A Hard Days Work!

This morning a Linux expert (and friend of Muni) stopped by. This guy knew Ubuntu, CentOS, Red Hat and all the other major Linux distributions in and out. We are in the process of converting the old server room to a much less cluttered (and much lower power consumption) server room using just two of the computers I brought. As I am typing this, the data is already going through one of the computers, which is currently set up as a DNS server. Tomorrow he will come back, and we will setup DHCP (on the computer we were working on today), then install Linux over the network on the other computer. Magic! In the hour that he was here, he managed to get a huge amount of work done: part of this is because he SSH’d into his home computer with a script he had already created for us. This was the computer science version of the cooking show host saying, “here’s one I prepared earlier”. He did a few days work in a short amount of time, and our ISP is one step closer to having 24/7 uptime. The looming specter of load shedding  is getting closer every day, as power outages last a little bit longer every time the power cuts off.

We did manage to get an accurate (and safe) reading with the multimeter. I asked Shyami to hold the terminals one time so that he won’t have an irrational fear of batteries for the rest of his life. I held the other one just so that he’d feel safe, and Ram helped set everything up so that we wouldn’t have the same problem we had yesterday. The reading came through as 13.8V at 1amp when the computer was first turned on (a power spike, as high as it will ever be when the computers are running) and then dropped to 13.8V at 0.91amp while the computer was booting up with the hard drives spinning at full speed (5400RPM). This translates to ~12.6W under full load, which is great. There is always a margin of error when measuring electrical devices, though, so the real power draw could be anywhere from 11.3W to 13.9W, assuming a +/- 10% accuracy. Considering the previous rating taken in America using a P3 Kill-A-Watt was 14W (when using a AC-DC converter with 95% efficiency), I am guessing that the real power consumption is around 13W under full load, which is excellent.

Later in the day, a Panasonic Toughbook came in for repairs. I thought this would be a good time to disassemble the DVD drive in my M1530, as it has not been working for over a year. The Toughbook had a faulty DVD drive too, and needed a reformat and re-installation of Windows. By fixing my DVD drive, we could put the hard drive in my computer, use my DVD drive to install Windows on the Toughbook’s hard drive, and then switch the drives. The Toughbook wouldn’t have a working DVD drive still, but at least it would have a working copy of Windows. Upon completely taking apart my computer (the DVD drive is literally the last thing you can access if you take it apart step-by-step), we found what was wrong with it: the last DVD I had put in was still there, just as I had remembered it (if Anders wants his DVD with yearbook photos on it, it’s sitting in Kathmandu waiting for him), but the motors in the DVD drive had died as the ribbon cable had somehow detached at one point. It is also not a SATA drive as I had thought (I have a replacement slim line SATA DVD burner with me) but a PATA one. Realizing that we didn’t have the necessary tools to fix my M1530, we decided to move on to the Toughbook and test the hard drive in my computer. It booted fine into Windows XP, but I then got a warning message telling me that it was official US government property and that all data and communications would be monitored. Yikes. The laptop seemingly belongs to someone in the Multi National Force serving in Iraq, judging by the workgroup login “MNF-WIRAQ”.

Other than that, early celebrations for Deepawali / Diwali are starting here. Fireworks explode every few seconds — although they seem to be on-ground “report” style fireworks (little flash but a lot of bang) rather than the sort of airborne fireworks seen during July 4th in America or October 1st in China, so I haven’t managed to catch any with my camera (yet). I certainly want to take as many photographs as I can: I emailed the editor of www.boston.com’s popular “Big Picture” blog, and he told me to send my best Diwali photos to him as the festival progresses. Here’s hoping I’ll be published!

That’s all for now.
Charles