Logging in McCarthy Forest!!! Mon, Aug 28. 2006
What is this man doing?!
Why he's logging his discovery of a GeoCache of course!
McCarthy Forest Pathes
(in cyan, by Myke and CondorCounter; 45.3505,-75.6525)
Google Earths Map: © 2006 Navteq, © 2006 Europa Technologies, Background Image © 2006 DigitalGlobe
(in cyan, by Myke and CondorCounter; 45.3505,-75.6525)
Google Earths Map: © 2006 Navteq, © 2006 Europa Technologies, Background Image © 2006 DigitalGlobe
This past weekend, my father and I set off on a cartographing mission of the nearby McCarthy Forest on our Kona bikes. (He's got my old Fire Mountain.) He's got this neat little wrist-wearable Garmin ForeTrex 101 GPS receiver that we used to track our voyage and mark intersections as way-points. Unbeknownst to me, he'd also pre-programmed a few co-ordinates...
Along the way, we discovered our first GeoCache.
The Cache
Inside the cache
I'd heard of GeoCaching years ago, but not having a handheld GPS (I've got a USB mouse recv'r) or a bike, but mostly no significant inclination to go outside - didn't really made playing hide-and-seek all that likely... I get the feeling that's probably about to change: an excuse to use a GPS receiver, a digicam, my bike and something to 'blog about... how could I say no?!
Actually - a couple good reasons: raspberries, thorns, brambles... blood...
More Ow.
The more I think about it, GeoCaching isn't that far off from wardriving or Plazes either. Neither of which I'm a stranger to.
So now I have to find a GPS receiver that's:
- Mac and Linux friendly
- Handle-bar mountable
- Readable at that distance
- saves tracks
- supports way-point direction
Suggestions?
Oh, and here's some obligatory bike photos. Click for links to the galleries.
The Hoss in its Element
The Hoss and its Element
Radio Archeology Sun, Aug 27. 2006
Scars o'er the land
CJSB-AM "54Rock" was a widely popular radio station in the Ottawa market; in 1994 the changed formats into what's now known as CKQB-FM The Bear, which I wrote about a few weeks back.
Well, let's go further back. Jorge and I trekked out to the old and decommissioned AM transmitter site. While I'd been hoping that there'd be tons of radio gear just gathering dust, I was informed that those assets had been removed years previously. Aww. He assured me that it'd still be neat to check out, and it was!
The facility lies a few kilometers north of Manotick and not far from the CFRA-AM transmitter site too. They had a 50KW day-time transmitter (10KW night) feeding a 6 pole antenna array (4 day, 3 night.)
Array Control
Entering the building didn't exactly leave me feeling awestruck, but it's all about what you put into it:
Lots of junk in the 50KW room
What you see here is the STL (Studio/transmitter link) dishes in gold, the HVAC ducts (minus the blower unit) for the 50KW transmitter room, the metal rack with lots of green cards is the old audio router and some selector panels are near it. You can see one of the phasing coils standing about 4' tall at the right, and just at my feet was a portable 12' satellite receiver dish... in pieces.
In the other rooms there was just remnants of an old radio station... posters, boxes of vinyl, CDs, tower-lamps, spare-parts, winter tires, microfiche, and bugs... lots of bugs. Dead and alive.
So that's when the real exploring began. The building is rectangular, divided into 3 sections, the rightmost of which was split again, but front to back. Initially we thought the back half of the right room was backup transmitter, the middle room was control and monitoring, and the left room was the 50KW transmitter. But after a few minutes, things weren't adding up, the pipe trays in the ceiling, the ventilation, power lines... First real tipoff was one of the main breaker panels had labeling for 'Transfer Switch.'
Incoming power, transfer switch on the right.
Took us about half-an-hour to follow trays, sub-floor conduits, guessing what holes in the walls were from. Finally we resolved that the back room was the genset and fuel tanks, the front room was the workshop, pre-power signal processing, and 10KW night/backup transmitter. Middle was control and management, and the 50KW room was always pretty obvious... a twenty by 6 foot scar one the floor made that clear.
As stripped as it was, there was still a lot of things to look at;
Tubular!
A "C-Quam" (Compatible Quadrature AM) unit, which enabled AM to be heard in stereo. Yes, AM radio can be heard in stereo... try it in your car.
