build a regulated charger for them, though. I suspect using an automotive charger isn't the best idea.
I'll get eight more of these out of the other UPS units, though rather smaller sized as they are rack mounted. I think I may be able to use them on our fence chargers that run off 12v. and have solar trickle chargers to keep the batteries floated.
Tomorrow Gary is probably going to a Civil War recreation, and I have barn duty and a pot luck to attend in the evening. Sunday is my turn to be a recreator, demonstrating 18th-19th century spinning techniques at a 180 year old farm in the NE corner of the county. Chance of thundershowers both days, but we'll hope for the best.
I've worked with her for just short of eight years. That's a few months longer than I was at my previous library position, and it has almost always been cordial and collegial. She's entitled to her retirement, of course, having been at the library for 30 years and 28 of them as head librarian (which is what it was called back then.) But that doesn't make me feel less melancholy and apprehensive about her departure. We had a lot of common interests outside of work, and even though she'll still be around and I expect to see her often this is a major change.
Replacement UPS batteries arrived yesterday afternoon, and of course we had another power outage overnight so everything was down when I arrived this morning. Had they come a day earlier, I'd have had them all installed yesterday while the library was closed. Now it's going to take a few days. One of the target UPS units was offline, though, so I was able to swap batteries and charge the new ones up. It's backing up my Alpha (test server, no users other than myself) for the weekend and I will swap it for one of the unreliable units on Monday morning before the library opens. The other two units are rack mounted and provide backup power to network switches and hubs as well as routers and the firewall. Most of that stuff recovers on its own after a crash, but occasionally the firewall or one of the routers will hang on a "brownout" and lock up, requiring intervention. Once I get 40 pounds of new batteries installed, they should be more reliable.
I brought home the batteries from the Smart UPS I reactivated today. Although they no longer keep the UPS charging circuitry happy, I suspect they are quite usable for my amateur radio activities. These are two very hefty lead-acid gel cells, 12v. each at a substantial amperage (they had a 100A fuse and were connected in series to yield 24v. output.) I will try putting them in parallel instead to supply my low power radios with steady DC and no power line hash or interference. My regular transceiver draws all of 100mA with the key down, and I suspect they'll be up to that load for some time yet. I should build a regulated charger for them, though. I suspect using an automotive charger isn't the best idea.
I'll get eight more of these out of the other UPS units, though rather smaller sized as they are rack mounted. I think I may be able to use them on our fence chargers that run off 12v. and have solar trickle chargers to keep the batteries floated.
Tomorrow Gary is probably going to a Civil War recreation, and I have barn duty and a pot luck to attend in the evening. Sunday is my turn to be a recreator, demonstrating 18th-19th century spinning techniques at a 180 year old farm in the NE corner of the county. Chance of thundershowers both days, but we'll hope for the best.
