Room with a Deja View

[altivo]

In a sort of echo of yesterday's pattern, we had a thunderstorm that glitched power enough to reset servers and stuff in the middle of the afternoon, while a whole classroom full of second graders was just leaving the library. So they stood under the canopy outside screaming every time there was a lightning flash.

Yesterday I found that the batteries in two UPS units need replacing, and suspected a third. Today I confirmed that the batteries in the third may be good, but the switching circuitry is bad so it never cuts over to battery power at all. Then as we were about to leave the building at 8 pm we heard beeping from another direction. Sure enough yet another UPS is now reporting that its battery is bad. There's only one more to go, and it powers our telephone system. If that fails I won't be able to call out to order any replacements at all. Fortunately the internet will still work.

Caught the kid who's been hacking at our systems. He was unplugging a machine from the wall and I let him have it (verbally.) Now I know who has been doing this. I keep finding stations unplugged from the power or the network. He thinks he's hiding what he's been doing that way, but we're on to him. I believe the boss will finally ban him from using the library at all for 30 days now.

Clouds have thinned out enough to let the almost full moon show through. It looks kind of spooky and autumn-ish, but the steamy 80F air definitely feels like summer.

Threading the loom for the "green" bag. Should be weaving by this time tomorrow.

Comments

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

How does unplugging a machine from the wall hide what he's been doing? To me that's like unplugging the computer and expecting all the data to be gone.

[altivo]

I'm guessing that he thinks it forces a reboot and erases any logs. We see this fairly often. People who have been trying to get at porn or such will power down the PC when they leave. This one has been trying to do all sorts of illicit stuff, we already know that. Some of his antics can cause the machine to freeze up rather than do what he wants. Since these machines run Linux on an ext3 file system, he is not erasing any evidence that way of course. Some of his activities are logged to another machine over the network in any case.

[hrrunka]

Glad you caught him. Hope he'll stop causing trouble.

[moonhare]

I believe the boss will finally ban him from using the library at all for 30 days now.

We only banned one patron from the pcs, and this was more for direct vandalism and not his viewing prefs. Some of the kids sit and cruise the net, chat, yell across the room, throw stuff around, and finally get bored and start picking at labels, stickers, keys, and buttons on the machines. We don't keep more than a visual track on who is where and when; some of the branches track by card number and time slot. Anyway, we knew where this one had been and the boss finally had him escorted out for his activities.