Motorola C-QuAM exciter
No idea why this was there:
"Elementary my dear Waston!"
After going through some documentation at the studios, I found that the 50KW was a Contintental Electronics 50KW transmitter... so then I started researching. Damn The Internet. I got caught up by Scott Fybush's Tower Site Of The Week site.... for days. I'm going to make a point to email him about my 'blog as I've gotten access to the Fortune transmitter site that he couldn't when he featured it a few years ago. Ben MacMurchy also seems to suffer the same addiction, and he seems to be in Eastern Ontario as well. And NECRAT only seems to have a Montreal site...
Anyway, 'bout the Continental xmitter.... want to buy one? No? Maybe just the manual? They look fant-classic:
Continental Eletronics 317C2 Transmitter
50,000W of rockin' AM energy
50,000W of rockin' AM energy
And here's the exploded/open view:
The Guts.
Also nearby are the CFGO-AM 1200 site, CFRA-AM 580 site, I believe 1310 AM has to be out here too. The old CBC site should be here too, Ben MacMurchy had a photo of it, so I'd like to find that one. And there's the big FM/TV transmitter site just east of Manotick on Stagecoach road.. it should be comparable to Fortune... gotta get a tour of that.
Here's all the photos from the old CJSB site.
It's Hoss-Tough! Wed, Aug 23. 2006
(Say it aloud, you'll get it.)
The bike - has landed.
Two weeks ago I went into Full Cycle to try out the 2006 Hoss 20" and I quite enjoyed it. Having never ridden on a telescoping (shock-absorbing) fork before certainly was a change I had to be careful of; I think I rode maybe 200 meters, then had them stiffen the travel.
Disc-brakes are amazing, 'nuff said. The bike is actually heavier than my '97 Fire Mountain, but not by much - maybe a pound or two. The frame is lighter even though it's about double the girth, but the weight is made up for in the fork. Derailleur technology doesn't seem to have really changed any, so nothing exciting to report that.
While test-riding, I noticed this bike is geared quite low. From a standing-start, one can start climbing a respectable grade without stalling. Of course that comes with the caveat that top speed is limited, but the knobby tires (they're huge!) are going to be a much bigger problem first.
I liked it. It was the only bike I tried and I was happy, so I ordered it. Then they told me there was no more stock on the 2006 20"... but the 2007's are available... would I like that? Different colour, but same price.
Uhm. Okay.
12-14 days later...
2007 Kona Hoss Deluxe (20")
I actually (re)booked a doctor's appointment around picking up my bike tonight
And traffic made my impatience flourish.
But there it was... a bike with my name on it.When they told me it was a different colour, I wasn't sure what to make of the "Red", but Phil at Full Cycle called it "Root Beer" (tho possibly just because I was sipping on a bottle of Mug Root Beer at the time...) colour. Regardless, I like it. It's not brown, that much I'm good with.
Again I had them stiffen up the front suspension, because I bought the Deluxe model, it's a different type of fork... air on one side and sping/coil on the other. Odd. Is this a good thing? What about imbalance?
I do recall when I was riding with Darren W. back in the late 90s, his Mazocchi Bombers were only single action, the other side was free to telescope... So this has to be better than that.
Scary fact about the air cylinder... it's pressurized to 100PSI, apparently some shocks go up to 300PSI!! Yikes! I won't be adjusting that any time soon.
Meow.
Finished up in the store and met up with Sean to go for a short ride. Things had taken longer than I hoped so we only had time to make it across the river and a short distance east before we had to turn back. (We did find a lonely, disconnected and disused Yagi hanging off of a phone pole... pointing at someone's bedroom window less than 20m away. No idea why that was there.)
We tooled around on vacant lot with lots of rocks on a good slope, lots of fun and nicely facilitated by the low-gearing. I also managed to give myself an injury I haven't experienced in almost 7 years... chain-ring bite - as seen on the back of my right leg:
"A bit like ringworm but not as bad."
(WTF Sean?)
(WTF Sean?)
