evanroberts.com

The thunderstorms we’ve had here in Toronto have pretty much made me aware of two things:

• My love of watching lightning strike things is fairly normal.
• I need a UPS for the server.

All it takes is a minor brownout to bring the server down, which isn’t too much of an issue as the machine is set to turn itself back on should the power go out, but it can lead to database corruption… which isn’t so cool. Last night I had to restore a part of the database that my website is based upon, which was a pain in the ass. Never did something like that before, and there’s no better way to learn how to do something than by flying by the seat of your pants!

One could argue that this is only MY site, and it’s not like it is a company website worth millions of dollars, but I like my site, and I’m sure some of you do as well. Thank you for visiting.

Anyway, Sparky has had a UPS for a number of years now, and it has worked fairly well for him. His server remains up, his connection to the ‘net remains up, and should he want to watch TV during a blackout, he can… for about 20 minutes. At his recommendation, we got an APC RS-900, which can theoretically provide around 40+ minutes of power; more than enough for one Mac Mini, router, and cable modem. Another thing that is completely cool is that there is a daemon for Linux known as “apcupsd”, which can be used to monitor, manage, and grab information from the UPS, which just rocks.

Check it out:

I *really* like how the UPS logs the “recent events”. For example, with last night’s thunderstorms, Sparky’s UPS logged when there was a power failure, noted that the batteries were being used, and then logged when power was restored. He’s also mentioned how you can set the daemon to send emails detailing the status of the outage (which should work, as a power outage doesn’t necessarily affect cable or phone lines), and that you can even set it to perform a controlled shutdown should the batteries get low. How neat is that!?

We’ll see how this works out, but I’m sure it will be MUCH better than the current configuration.

Breakfast

• Protein shake
  • 1.5 scoops of Weider 90% Protein Soy - chocolate
  • One banana
  • 250ml 1% skim lactose-free milk
  • Mix of frozen strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries

Lunch

• One Premier Nutrition Protein bar - double chocolate crunch

Snacks

• Two light Babybels

Dinner

• RCMI
  • A small bowl of tomato and cucumber gazpacho with crispy leeks
  • Eight pieces of buttered bread (hey, they tasted AWESOME)
  • Pot roast beef brisket with horseradish
  • Parsley boiled potatoes
  • Green beans
  • Peas
  • Boiled carrots
  • A small glass of house red wine
  • A rhubarb and strawberry tart with vanilla whipped cream
  • Two small glasses of Port
  • A cup of coffee with cream and two sugars