Monday, February 23, 2009
Healthy as Horses
Just a quick note to report that we are all FINALLY healthy! Now, some of you might not think this is news worthy, but we've had quite the winter...down with the sickness. :)
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Midterm Results
I just took my Database Management midterm yesterday, and I was pretty nervous. I had been taking classes that don't require midterms (English, and a programming class, all project based), and I hadn't taken a big test in a while. The test wasn't that hard, but was fairly challenging, one answer came down to a properly placed semicolon, and the professor used obscure terms rather than ones in common usage. And I CRUSHED it. All the questions, even the extra credit ones. I was done so fast the professor offered to grade it right there, and he had a note of disbelief in his voice when he told me I aced the test. So, that was a good day.
Temporal Disconnect
I had a very unusual experience lately, and I thought I would share it with you all. I was telling an Army story about a friend who dislocated his pelvis on a jump, and it took 6 months to find the problem and have his pelvis re-located (that makes it sound like his pelvis was lost). This lead to a desire to try to look him up again, as we had been fairly close. He and his wife used to invite me over for dinner and not tell me they had invited the priest, as well. We were also roommates in language school, classmates in AIT, and in the same company in the tactical battalion. Oh, and we performed together once, he singing, and me on the piano, at a formal event.
So I googled his name, which I had tried before, but this time I got a newspaper article about his death. The article was almost 3 years old. I was kind of upset, because he was one of the few guys I had tried to get in touch with. I guessed that his wife would move back to where they were from, so I did some internet magic and came up with her number. I got in touch with her, and we had a very nice chat, but it was really odd. I had only known about Josh's death for about 30 minutes, and it was raw and painful. It had been three years for her, and she had moved on and was doing fine. She had even started dating again. Here I was, expressing my condolences to someone telling me jokes, and remembering fun stuff we had done! It was heartwarming in the end, and she invited me up with my family to visit, just outside of Pittsburgh. She is REALLY interested to meet Conni, and can't believe I have kids.
Here is the article on Josh, if you are interested, or morbidly curious:
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/cityregion/s_452715.html
So I googled his name, which I had tried before, but this time I got a newspaper article about his death. The article was almost 3 years old. I was kind of upset, because he was one of the few guys I had tried to get in touch with. I guessed that his wife would move back to where they were from, so I did some internet magic and came up with her number. I got in touch with her, and we had a very nice chat, but it was really odd. I had only known about Josh's death for about 30 minutes, and it was raw and painful. It had been three years for her, and she had moved on and was doing fine. She had even started dating again. Here I was, expressing my condolences to someone telling me jokes, and remembering fun stuff we had done! It was heartwarming in the end, and she invited me up with my family to visit, just outside of Pittsburgh. She is REALLY interested to meet Conni, and can't believe I have kids.
Here is the article on Josh, if you are interested, or morbidly curious:
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/cityregion/s_452715.html
A Little Lesson in DC Power
This happened several weeks ago, but I have been pretty busy, and Conni is always on the laptop. In her defense, it is her laptop. On with the story...
Most of you know that I work in a lab with fairly large network equipment. Part of my testing involves power failures and recovery, as well as redundancy. On this lovely Monday morning, I was testing the power conditioning units in a chassis. All computers (including laptops, desktops, servers and network appliances) run on DC power. We don't have DC power feeds in our lab, because it is expensive, dangerous, and the line loss is pretty high over anything longer than about 30 feet. So we run AC to the rack, and have a rectifier turn the AC into DC. To give you an idea of the amount of power, the rectifier takes four (4) AC inputs, and has two DC outputs, one for each power conditioning unit in the chassis. I can picture everyone (but mostly brooke) with their eyes glazed over. On with the story!
I had to simulate a power outage, and remove the PCU from the chassis. Being a belt AND suspenders kind of guy around electricity (hi Matt!) I decided that I would not only turn off the switch in the PCU, but also disconnect the PCU from the rectifier. The smart course would have been to remove the power cord from the PCU, but I wasn't sure that the cord (DC, remember?) didn't have exposed prongs, and I didn't want to be waving live DC around in one hand while I fiddled around with the PCU with the other. So I disconnected power from the side of the rectifier which fed the PCU (which is about the size of a shoebox) and then turned off the PCU with a switch, and went to remove it from the chassis.