To conclude this rambling post of mine; I'm quite happy with the bike, but it need some breaking in and adjustment. My knees get sore, so that's something new to contend with. Have to figure out my helmet situation (my newer Bell helmet's pads all de-glued themselves...?) and get a bell on there because I don't believe it's road-legal without one. Lights are another consideration... and since I'm starting late in the season, and likely late in the day, that may rapidly become a non-option as well. I'll snap some more photos in the coming days... at present the bike will reside in the back of my car for a lack of any more secure location.
Thankfully that's no burden.
"Bite my shiney metal ass!"
-- Bender
-- Bender
Where's the bird? Sun, Aug 20. 2006
Uh oh - I think I need a bigger box Sat, Aug 19. 2006
</chihuahua>
Many years ago, I was given a dead UPS, an APC BackUPS280 or something similar. I took this UPS and replaced its battery - and it rose from the dead, tho it did take a bit more than 3 days.
It seems there's an alarmingly high percentage of people who acquire a UPS, and when the battery turns into a rock 3 years later, they throw whole UPS out. Or at least, throw 'em in a corner and forget about them... which is mildly better for the enviroment as it gives me an opportunity to find and sieze possesion. This is evidenced by the fact that I own about 10 UPSes and I've never bought one new (for myself, several for clients tho.)
I think the first time I ever even encountered a new UPS was Pesty's Belkins... and they both melted/caught-fire... and for some reason I was the one running out of his house with a smoldering UPS into -30C winter... with socks on. No Belkins for me. Thanks.
Since that experience, I've had a very strong preference for American Power Conversion (APC) units because I'd simply not had any bad experiences with them.
Recently, I've had good fortune to come upon a big, APC 2200 3U Rackmount, and a PowerWare 9125, my first non-APC unit. Again, these units were put in the corner and left to gather dust because "that one's dead, struck by lightning or something" or "yeah, that one just died after a few years of running flawlessly"... and as expected - both units had extremely dead batteries...
I expect the one that was "struck by lightning" (the APC2200) had transferred to battery on loss of input power and instead of 48VDC, got a pittance of 7 volts... and after the whole unit had failed and locked-out, when the engineer tried to turn it back on, the charger probably thought there was NO batteries or an open circuit in one, so it wasn't going to turn on if it was only going to act as a very heavy power distribution unit (PDU... aka "expensive power bar" with isolation transfomer)
When I opened this unit up, I could immediately see it wasn't going to work with swollen cells (serious heat, overcharging and/or overuse) that were only putting out ~3 volts in 24 volt configurations (2 packs in series.) I actually had to dismantle the framing and half of the chassis just to get them out... and it doesn't help that APC glues the packs together. 8 cells in all. Took almost an hour to get them all out.
PowerWare probably failed while in normal operation because it's a full double-conversion unit. The way it works normally is the power it outputs comes from the battery, and isn't passed thru from the mains input, (as most APC Smart UPSes do.) By nature of design, the charger would've maintained the batteries to the best of it's ability, but when the batteries turned into rocks (sulfated) after years of neglect, the charger just gave up. A short time later, likely minutes, the power from the battery was insufficient to operate the load and the unit turned off and locked-out. When I plugged it in, it did absolutely nothing... no clicks, hum, blinky-lights... nada.
I've wanted a PowerWare for some time, back at Sedona Networks we'd had a few of them, and the management and reporting from the was impressively comprehensive; per-outlet metering, pretty graphics and other goodness. I was impressed with it's design and layout as well when I opened it up. The battery pack was in a plastic casing to facilitate easy installation, the wiring arrangement I found a little odd, but I made sense of it - and documented it on the lid of the UPS. Because I've struggled with wiring and arragements before in 4 cell UPSes.
Around the same time I was investigating those units, my in-service APC SUA700N UPS started trying to melt. Apparently this older, stupider unit doesn't have very good charger controls and was basically trying to recharge the now-sulfated batteries... it must've been pushing a lot of power trying to recharge them because at last look the internal temperature of the UPS was in the high 60s!
So it was time to order batteries... 8 for the 2200, 2 for the 700, 4 for the 9125... probably should do the BU280 too because it'd been a while... erk... that's 15 batteries... luckily I can get them at a decent price from Pesty's father in any quantity. I decided I'd start with 10 because that'd be enough to get the 2200 tested and the 700 running again.
