bad weather, but still working
Date: Mon, 2 Mar 2015 22:39:23 +0000
Mon:
I came back from NC (a week ago) with a hellacious cold - or perhaps the flu, since it just didn't quit. I stayed home from work all week, but I used only 9 hours of sick time. (I took 2 days off the previous week, and used no vacation time because I was still over 40 hours. So I still have 7 days of vacation to use-or-lose this month.) There was a terrible, deep cough, congestion, runny nose, nosebleeds, headaches, body aches, etc. I was feeling less bad towards the end of the week, but the weather got worse. And I still didn't want to get the rest of the office sick.
I was feeling better today, and decided to bike. I was still feeling pretty tired, and didn't even try the short, super-steep hill a couple of blocks from home. At the 2nd traffic signal I make a left turn, and some really stupid lady decided she wanted to pass me on the right in the left-turn lane. (If you can't even figure out what that means, it's because what she was doing was incredibly stupid.) Made it very difficult for me to move right after the turn to let everyone else pass me. Can people really not wait until they get through the intersection to be road hogs? I obviously had to be in the left lane to make the left turn. What on earth made her think I would want to be in the left lane after turning onto the new street? All the rest of the car traffic - the whole trip - was fine, much better than usual. Just that bozo in a minivan, and the bozo behind her in a BMW - whom I did inconvenience, because after bozo #1 I did get into the outside lane. (And I caught up with her 2 traffic lights later, so what was the point?)
The trail alongside I-66 has sections in the shadow of a high retaining wall, and had large stretches of ice. I had to stop and walk the bike up a hill. There's traffic counters on many of Arlington's trails, and one in Rosslyn has a display. It showed 37 when I approached it (around 15:00). That's the lowest daily count I've ever seen on it. [On the other hand, it tells the county that there are still people using bikes and the trails to get around.] I expect the trails in Fairfax County are in much worse shape (or better, if you want to cross-country ski), so the really hard-core long-distance commuters were probably working from home or driving. Ice really is the limit for most cyclists. If I'd had studded tires and were feeling better though, I probably could have cruised up that hill.
I did find the temperature comfortable - low 40s°F/5-6°C going in, and dropping fast coming home, ending at 28°F/-2°C in my yard. I'm either getting acclimated or I still had a fever. The lack of wind probably made a difference, and I wasn't riding very fast much of either way. I was wary of ice on a lot of the downhills.
There's no Torx-security bits at (NC) home, so I wasn't able to open Mom's UPS yet. But I remembered my own UPS, which died years ago, and which I've never taken the time to open up. It feels like it weighs 10 times what Mom's does, so hers has got to have a heck of a lot less battery in it. I got the cover off mine with 5 screws, but then there's more brackets holding the batteries in place, and there's a circuit board in the way of getting to them. There are 2 batteries that appear to be the same size as the lead-acid gel cells I've been using for years on my bikes. The 2 batteries in series are putting out 0.5v, so they're shot. I'm assuming they're 12v batteries, but there are also 6v batteries that size. I can't tell anything from what the meter registered. I'll have to get the brackets lose to see any markings on the batteries. There is a huge iron-core transformer in there too, and that could be half the weight. Mom's UPS probably has a newer power-supply/charger approach, saving weight, but there still can't be nearly as much battery in there - unless it's NiMH or lithium.
Given that the batteries are what usually fails in a UPS, I don't know why there isn't a market for UPSs that don't contain a battery, designed instead to connect to external 12V batteries - easy to test, and easy to replace. Just get a car battery and set the thing in a corner. You'll get a much longer run time from a larger battery. It might keep a cable or DSL modem and a WiFi router running for days - which could be of use, if your Internet is still up and you're using laptops, tablets, or smart phones.
Tue:
The weather's turned bad again and I won't be on the bike again before Friday. We had some sleet while I was standing on the corner waiting for the bus to work.
It might hit 50°F/10°C Wednesday, but then turn cold again with another winter storm, and possibly 3-5" (7-12cm) of snow. Friday's forecast is sunny and clear, but a high of 26°F/-3°C. Finally back over freezing Saturday (42°F/5.6°C). Spring has got its work cut out for it to get here this year.
Wed:
It did reach 51°F at the airport today. A winter storm warning is set for Thursday, 00:00-21:00, possibly 4-8" (10-20cm) of snow. The temperatures should be dropping tonight with bitter cold Thur/Fri. I'm expecting that transit is going to shut down if the weather is as bad as they say, and we'll all be working from home. The grocery stores should be zoos this evening, with people out to stock up on all the white stuff - milk, bread, eggs, toilet paper, etc....