Now the exciting part--a very large arc as the PCU in my hand grounded itself to the chassis, about 6 inches in front of my eye. I couldn't see very well, as the spark left a fairly good-sized afterimage, so I exited the lab (in a bit of a hurry) and grabbed one of the other engineers to assist. I believe I said something like "I can't see very well, and we need to isolate power from rack 7 before we have a fire or someone gets hurt". We very carefully removed the remaining AC leads from the rectifier, which isolated the chassis entirely, and surveyed the damage. The arc had eaten a hole in the side of the chassis about the size of a dime.
In the post-mortem, we decided that the rectifier had a common bus. That means that all four AC power supplies lead to one common DC feed, which then split into two cables, one for each PCU. So my disconnecting two AC cords didn't really do anything. But, you ask, what about turning the PCU off at the switch? Surely that means there was no power to the PCU? Well, there was no power THROUGH the PCU, but there was still power to the switch. And it turns out that I brushed the hot power lead to the switch against the side of the chassis, which completed the circuit.
Something funny did happen later. My boss, his boss (a director named Scott, he reminds me of Dad) and I were discussing the event, and Scott said "Well, we aren't going to run this test anymore, let the vendors do it." My boss, Raj, said something like "After we initially qualify a chassis, there is no need to run this test again." Scott said "Didn't you hear me? We are NEVER running this test again. It isn't worth having an engineer smoking and twitching on the floor." Which still makes me kind of giggle. BTW, I stopped by the Lab Manager, and thanked him personally for ensuring the chassis were grounded to the racks, and the racks themselves grounded. Do you want to know why everything was grounded? I had picked up some stray voltage some months previously, questioned why the racks weren't grounded to spec, and stopped testing until they got fixed. True.
Most of you know that I work in a lab with fairly large network equipment. Part of my testing involves power failures and recovery, as well as redundancy. On this lovely Monday morning, I was testing the power conditioning units in a chassis. All computers (including laptops, desktops, servers and network appliances) run on DC power. We don't have DC power feeds in our lab, because it is expensive, dangerous, and the line loss is pretty high over anything longer than about 30 feet. So we run AC to the rack, and have a rectifier turn the AC into DC. To give you an idea of the amount of power, the rectifier takes four (4) AC inputs, and has two DC outputs, one for each power conditioning unit in the chassis. I can picture everyone (but mostly brooke) with their eyes glazed over. On with the story!
I had to simulate a power outage, and remove the PCU from the chassis. Being a belt AND suspenders kind of guy around electricity (hi Matt!) I decided that I would not only turn off the switch in the PCU, but also disconnect the PCU from the rectifier. The smart course would have been to remove the power cord from the PCU, but I wasn't sure that the cord (DC, remember?) didn't have exposed prongs, and I didn't want to be waving live DC around in one hand while I fiddled around with the PCU with the other. So I disconnected power from the side of the rectifier which fed the PCU (which is about the size of a shoebox) and then turned off the PCU with a switch, and went to remove it from the chassis.
Now the exciting part--a very large arc as the PCU in my hand grounded itself to the chassis, about 6 inches in front of my eye. I couldn't see very well, as the spark left a fairly good-sized afterimage, so I exited the lab (in a bit of a hurry) and grabbed one of the other engineers to assist. I believe I said something like "I can't see very well, and we need to isolate power from rack 7 before we have a fire or someone gets hurt". We very carefully removed the remaining AC leads from the rectifier, which isolated the chassis entirely, and surveyed the damage. The arc had eaten a hole in the side of the chassis about the size of a dime.
In the post-mortem, we decided that the rectifier had a common bus. That means that all four AC power supplies lead to one common DC feed, which then split into two cables, one for each PCU. So my disconnecting two AC cords didn't really do anything. But, you ask, what about turning the PCU off at the switch? Surely that means there was no power to the PCU? Well, there was no power THROUGH the PCU, but there was still power to the switch. And it turns out that I brushed the hot power lead to the switch against the side of the chassis, which completed the circuit.
Something funny did happen later. My boss, his boss (a director named Scott, he reminds me of Dad) and I were discussing the event, and Scott said "Well, we aren't going to run this test anymore, let the vendors do it." My boss, Raj, said something like "After we initially qualify a chassis, there is no need to run this test again." Scott said "Didn't you hear me? We are NEVER running this test again. It isn't worth having an engineer smoking and twitching on the floor." Which still makes me kind of giggle. BTW, I stopped by the Lab Manager, and thanked him personally for ensuring the chassis were grounded to the racks, and the racks themselves grounded. Do you want to know why everything was grounded? I had picked up some stray voltage some months previously, questioned why the racks weren't grounded to spec, and stopped testing until they got fixed. True.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Sick and Tired of Being Sick
If anyone hasn't heard about our September, Karl and I ended up getting Bronchitis and the boys came down with bad colds and coughs. I swear that whole month someone in our house was sick. I thought we'd paid our dues...WRONG.