Then I opened my eyes and realized that the 2200 actually has a 20 amp plug on it... and I don't have any 20 amp circuits in the house. So I had to pick-up a breaker, 12 gauge wire and 20A outlet... then I discovered our panel at home is full! One minor hack and a dead circuit later, things were ready to test.
First up was the Powerware as it had the least batteries to contend with. It worked just fine. Bit of an odd thing - as long as it's receiving utility power, the cooling fans are running. This doesn't strike me as a bad thing at all.
The SUA700N came up normally as well. No big surprises there.
Continuing the success, the APC2200 also started just fine, and transferred to and from battery normally, but the meter was always flashing. Turns out it just need it's battery 'brain' to be calibrated, which isn't the most difficult thing to do, but it requires that the UPS be loaded to 30% (±5%) and that's somewhat more difficult to do with a 2200VA unit than a 700VA! It took 3 Sun Ultra2 clones, a Pentium D, room fan and a combination of florescent lamps... which have a different draw once warmed up.
Popped in the SNMP card and struggled to get that going. There's instructions on how to do it by pinging it with the IP while forcing the MAC on your local machine, but that didn't work for me at all. Had to use the serial console to configure it. Handy thing tho. Not sure how I'm going to deploy it.
Actually, I'm not really sure how I'm going to deploy any of this stuff! With an impending new venture for Server North that'll require a new UPS... bigger runtime for mWare at either Condor or Neville certainly wouldn't hurt... Do I really need to use the SNMP cards? Everywhere I've got a UPS I've got a computer with RS232...
Speaking of run time, the other thing buzzing in my mind is gensets... (A gasoline, diesel, natural-gas or propane powered generator) If I get my own place in the near future, it's a highly practical investment for me and my line of work. Combine that with the Matrix 5000 I've got in my garage, it could quite viably turn my residence into a half decent data center
More on that stuff later... it's already taken me 3 weeks to write this post. Congrats on making it this far through it.
Many years ago, I was given a dead UPS, an APC BackUPS280 or something similar. I took this UPS and replaced its battery - and it rose from the dead, tho it did take a bit more than 3 days.
It seems there's an alarmingly high percentage of people who acquire a UPS, and when the battery turns into a rock 3 years later, they throw whole UPS out. Or at least, throw 'em in a corner and forget about them... which is mildly better for the enviroment as it gives me an opportunity to find and sieze possesion. This is evidenced by the fact that I own about 10 UPSes and I've never bought one new (for myself, several for clients tho.)
I think the first time I ever even encountered a new UPS was Pesty's Belkins... and they both melted/caught-fire... and for some reason I was the one running out of his house with a smoldering UPS into -30C winter... with socks on. No Belkins for me. Thanks.
Since that experience, I've had a very strong preference for American Power Conversion (APC) units because I'd simply not had any bad experiences with them.
APC2200
Recently, I've had good fortune to come upon a big, APC 2200 3U Rackmount, and a PowerWare 9125, my first non-APC unit. Again, these units were put in the corner and left to gather dust because "that one's dead, struck by lightning or something" or "yeah, that one just died after a few years of running flawlessly"... and as expected - both units had extremely dead batteries...
I expect the one that was "struck by lightning" (the APC2200) had transferred to battery on loss of input power and instead of 48VDC, got a pittance of 7 volts... and after the whole unit had failed and locked-out, when the engineer tried to turn it back on, the charger probably thought there was NO batteries or an open circuit in one, so it wasn't going to turn on if it was only going to act as a very heavy power distribution unit (PDU... aka "expensive power bar" with isolation transfomer)
When I opened this unit up, I could immediately see it wasn't going to work with swollen cells (serious heat, overcharging and/or overuse) that were only putting out ~3 volts in 24 volt configurations (2 packs in series.) I actually had to dismantle the framing and half of the chassis just to get them out... and it doesn't help that APC glues the packs together. 8 cells in all. Took almost an hour to get them all out.
2.6 is not 48
PowerWare probably failed while in normal operation because it's a full double-conversion unit. The way it works normally is the power it outputs comes from the battery, and isn't passed thru from the mains input, (as most APC Smart UPSes do.) By nature of design, the charger would've maintained the batteries to the best of it's ability, but when the batteries turned into rocks (sulfated) after years of neglect, the charger just gave up. A short time later, likely minutes, the power from the battery was insufficient to operate the load and the unit turned off and locked-out. When I plugged it in, it did absolutely nothing... no clicks, hum, blinky-lights... nada.