Thu:
Federal offices in DC were closed today. I never got (at home) the email notice I'm signed up for from the Office of Personnel Management. (There were status notices from 3 sources in my office email, though.) I worked from home.
I went out around 18:30 to shovel the sidewalks. As usual, I did the sickly neighbor to the north and the elderly neighbor to the west and the next house west to the corner. (And we live on a corner, so we've got double sidewalk.) They never thank me. I wonder whether they even notice. Seems like they'd have to notice that somebody is doing it, since they're responsible for getting their walkway passable. I don't generally see any of them in the winter, but sometimes some of them are outdoors in the summer.
The buses were running on the main road (but not the cross street), so I could have gotten to the office. I didn't see any passengers on the buses, so most people really were staying home. The main road is a state highway, so it gets plowed early and often, and it used to be a railroad - lots of cut and fill - so it's much less hilly than the terrain it crosses, putting the bus route farther down the list of weather closures. (Our cross street is quite hilly.)
Fri:
Took the Metro (bus + rail) to work. There were people at the office, but not a lot. Union Station was very busy (long lines at the gates) when I arrived and left. I guess many people whose flights were cancelled Thursday were turning to the trains.
I spent a surprising amount of time cleaning up account problems for a new employee. He needed help setting his password (because the person who created the accounts apparently didn't share the temporary password), and then it didn't work on the first servers he tried. It turns out the accounts weren't created on 9 of the servers requested. Then it turned out that 6 of those 9 servers no longer exist, which doesn't say much for what the managers requesting the accounts know about the application. (2 servers were for functionality that was removed from the application years ago, and the other 4 have been consolidated into fewer servers.) He was trying from the 3 that should exist. And I found the account on 21 servers that were not on the request (although many of them probably should have been).
And many of the managers still don't understand redundant servers. We have back-up servers (plus an entire back-up site) to use if there are problems with the primary servers. If an employee's duties merit access to a primary server, shouldn't (s)he also have accounts on the corresponding back-up servers? If the admins have to fail application services over to the back-up servers, we're probably going to be too busy to create accounts for people. And without access to the primary servers (for reference), we probably won't set the secondary accounts up the same way. And the people who handle the data backups will probably be too busy to restore individual users' directories from the backups of the primary servers.
[This entry was originally posted as https://syntonic-comma.dreamwidth.org/726122.html on Dreamwidth (where there are
comments).]
Mon:
I came back from NC (a week ago) with a hellacious cold - or perhaps the flu, since it just didn't quit. I stayed home from work all week, but I used only 9 hours of sick time. (I took 2 days off the previous week, and used no vacation time because I was still over 40 hours. So I still have 7 days of vacation to use-or-lose this month.) There was a terrible, deep cough, congestion, runny nose, nosebleeds, headaches, body aches, etc. I was feeling less bad towards the end of the week, but the weather got worse. And I still didn't want to get the rest of the office sick.
I was feeling better today, and decided to bike. I was still feeling pretty tired, and didn't even try the short, super-steep hill a couple of blocks from home. At the 2nd traffic signal I make a left turn, and some really stupid lady decided she wanted to pass me on the right in the left-turn lane. (If you can't even figure out what that means, it's because what she was doing was incredibly stupid.) Made it very difficult for me to move right after the turn to let everyone else pass me. Can people really not wait until they get through the intersection to be road hogs? I obviously had to be in the left lane to make the left turn. What on earth made her think I would want to be in the left lane after turning onto the new street? All the rest of the car traffic - the whole trip - was fine, much better than usual. Just that bozo in a minivan, and the bozo behind her in a BMW - whom I did inconvenience, because after bozo #1 I did get into the outside lane. (And I caught up with her 2 traffic lights later, so what was the point?)
The trail alongside I-66 has sections in the shadow of a high retaining wall, and had large stretches of ice. I had to stop and walk the bike up a hill. There's traffic counters on many of Arlington's trails, and one in Rosslyn has a display. It showed 37 when I approached it (around 15:00). That's the lowest daily count I've ever seen on it. [On the other hand, it tells the county that there are still people using bikes and the trails to get around.] I expect the trails in Fairfax County are in much worse shape (or better, if you want to cross-country ski), so the really hard-core long-distance commuters were probably working from home or driving. Ice really is the limit for most cyclists. If I'd had studded tires and were feeling better though, I probably could have cruised up that hill.
I did find the temperature comfortable - low 40s°F/5-6°C going in, and dropping fast coming home, ending at 28°F/-2°C in my yard. I'm either getting acclimated or I still had a fever. The lack of wind probably made a difference, and I wasn't riding very fast much of either way. I was wary of ice on a lot of the downhills.
