Need Some Temporary Power

April 01, 2005 by Eric Richardson

There's a sign downstairs saying that Monday morning they're going to be testing the building's emergency generator -- please turn off your computer. This creates an issue for someone like me, whose computers never turn off. It also creates an issue for this site, which would go black with the building.

That got me thinking... I have a laptop that's perfectly capable of running the site for a couple hours, but the problem is that my DSL bridge needs power for that to even matter. I guess what I really need is a little UPS that could give juice to just one 18 watt device for two hours. If anyone who reads this happens to have one handy, I'd love to borrow it.

Of course a setup like that wouldn't give me any sort of generalized protection... I'd need to know the outage was coming to get the laptop up and serving (and enough warning to rsync current data onto it), but I don't care about generalities. I care about Monday.

More Biking Stuff

April 01, 2005 by Eric Richardson

I posted yesterday that I had ridden the fifteen or so miles from JPL to Downtown on my bike. I forgot to mention that this also gave me the chance to try out my new front light and rear flasher. First, though, I had to settle out my battery situation. I had been complaining to Alan earlier in the afternoon that I had gone to the JPL Store and bought AA batteries without taking the time to realize that my rear flasher needed AAA. Oh well, though, for my little ride I wasn't going to be needing lights. Of course then I decided to make my little trip a big one. When it started to get dark I pulled into a liquor store in Highland Park and bought AAA batteries. I grabbed my front light out of my bag and... it didn't turn on. It had worked a couple days ago, so somehow it must have gotten turned on and drained its batteries. Conveniently, though, I had the AA's I had bought by mistake. In the end my lighting worked out perfectly.

Yesterday after my ride I felt great. Today, though, on the way up the hill from Pasadena, I realized that I had in fact gotten a workout. My legs are feeling it. I still think I'm going to do the big ride again this evening. It's just fun.

I Hate April 1st

April 01, 2005 by Eric Richardson

Every year it's the same things:

Back From Work on Two Wheels

March 31, 2005 by Eric Richardson

JPL to Downtown I was proud of myself today for riding my bike in to work. I didn't even feel all that winded afterward.

And so, tonight, I thought "why not?" and proceeded to ride from JPL to Downtown. bikemetro gives a route that's 14.43 miles long for that trek, so I'm sure that's about what my ride was. I made it in about 70 minutes, which sounds a lot more impressive before you hear that I had 837 feet of elevation loss to push me onward. Still, though, it was a good workout.

The first five miles or so are along the Arroyo Seco, which makes that by far the best part of the trip. After that I sort of meandered through South Pasadena, Highland Park, and finally Chinatown. I generally picked whichever route looked like it was heading downhill.

bikemetro says the average cyclist would have burned 566 calories on my trip, which really doesn't seem like that much, but I guess every little bit counts.

Controllable Power

March 30, 2005 by Eric Richardson

I could really use some sort of a cheap power box that's controllable via serial. When the internet goes out in my apartment, 99% of the time it can be fixed by just cycling power to the DSL bridge. I'd love to have some way to let my server ping out every five minutes or so, and if it sees the connection go down let it try cycling the bridge. If that doesn't work it could just hang out for someone else to fix it, but it would be a good first line of defense for when I'm not around.

In fairness, I haven't done any googling to see if anythiing exists for a reasonable price. I'm just writing while it's fresh in my mind.