I've wanted a PowerWare for some time, back at Sedona Networks we'd had a few of them, and the management and reporting from the was impressively comprehensive; per-outlet metering, pretty graphics and other goodness. I was impressed with it's design and layout as well when I opened it up. The battery pack was in a plastic casing to facilitate easy installation, the wiring arrangement I found a little odd, but I made sense of it - and documented it on the lid of the UPS. Because I've struggled with wiring and arragements before in 4 cell UPSes.
Around the same time I was investigating those units, my in-service APC SUA700N UPS started trying to melt. Apparently this older, stupider unit doesn't have very good charger controls and was basically trying to recharge the now-sulfated batteries... it must've been pushing a lot of power trying to recharge them because at last look the internal temperature of the UPS was in the high 60s!
So it was time to order batteries... 8 for the 2200, 2 for the 700, 4 for the 9125... probably should do the BU280 too because it'd been a while... erk... that's 15 batteries... luckily I can get them at a decent price from Pesty's father in any quantity. I decided I'd start with 10 because that'd be enough to get the 2200 tested and the 700 running again.
100 Amps just doesn't cut it anymore
NEMA 5-20
First up was the Powerware as it had the least batteries to contend with. It worked just fine. Bit of an odd thing - as long as it's receiving utility power, the cooling fans are running. This doesn't strike me as a bad thing at all.
The SUA700N came up normally as well. No big surprises there.
Continuing the success, the APC2200 also started just fine, and transferred to and from battery normally, but the meter was always flashing. Turns out it just need it's battery 'brain' to be calibrated, which isn't the most difficult thing to do, but it requires that the UPS be loaded to 30% (±5%) and that's somewhat more difficult to do with a 2200VA unit than a 700VA! It took 3 Sun Ultra2 clones, a Pentium D, room fan and a combination of florescent lamps... which have a different draw once warmed up.
Popped in the SNMP card and struggled to get that going. There's instructions on how to do it by pinging it with the IP while forcing the MAC on your local machine, but that didn't work for me at all. Had to use the serial console to configure it. Handy thing tho. Not sure how I'm going to deploy it.
Actually, I'm not really sure how I'm going to deploy any of this stuff! With an impending new venture for Server North that'll require a new UPS... bigger runtime for mWare at either Condor or Neville certainly wouldn't hurt... Do I really need to use the SNMP cards? Everywhere I've got a UPS I've got a computer with RS232...
Speaking of run time, the other thing buzzing in my mind is gensets... (A gasoline, diesel, natural-gas or propane powered generator) If I get my own place in the near future, it's a highly practical investment for me and my line of work. Combine that with the Matrix 5000 I've got in my garage, it could quite viably turn my residence into a half decent data center
More on that stuff later... it's already taken me 3 weeks to write this post. Congrats on making it this far through it.
You know who you are. Sat, Aug 19. 2006
You should wear a party hat.
Byke For Myke? Mon, Aug 7. 2006
I don't think I've ridden a bike since 2003, and even then it was very little. I actually out-grew my Kona Fire Mountain I bought waaaaaay back in early 1997. I'm surely a foot taller now. (...and likely in other dimensions too.)
So with the heat-of-death receding, I dragged my father to Full Cycle with me on Saturday to look at some mountain bikes. I like Full Cycle. Full Cycle has Kona bikes. I like Kona Bikes. I like them thiiiiiiiiiiiiiis much:
The guy at the shop described it as a "big guy" kind of bike... which seems rather apt. (Both the bike for me, and the description They actually had the Hoss in stock, but I wanted the upgraded disc brakes for the double-cylinder action... so I'm looking at the Deluxe model. When I walked in, I wasn't sure whether I wanted a soft-tail (rear suspension) or not. I never was a big fan of them as they can absorb a lot of down/forward energy, especially when riding on level territory - like riding on roads across town.
Turns out that the low-end full-frame suspension bikes start around $1500-$2000... I was immediately put off by the notion because I certainly didn't want to sink $2K on something that's described "entry level". And the sales guy made it clear that those suspensions aren't designed for someone as big as me anyway, so if I really wanted to do that, I'd be into the mid- to high-end bikes. Pass. Good sales guy tho - he was telling me this to discourage me from buying up there.