There's no Torx-security bits at (NC) home, so I wasn't able to open Mom's UPS yet. But I remembered my own UPS, which died years ago, and which I've never taken the time to open up. It feels like it weighs 10 times what Mom's does, so hers has got to have a heck of a lot less battery in it. I got the cover off mine with 5 screws, but then there's more brackets holding the batteries in place, and there's a circuit board in the way of getting to them. There are 2 batteries that appear to be the same size as the lead-acid gel cells I've been using for years on my bikes. The 2 batteries in series are putting out 0.5v, so they're shot. I'm assuming they're 12v batteries, but there are also 6v batteries that size. I can't tell anything from what the meter registered. I'll have to get the brackets lose to see any markings on the batteries. There is a huge iron-core transformer in there too, and that could be half the weight. Mom's UPS probably has a newer power-supply/charger approach, saving weight, but there still can't be nearly as much battery in there - unless it's NiMH or lithium.
Given that the batteries are what usually fails in a UPS, I don't know why there isn't a market for UPSs that don't contain a battery, designed instead to connect to external 12V batteries - easy to test, and easy to replace. Just get a car battery and set the thing in a corner. You'll get a much longer run time from a larger battery. It might keep a cable or DSL modem and a WiFi router running for days - which could be of use, if your Internet is still up and you're using laptops, tablets, or smart phones.
Tue:
The weather's turned bad again and I won't be on the bike again before Friday. We had some sleet while I was standing on the corner waiting for the bus to work.
It might hit 50°F/10°C Wednesday, but then turn cold again with another winter storm, and possibly 3-5" (7-12cm) of snow. Friday's forecast is sunny and clear, but a high of 26°F/-3°C. Finally back over freezing Saturday (42°F/5.6°C). Spring has got its work cut out for it to get here this year.
Wed:
It did reach 51°F at the airport today. A winter storm warning is set for Thursday, 00:00-21:00, possibly 4-8" (10-20cm) of snow. The temperatures should be dropping tonight with bitter cold Thur/Fri. I'm expecting that transit is going to shut down if the weather is as bad as they say, and we'll all be working from home. The grocery stores should be zoos this evening, with people out to stock up on all the white stuff - milk, bread, eggs, toilet paper, etc....
Thu:
Federal offices in DC were closed today. I never got (at home) the email notice I'm signed up for from the Office of Personnel Management. (There were status notices from 3 sources in my office email, though.) I worked from home.
I went out around 18:30 to shovel the sidewalks. As usual, I did the sickly neighbor to the north and the elderly neighbor to the west and the next house west to the corner. (And we live on a corner, so we've got double sidewalk.) They never thank me. I wonder whether they even notice. Seems like they'd have to notice that somebody is doing it, since they're responsible for getting their walkway passable. I don't generally see any of them in the winter, but sometimes some of them are outdoors in the summer.
The buses were running on the main road (but not the cross street), so I could have gotten to the office. I didn't see any passengers on the buses, so most people really were staying home. The main road is a state highway, so it gets plowed early and often, and it used to be a railroad - lots of cut and fill - so it's much less hilly than the terrain it crosses, putting the bus route farther down the list of weather closures. (Our cross street is quite hilly.)
Fri:
Took the Metro (bus + rail) to work. There were people at the office, but not a lot. Union Station was very busy (long lines at the gates) when I arrived and left. I guess many people whose flights were cancelled Thursday were turning to the trains.
I spent a surprising amount of time cleaning up account problems for a new employee. He needed help setting his password (because the person who created the accounts apparently didn't share the temporary password), and then it didn't work on the first servers he tried. It turns out the accounts weren't created on 9 of the servers requested. Then it turned out that 6 of those 9 servers no longer exist, which doesn't say much for what the managers requesting the accounts know about the application. (2 servers were for functionality that was removed from the application years ago, and the other 4 have been consolidated into fewer servers.) He was trying from the 3 that should exist. And I found the account on 21 servers that were not on the request (although many of them probably should have been).
And many of the managers still don't understand redundant servers. We have back-up servers (plus an entire back-up site) to use if there are problems with the primary servers. If an employee's duties merit access to a primary server, shouldn't (s)he also have accounts on the corresponding back-up servers? If the admins have to fail application services over to the back-up servers, we're probably going to be too busy to create accounts for people. And without access to the primary servers (for reference), we probably won't set the secondary accounts up the same way. And the people who handle the data backups will probably be too busy to restore individual users' directories from the backups of the primary servers.
[This entry was originally posted as https://syntonic-comma.dreamwidth.org/726122.html on Dreamwidth (where there are
comments).]