It doesn't rain but it hails.

[vakkotaur]

Or why last night was the start of one of those days.

This gets a bit telegraphic...

I thought I'd have a nice fairly relaxing evening with the only problem being the cleaning/repair of a remote control. That wound up eating more time than I had expected and the thing is still a bit flaky. At least it was nothing urgent and I can set that aside for a while.

I noticed it was getting rather cool in the house. The machine room got to below 70 F which is quite unusual. A check of the thermostat showed that it was set to cool. I hadn't realized Jay had changed it a few days ago when it was warm out. So I set that to back to heat and soon things were warming up again.

So far not too bad, but it had gotten late by the time I really noticed. And then I couldn't check email. Aw, crud. I tried to see if I could load one of own pages. Aw, crap. Check the machine room, find the console for the server... and see "boot failure." Erf. Try a power cycle. "boot failure" Erf! Well, leave it be for now.

Go to bed, read a bit. "What's that loud hum? And that smell is... the smell of hot windings." Aw, CRAP! Check the machine room. No room-filling stench of burnt-out transformers. Whew! Shut the server down anyway. Call Jay, leave a message. Get back on IRC, tell folks (like kinkyturtle who has many pages on it) that it's down and seems to be down hard. Leave a memo.

So I go back to bed and read a bit more. And the loud hum starts. The smell of hot windings comes again. What the?!

The machine room is fine, aside from the very off-line server. Good, well relatively good. Ack, the sound and smell is coming from a heat register. Down to the basement I go. Yep, the furnace motor is getting power but not turning. GESPLINNENGEBLITZ! It's after 11 PM. I need sleep. So I just set the thermostat to "OFF", let the water run a bit in the kitchen, and hope there'll be enough heat retained in the house through another night.

I got through the night, though it was rather cool inside this morning it wasn't freezing (Jay might say otherwise). I check IRC and Jay guides me through a bunch of things with the server, including checking the RAID setup and pulling and re-seating the CPU card, and it all comes back "boot failure" to our mutual annoyance. One last test seems to indicate a memory error, but I'm not sure what it really is. I'm not fluent in alphaserver.

By then, it was time for me to get going. I did a quick pass through the house, opening blinds some to let in daylight (ah, solar heating) and that's things so far.

Not sure what I'll do at noon. Changing CPU cards was suggested, and I might if I can find the other CPU card and have time. I also want to have that furnace motor working again. One *#@& problem at a time please.

At least the local weather this week should have highs above 50 F instead of hanging around 30 F again.

Comments

One problem at a time

[jugularjaguar.livejournal.com]

Seems that Problems ( Aggravatius asmuchchaas Possibicus) run in packs for some unknown reason. It is their nature to travel in large groups so as to better attack you. The lone Problem is normally able to be taken out unless the Problem is allowed to grow to it's full size.
There has been those who have taken out the herd of Problems successfully only but attacking one Problem at a time. These storys that may be true have not been verified at this time.
Good Luck at attacking your Problems

Re: One problem at a time

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

At least I have a couple things I can try tonight to deal with the server. Not that I'll get the thing going again for sure, but maybe I can isolate the problem better.

The furnace motor, while an annoying problem, can be worked around. I can deal with cooler temperatures fairly well - though an electric heating pad might get put to use at night.

The server affects more people and is visible. The furnace is, for the moment, affecting only me. The furnace is probably the simpler problem, too.

[kinkyturtle.livejournal.com]

But yaay, you got everything (including my page) working again! Thanks! *huggo*

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

Not everything. The furnace is still off since the exhaust fan motor (the one that sends the combustion product gasses outside) is out.