[Shop-talk] Backup problems (was: diesel fuel question, then backup generator issues)

[Mark Miller]

I would guess you were not on the emergency power system at all; it came 
back on after 5 minutes because the test was complete and you went back 
to mains power feed.

Even more off topic here.

Not life threatening as your situation was but I once worked at a 
mini-computer manufacturer where we got fancy: hired someone to run our 
system backups so we engineers didn't have to take turns babysitting it 
nightly. Eventually we had a problem as we had more data than would fit 
on a single tape (1/2" 9 track). Note that this was still under 200Mb 
(Mb, not Gb), now a $2 thumb drive. So the code was updated to flow onto 
another tape and a message to the backup operator when the tape reached 
the end popped up "mount other tape".  Fast forward until someone went 
to use the backup after a disk crash and it was unusable:  our data had 
grown so that we now needed 2+ tapes but with the message that came up 
the operator put the first tape back  in for the second change, 
overwriting the first tape in the backup. Oops.

Regards,

Mark Miller   707-490-5834
markmiller at threeboysfarm.com


> From: Eric Russell <ejrussell at mebtel.net>
> To: shop-talk at autox.team.net
> Subject: Re: [Shop-talk] diesel fuel question
> Message-ID: <d766531c-1850-e8fe-a4cb-145651441709 at mebtel.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; Format="flowed"
>
> Since we've drifted a little bit off-topic (and we likely have too much
> free time now), here's my story about emergency generators. At the time
> I was working (RN) night shift in a hospital ICU. Every Tuesday about
> 6am the hospital would test their emergency generator. It was supposed
> to be a quick blink from regular power to emergency power. Except in our
> ICU (and only the ICU) the power would be off for 3-5 minutes! Not fun
> when you have patients on ventilators that did not have battery back-up.
> It got so bad I would remind my staff to stand by with flashlights and
> manual Ambu bags every Tuesday morning.
>
> I complained to the engineering department but they insisted the power
> would only be off for a few seconds at most. I finally convinced the
> chief engineer to come sit in our unit on a Tuesday morning. He did, the
> power went off for a full 5 minutes and the color drained from his face.
> Whatever was the problem finally got fixed.
>
> Eric Russell
> Mebane, NC
>
> On 4/24/2020 10:30 AM, Al Fuller via Shop-talk wrote:
>