The Firehouse

Check out this post:

https://forums.garmin.com/showthread.php?t=274

If you are running the latest release, downgrade to the previous one otherwise uploads from a Forerunner 405CX will invariably fail.

A company-owned Nokia N82 happened to have a failed LCD display module when it was returned, and since replacing it yourself is an easy task (pop the screen cover off, unstick the LCD, disconnect the cable, replace with the new LCD, and close the cover), I went looking for spare parts. Nobody seemed to have the display in stock, other than DataKits UK. I placed an order for the LCD and a set of new covers, as the ones on the phone were quite damaged from use. First sign of trouble was when I checked the order, and the site detected either the language setting of the browser I was using, my IP address, or both – and it tried to load the site in a language that was not configured. There were tons of not found PHP includes, and when HTML was loaded it was full of default text strings.

I emailed the sales address telling them about this, and got an auto-reply a few minutes later: “Sorry for any delay in receiving your order. we will check the status and follow up the delivery company straight away. Thanks DataKits.co.uk” Second sign of trouble, an automated reply regarding possible delays in shipping. This can mean only one thing: they receive a ton of questions and complaints about shipping schedules.

On the order comments, I had specified that they should send me the Royal Mail tracking number once shipped, but last night I saw they had updated the online order status to: “19/02/2009 Dispatched rm”. Not very useful. After some googling, I came across this forum thread on PriceRunner, which details the many problems people have had with this company. I honestly hope they send me the LCD and covers, and have left them a message on their answerphone plus another email (which was auto-replied again with the same text), and have heard nothing back.

For some reason, the power utility and my DSL provider decided to take a dump during the last week, both at the same time. It all started with a day without power, which was blamed on maintenance work. Until today, I ran an APC BackUPS 350 to filter out any power problems that could affect the desktop and other things plugged in it. Well it seems that the power cut and subsequent voltage fluctuations managed to terminate the UPS, rendering the phone line protection port useless. This caused my DSL line to effectively grind to a halt, and also killed my Linksys AG241 router in the process. A couple of days after all this happened, the phone line went dead for almost 48 hours, after which I spent one day running normally, and then all hell broke loose.

The power failed once again for the best part of a day, this time due to a blown transformer taken down by the heavy rain we had during five days, non-stop, and since I was without a UPS, the main hard drive on my desktop got totalled. It would just not boot up.

Drastic times call for drastic measures

Fed up with all this crap and having to reinstall Leopard, apps and get my data back from the latest Time Machine backup, I decided to overkill the problem.

Scotty! We need more power!!

Enter the Honda EC5000 gasoline-powered generator. I plan on converting it to LPG using a Honda kit so that it can run off our house’s big propane tank – much cleaner, longer run times, and no problems with fuel going stale.

I also had to buy a 50A switchover, disruptor, cable, connectors and other stuff to get the generator plugged into our home grid. The first part of the problem, our power utility, had been solved.

A big pile of Duracells

The second big part of the problem was the busted UPS. I decided to replace it with something beefier, not just present to filter out surges and drops, but to provide at least 15 minutes of runway to allow the generator to come online, while keeping powered the Mac Pro, two external hard drives, the new Cisco 877 DSL router that replaced the busted Linksys, three monitors, the Time Machine, and a Mac Mini I use as a media server. A 2,000VA UPS would cover this, but it cost just shy of 1,000€, but instead two 1,000VA SmartUPS units cost 250€ each, and would allow me to distribute load.

Right now, my main UPS handles the Mac Pro plus the external FireWire drives, and the secondary handles the rest (monitors, DSL router, etc.). After powering everything up, the main UPS is at 40% load, while the secondary sits comfortably at 20%. This gives me at least 30 minutes of runtime on the desktop, plenty of time to go outside, fire up the generator, and switch away from the outside grid.

Cost of all this? Almost 4,000€, but in the long run, it will be money well spent. It will be the difference between falling behind work schedules by a full week and keeping up as if nothing happened.

Still running on June’s 3.0 release – and boy, am I glad I didn’t upgrade to 4.0, mainly due to lack of time. In hindsight, it seems that there are so many problems with Parallels 4.0 that I’m going to try VMWare Fusion instead. The world looks slowly more perpendicular…