The Hoss was stickered at (IIRC) $1050... this was coming in rather below budget, so I was curious what the other options were. I was shown the Caldera, which is very similar to the Hoss but a slightly lighter(duty) frame but better accessories (derailleurs, brakes) and they has a 20" frame in storage, but I just wasn't taking to it... and the lighter frame just worried me.
I should mention that since my height is all in my legs, that bike shopping is rather challenging... there aren't many bikes under $1000 that come with big enough frames for me. That's actually the reason I stopped riding my Fire Mountain - couldn't make a full plunge on the pedals because the distance between the seat and crank was too little - and I'd already had the seat beyond the max-height marker.
Anyway, I'll call the shop tomorrow and see if they can get the Hoss Deluxe in a 20". I've missed the season so getting stock is going to be random at best.
I miss riding so much. It actually occurred to me that I don't have any photos in my gallery because I never really rode much since I've owned a digicam. That's lame.
So with the heat-of-death receding, I dragged my father to Full Cycle with me on Saturday to look at some mountain bikes. I like Full Cycle. Full Cycle has Kona bikes. I like Kona Bikes. I like them thiiiiiiiiiiiiiis much:
The guy at the shop described it as a "big guy" kind of bike... which seems rather apt. (Both the bike for me, and the description
They actually had the Hoss in stock, but I wanted the upgraded disc brakes for the double-cylinder action... so I'm looking at the Deluxe model. When I walked in, I wasn't sure whether I wanted a soft-tail (rear suspension) or not. I never was a big fan of them as they can absorb a lot of down/forward energy, especially when riding on level territory - like riding on roads across town.Turns out that the low-end full-frame suspension bikes start around $1500-$2000... I was immediately put off by the notion because I certainly didn't want to sink $2K on something that's described "entry level". And the sales guy made it clear that those suspensions aren't designed for someone as big as me anyway, so if I really wanted to do that, I'd be into the mid- to high-end bikes. Pass. Good sales guy tho - he was telling me this to discourage me from buying up there.
The Hoss was stickered at (IIRC) $1050... this was coming in rather below budget, so I was curious what the other options were. I was shown the Caldera, which is very similar to the Hoss but a slightly lighter(duty) frame but better accessories (derailleurs, brakes) and they has a 20" frame in storage, but I just wasn't taking to it... and the lighter frame just worried me.
I should mention that since my height is all in my legs, that bike shopping is rather challenging... there aren't many bikes under $1000 that come with big enough frames for me. That's actually the reason I stopped riding my Fire Mountain - couldn't make a full plunge on the pedals because the distance between the seat and crank was too little - and I'd already had the seat beyond the max-height marker.
Anyway, I'll call the shop tomorrow and see if they can get the Hoss Deluxe in a 20". I've missed the season so getting stock is going to be random at best.
I miss riding so much. It actually occurred to me that I don't have any photos in my gallery because I never really rode much since I've owned a digicam. That's lame.
It's HOT out there! Tue, Aug 1. 2006
11AM and the humidex is already 44
I've already turned off all the CRTs I'm not using, and even shutting down warm-spare servers at some of my client's sites. If we do end up in a power-crisis again, at least the UPSes will run longer powering 1/3rd less load. With that thought in mind, something did happen yesterday; between 1600 and 1800, the overall grid voltage dropped significantly and the price skyrocketed to over $300/MW... I haven't done much research yet, but my theory is that a prime generation facility unexpectedly went offline - just as the peak hours began. Bad stuff. If something like that happens again today, it might destabilize the grid, causing selective blackouts. And that's if they catch it on time. If they don't... it's August 2003 all over again. That is why I monitor this stuff so much. See the Voltage graph below.
Bad enough was the storm we had blow throught last night, started at 11PM and continued till about 4AM... Which incidentally, is the time my UPS at Condor 'blipped' and I lost my router. Doh. The unfortunate part about the storm is that the humidity will possibly be higher than anticipated today... when they're calling for a high of 35C (pre-humidex), I can only dread what that's going to feel like. This is the kind of weather that kills people.
Power drop and router failure.
(20060731 to 20060801)
(20060731 to 20060801)
