The Boston Diaries

The ongoing saga of a programmer who doesn't live in Boston, nor does he even like Boston, but yet named his weblog/journal “The Boston Diaries.”

Go figure.

Monday, August 31, 2009

If this keeps up, I may have to physically drag Smirk back to the office

Four for four. Today's issue was a non-responsive DNS resolver in The Data Center In Boca Raton. It may have been left over from the UPS incident the other day (we have redundant DNS resolvers and there's a known issue with the monitoring system triggering false reports on that one resolver).

But still … this is getting ridiculous.


“What if you mix the mayonnaise in the can, WITH the tunafish? Or … hold it! Chuck! I got it! Take LIVE tuna fish, and FEED 'em mayonnaise! Oh this is great.”

Those USP devices you buy for your computer usually have a gel-cell battery that lasts for a few years. Less if your power goes out a lot. When you replace them, you pay a bundle, even if it's a standard cell. This short Instructable will demonstrate how to rework an older USP for more capacity with cheaper battery power.

Via Hacker News, Rework a USP with Massive Capacity

Sounds like a neat idea, but it got me thinking—wouldn't it be better if the USP could power the computer directly with DC? Our Cisco switches can take a direct 12V power supply, and pretty much all computer power supplies convert AC 120V to ±12V and ±5V (or is it ±3.3V these days?—I haven't kept up) and there are any number of devices (like the wireless router, the DSL modem, the VoIP phone) that all have these huge wall worts that are hard to find space to plug in that all work off of 12V as well. I would think it would be a no-brainer to make a USP do the conversion work and feed the devices DC directly, instead of converting 12VDC power into 120VAC power only to have it converted back to 12V/5VDC power.

Obligatory Picture

[The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades]

Obligatory Contact Info

Obligatory Feeds

Obligatory Links

Obligatory Miscellaneous

You have my permission to link freely to any entry here. Go ahead, I won't bite. I promise.

The dates are the permanent links to that day's entries (or entry, if there is only one entry). The titles are the permanent links to that entry only. The format for the links are simple: Start with the base link for this site: https://boston.conman.org/, then add the date you are interested in, say 2000/08/01, so that would make the final URL:

https://boston.conman.org/2000/08/01

You can also specify the entire month by leaving off the day portion. You can even select an arbitrary portion of time.

You may also note subtle shading of the links and that's intentional: the “closer” the link is (relative to the page) the “brighter” it appears. It's an experiment in using color shading to denote the distance a link is from here. If you don't notice it, don't worry; it's not all that important.

It is assumed that every brand name, slogan, corporate name, symbol, design element, et cetera mentioned in these pages is a protected and/or trademarked entity, the sole property of its owner(s), and acknowledgement of this status is implied.

Copyright © 1999-2024 by Sean Conner. All Rights Reserved.