In December, Gavin got shots and his 2 year check-up. The doctor asked me about getting flu mists for both Conner and Gavin. (I've always thought they MADE you sick instead of preventing it.) I felt like a horrible mother declining the doctor's insistence that I have them administered. I eventually was brow-beat into doing it and we were off.
Along comes January 25th...I woke up very early with the stomach flu. I was out the whole day with things coming out both directions, it lasted 24 hours. I thought luck was with me because I was sick on Sunday, therefore I didn't have to miss my babysitting duties the next day...again I was WRONG.
Thursday morning came along and CJay and Karl came down with the same thing I had 4 days prior. I had to "call in" sick and kept all babies that weren't mine away.
Thursday night came and I thought we were in the clear because at least that darn flu mist was going to pay off after all because Conner and Gavin hadn't gotten sick. Think again!!!! Gavin started in at 11PM just as I was getting into bed and I was up with him most of the night.
My 4 hours of sleep ended dreadfully Friday morning when I woke up to Conner throwing up. I "called in sick" again and my babysitting duty had to accompany his mother to work that day (add guilt to the party). Mind you...Karl was still not feeling well so he couldn't help with the children and so I had 3 sickos (probably not the best word)to take care of. One bright spot was that CJay was feeling great and went to school that day.
Saturday comes and we were all beginning to feel normal. (Sigh)
Sunday came and after I attended Stake Conference I came home with a migraine that lasted until I feel asleep that night. I guess I'd had too much stress recently or something.
Monday morning I woke without a headache, which I was extremely grateful for, but I came down with a sore throat later that day.
Tuesday I still had the sore throat, but I now had started to develop a horrible stuffy nose.
Today, Wednesday, I still can't breathe and I just want to shoot myself! Okay, not really.
Btw, Karl was both an excellent nurse when I was sick and patient when he was sick. What would I do without him.
In December, Gavin got shots and his 2 year check-up. The doctor asked me about getting flu mists for both Conner and Gavin. (I've always thought they MADE you sick instead of preventing it.) I felt like a horrible mother declining the doctor's insistence that I have them administered. I eventually was brow-beat into doing it and we were off.
Along comes January 25th...I woke up very early with the stomach flu. I was out the whole day with things coming out both directions, it lasted 24 hours. I thought luck was with me because I was sick on Sunday, therefore I didn't have to miss my babysitting duties the next day...again I was WRONG.
Thursday morning came along and CJay and Karl came down with the same thing I had 4 days prior. I had to "call in" sick and kept all babies that weren't mine away.
Thursday night came and I thought we were in the clear because at least that darn flu mist was going to pay off after all because Conner and Gavin hadn't gotten sick. Think again!!!! Gavin started in at 11PM just as I was getting into bed and I was up with him most of the night.
My 4 hours of sleep ended dreadfully Friday morning when I woke up to Conner throwing up. I "called in sick" again and my babysitting duty had to accompany his mother to work that day (add guilt to the party). Mind you...Karl was still not feeling well so he couldn't help with the children and so I had 3 sickos (probably not the best word)to take care of. One bright spot was that CJay was feeling great and went to school that day.
Saturday comes and we were all beginning to feel normal. (Sigh)
Sunday came and after I attended Stake Conference I came home with a migraine that lasted until I feel asleep that night. I guess I'd had too much stress recently or something.
Monday morning I woke without a headache, which I was extremely grateful for, but I came down with a sore throat later that day.
Tuesday I still had the sore throat, but I now had started to develop a horrible stuffy nose.
Today, Wednesday, I still can't breathe and I just want to shoot myself! Okay, not really.
Btw, Karl was both an excellent nurse when I was sick and patient when he was sick. What would I do without him.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Apostle Stake Conference
Our stake conference was last weekend and it was awesome! We had a visiting apostle, Dallin H. Oaks, and he gave an amazing talk. Before conference started, Elder Oaks took 30 minutes to walk throughout the chapel to shake and make eye-contact with everyone he could. (I got to shake his hand twice, it was exciting :) I was very impressed with his kindness. I was talking with my mom about the experience last night and she mentioned that somewhere in our genealogy we are related to Elder Oaks. Sure is a small world.
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