More rain, more rumbles

[altivo]

Sunshine midmorning turned to threatening clouds by midafternoon.

Arrived at work to find that the phone system was out, and the catalog system (located in Rockford) was down.

I hate digital phones. They are so poorly designed and so unreliable, in my opinion. The problem with the phones? They are connected to a UPS that is supposed to keep them going through a power outage. The UPS was out, and had cut off the power to the "brain" of the phone system. Removed the UPS from the circuit and plugged the phone system directly in to a wall outlet and it came back on. UPS is recharging overnight, but may need a battery replacement (or may be trash, I've never heard of "Alpha" as a UPS manufacturer.)

Once the phones were back on, we could call Rockford to see why the catalog was down. Their explanation: A server crash, apparently hardware failure. A complete new server unit is being expressed overnight and will be installed Wednesday morning. So we had no catalogs and no circulation system all day. I don't think they'll meet their projected recovery time either, because the new server will have to be restored from a backup before it can run.

Trying to help a friend with a Linux driver issue, I confirmed once again my opinion that 1) some Linux distributions are supplied pre-lobotomized; and 2) many hardware manufacturers who claim to support "Linux" really only support RedHat/Fedora. Driver is supplied by the manufacturer in source code form, and must be compiled on the target system before it can be used. OK. Kubuntu does not install the compiler or make utility, nor does it install kernel or module sources that are needed in order to perform this operation. The manufacturer's instructions do not tell the user that these are prerequisites, leaving him only with unintelligible make errors when he tries to follow their instructions. I suspect we can remedy this, but it's going to take some time to do. I don't have the hardware here to test with (though the code does compile for me on Slackware, where I have the prerequisites available.) I couldn't make it compile on Kubuntu either, because it needs the kernel source code in order to compile. Unlike Slackware, Kubuntu doesn't provide that on the CD. Instead, it's a 50 MB download, which I'm not about to undertake over a dialup line.

Thunder keeps rumbling through here this evening, but we've only had a quarter inch of actual rain. In spite of that, the NWS has issued a flash flood warning for our area. *snicker* As usual, they haven't looked out their windows and are just relying on computerized modeling.

Comments

[songdogmi.livejournal.com]

Remember card catalogs? They never went down. Although they would've been hard to read if the lights went out in the library, too. Good luck getting through the technological failures.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yup. I remember card catalogs and am acutely aware of both their advantages and their disadvantages. I tend to agree with those who say that the disadvantages have now outweighed the advantages, though. There are two important factors: cost of maintenance, and ease of change. Creating and filing catalog cards is costly and fraught with errors. Having worked on aspects of catalog maintenance at Michigan State University when their card catalog was still king and contained probably over 20 million cards, I know this well.

[kamodragon.livejournal.com]

Most phones now are digital because of the fiber-optics that deliver the information to and from carriers and between the PTSN and other switches. Thankfully there are safety loops within loops to prevent phone service from going down totally however when it comes down to the individual phones, the technlogy isn't there. For the most part we have to convert a nice digital signal into an analog strand of wires.... Personally I think they should invest money into the mobile phone technology and make EVERYTHING wireless since it seems to be the most stable. Imagine a whole office with complete portability and to prevent loss or dropped calls, a giant antenna on the roof :P

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Ugh. No thanks. I'm not at all enthused about wireless phones. Note that when the power fails in an area, the cell phone towers seem to go down immediately. Conventional analog phones keep working, though, unless the phone lines have been cut. Our digital phone system includes some desk stations that are like normal telephones and some cordless phones. I absolutely hate the cordless ones. They just don't work, require unintelligible sequences of touchpad presses to do things like put a call on hold or pick one up, and are generally uncooperative. They also rely on rechargeable nicad batteries that turn out to be very unreliable and have too short a lifespan.

[kamodragon.livejournal.com]

I think wireless is actually more stable... Towers should have UPS systems since by FCC law telephone systems have to meet certain criteria that keep 3-4 million customer's from loosing cell phone service if the power goes out. Being that I work for a telecommunications company that provides digital telephone, I have seen the problems that conventional phone causes. Now a days analog phones don't really exist... the only thing analog is the wires in the home. The service is carried digitally right to the Interface Unit on the home and converted on the spot...

[altivo.livejournal.com]

That may be true where you are, but hardwired telephones here are still all analog, from the central switch all the way to the residence or business. We have no availability of DSL or other digital services because of that.

It may be that regulation mandates UPS for cellular systems, but they still fail in disaster situations. Ask anyone who went through one of the recent hurricanes. The towers were standing, but the service went dead. The same has happened in my area as recently as last year when a power outage exceeded 15 minutes or so.

[kamodragon.livejournal.com]

Wow, I guess I am used to big city stuff. Of course a smaller place would be wired conventionally but thats scary that even cell phones can go down so easily out there...

