Anthony’s Ramblings

Somebody may have noticed that this and Jabber were down this morning…

So, I was at my parents house from the 3rd of July until today visiting for the holiday and then some.  I have my server sitting over there since I am too cheap to foot the power bill (but that may change).  Anyway, my mom woke me up at about 7 AM telling me to check on the server.  She said “it seems like the whole house was put on a dimmer switch!”.  So, in my boxers, I jump up and walk out to the garage.  Sure enough, the UPS’s alarm is blaring.  I stick a voltmeter into the wall socket and it reads 75 volts.  Yep, a brown out.  Since I’m not totally sure on the battery life of the UPS (but it’s probably at least an hour), off the server went.  Next came the frantic rush to turn off/unplug all other electronic devices (which nowadays is almost everything!).

I called PG&E and they gave me an estimate of 2 and 1/2 hours until power was restored.  Sure enough, they were actually on time!  Power was fully restored at 9:30 AM.

Since the server had to go down, I took this opportunity to do some major upgrades (shall we say, apt-get dist-upgrade ?)  Everything went smooth sailing…thankfully.

The power brownout/outage was weird.  I had always assumed that most electronic devices could not operate with a difference of +/- 15 volts coming from the wall.  In any case, both refrigerators still ran (but slowly/dimly), the microwave still displayed the time (but was very dim), and with a small load, the little power supply I made still produced the correct voltages.  However, I’m absolutely sure that prolonged usage at low voltages can be fatal.  Hence why a brownout is typically worse than a blackout.  It was the first time I had experienced one of them!

Oh, and Brianna was able to still toast a bagel.  However, she lost count after the 5th time she had to put it in…and it never turned brown (but it was crispy!).

Update: Is it just me, or does the “Visual” post editor in WP 2.2.1 NOT work? I’ve used it several times and with each post it ignores my paragraphs. I always have to go back and do it manually.

The power supply in my brother’s computer was acting weird…pretty much failing. I’m not sure how to explain it exactly, because all the voltages read within spec. His machine wouldn’t pass POST. In any case, a new power supply fixed it.

I ran across this site (PC Power Supply) and decided to give it a try myself. A trip to Radio Shack to pick up 6 binding posts (for ground, 3.3v, 5v, 12v, -5v, and -12v), a 10 watt 10 ohm wire wound resistor (for switching power supplies to work best, they must always have a load) to place on the 5v power supply, a lot of wire cutting, trimming, stripping, crimping, and sorting, a bunch of drilling, and volla! I built my own!

As you can see in the picture, mine is nowhere as neat as the one on the linked website. First of all, I drilled the mounting holes for the binding posts by eye. They’re not, shall we say, evenly spaced. Second of all, all connections should be soldered. I didn’t do this. I crimped all the connections together. So, maybe I’m a little lazy. It still works! Ironically, the only devices I had to test it with was a hard drive and a case fan. As soon as I get my hands on something I can destroy, it’s going on my new desktop power supply.

I recall making a similar post a year ago about pretty much the same thing. In any case…here goes nothing…

So, for those of you who don’t know, I applied for a job with the Menlo Park City School District in Atherton (go figure, it’s called the Menlo Park school district, but the office is in Atherton). I completed the first part of the interview process last Friday, and it went rather well..

The first part was a written exam. The exam itself wasn’t very hard, but you were only given 30 minutes and you had to answer essay questions like “Please describe DHCP addressing and static addressing, and why one would be better than the other in a given situation.” with only like 2 inches of space to write. So, I completed that as well as I could and moved on.

The second part was a hands-on exam. This involved working with the district’s Technology Director, which was a big bonus. This gave me the chance to show him some of what I know and who I am BEFORE the panel interview. This had two parts to it as well. The first part was an identification part. He handed me various hardware components and I had to identify them and describe them as well as I could. Everything was pretty standard: an RCA A/V cable, a USB cable, a fiber cable, a GBIC card, and a hard drive. However, when describing the fiber cable, I was given my first clue that I may have my foot in the door. The fiber cable he handed me was orange. I’m not 100% sure on this, but I believe that orange fiber cables usually signifies that it is a multi-mode cable. So, I stated that it was a multi-mode fiber cable. He paused for a second and asked “How do you know?”. I explained that it was orange, and that usually orange signifies multi-mode. He pauses, then goes “Huh, I may have just learned something.”

The second part to the hands-on exam was troubleshooting. He sits me at a computer that is having network connectivity problems. He states that I have 20 minutes to troubleshoot the computer, and that fixing the computer is not a requirement. He just wants to see how I troubleshoot the computer (or problem-solve). So, he hands me a sheet of paper that describes the problem. It turns out that the ethernet cable was unplugged at the back of the machine, and that the network settings were wrong (IP address, subnet mask, gateway, and DNS servers). I figured this out and fixed everything in a matter of 30 seconds. The Technology Director stares at me with this astonished look on my face. We sit there silent for what felt like 20 seconds (but was probably more like 2), and then he says “So, what exactly do you do now?!” I go into my position at Berkeley Unified, we talk some more, shake hands, and I am sent home.

So, this morning I get a phone call. It’s MPCSD and they want me back for the 2nd part of the interview! Teriffic! Now, I’m not totally sure if this is standard practice, or if the HR lady was serious, but she said I did fantastic on the testing portion of the interview. I’m going to allow that to be an ego boost and take that as a personal comment.

Portfolio, check! Supplementary questions, check! I’m ready for this interview. 3:00 PM, tomorrow. I can’t wait.

Some people ask me why I applied for the job…well, I will explain why:

If I currently stay at Berkeley USD, in 5 years I will probably be making $42-$45K a year. With MPCSD, the MINIMUM I will start at is $50K a year (or $24 an hour, 8 hours a day, 261 days a year). However, the position’s salary range is anywhere between $50-$70k a year (or $24-$35 an hour, 8 hours a day, 261 days a year), and the head of HR said it’s rare that mot people start at rock bottom. So I’d probably start around $52k…if I get the job. Now, it may sound like it’s all good, but there is one sacrifice. My Berkeley position is a 10 month position, which means I get the summer off. The MPCSD job is a 12 month job, which means I’d be working year-round. I feel the sacrifice is totally worth it!