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I'm aware of the frequency of cellular phone outages not because I use one, but because I'm a radio amateur. Nearly every disaster report where ham radio played a role, the fact that cell phone service failed is mentioned in the report. Hence I'm inclined not to believe any hype and publicity the phone companies put out about how reliable their wireless service is.

Here at the library site, which is on top of a hill and has line of site to at least two cell phone towers, people frequently have difficulty getting cellular connections. They have to walk around in the parking lot until they find a "good spot".

And yep, our landline service is still analog, with no projected date for conversion to digital or optical cabling. That does mean, however, since the DC power for the analog lines is actually provided by banks of batteries, that the phones keep working. The power that runs the telephone comes from the phone line, which is still live in a power failure. Power failures are frequent here. When the phone line is digital, the local phone is powered by the power mains and goes dead when the power goes out.

The library has one analog line to the fax machine. Our main service is analog twisted pair to the building, and converts to digital for the internal phones at the interface. Just the opposite of what you described. ;p

[kamodragon.livejournal.com]

Hmmm

When I worked for our radio station we used to get tapes and cd's with audio asking to confirm our programming and for decals and things like that. The HAM guys from accross the planet would hand-write letters to us as to their life stories and all that. Very interesting to get those letters and after about 20 years we had about 20 of those letters and tapes laying about.

As for cell phone service in your area... I know how it feels, my place of work has the worst cell phone service I have ever seen. We sit between an aiport and a govenment facility that makes weaponry. Then to top it off we sit between a small grouping of mountains. Needless to say, my cell phone feels like it is going to explode when i do so much as look at it when I am indoors...

*kamo loves radiation*

[chibiabos.livejournal.com]

Dunno about there, but here you can have no precipitation and still get flash flooding. In fact, hot spring days do bring floods on occaision from mountain glaciers melting too fast (which is happening more and more thanks to global warming ... but don't tell the Republicans who insist its all just fiction concocted by liberal conspiracy theorists ...).

[chibiabos.livejournal.com]

*wakes up* *reads your mood*

Mmmm. Bitch.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

We are the high ground here. All our water runs off in other directions. We may provide source for someone else's flash flood, but actually having such a flood here would be rather difficult. And no, we don't have glaciers or mountains here. ;p

[chibiabos.livejournal.com]

Flatland. Blech!

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Nope, not flat either. This was glacier territory in the last ice age, so we have lots of hills and valleys, just no real mountains. Due to a geological phenomenon called "isostatic rebound" our area is rising slowly from sea level, still springing back from the weight that went away when the glaciers melted.

[chibiabos.livejournal.com]

If the hills aren't at least 500', they aren't real hills. :p

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Many of the underlying hilly structures are that high if you measure the gravel and boulders. But the interstitial valleys have filled in with silt over the last 10,000 years so the apparent height is more in the 200-300 foot range.

[chibiabos.livejournal.com]

I live on a ~500 foot hill here, and I believe we've had more silt built up thanks to lahars from Mt. Rainier, more than a mile deep in some areas. If she blows, we're probably as close as you can get without being threatened by a lahar (since we're on a hill). If she blows like St. Helens toward the west, however, we're toast, on a hill directly facing her.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't a flash flood in your area be caused by heavy rain in another area rather than in your area? :)

Sounds like a dodgy UPS battery thats not holding its charge when plugged into the mains.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Actually, flash floods would be pretty uncommon here. We are the high ground. Surface water from here goes elsewhere, it doesn't stick around.

Yes, the UPS was reporting that its battery was no good. However, once it was completely removed from the mains for a few minutes, and then reconnected, it reported that the battery was fine and fully charged. Later in the afternoon I connected it up to a computer I was configuring, and it continued to work as it should. I'm inclined to believe that the battery was fine all along, and the circuitry or firmware in the thing is dubious. Some power glitch caused by storms over the weekend confused it.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'd imagine that flash floods are fairly unlikely if you actually are on the high ground :)

We've got about 4 Liebert UPSs' about here they've been very reliable. How old is that one you've got running the phones?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

It must be between 4 and 5 years old I guess. Certainly it would be reasonable for the battery to fail in that time, though the load is very light. My past experience has been that the regulating circuitry that keeps the battery charged and detects battery failure is more likely to fail than the battery itself.

[hellmutt.livejournal.com]

Yikes. Talk about defeating the object of a UPS. :) My dad's one managed to fritz his computer (in conjunction with me or possibly nergye - I still don't know what exactly went wrong, but it is all fixed now).

I'm really phone fussy. At home, given the choice, I'll use our old analogue unit (I had to stop my mum from throwing it out). The only advantages of our sup3rspiffy cordless handset are caller ID and inbuilt phonebook. It has plenty of disadvantages, not least aesthetic.