I am now just five days from having returned from a 3-month long tour of Cozumel, Akumal and Tulum. A glorious time it was! but all good things must eventually come to an end, and I needed to return home to the U.S. to take in some winter cold. No, seriously. I actually love snow! And I sleep much better at night when I can bury under heavy layers of blankets.
Failed Thing #1: UPS
Somewhere around mid-December I get an urgent email from the office saying that the UPS on our ClickTrax computer is beeping a lot, and running VERY hot. Dammit, I knew I should have changed that fan when it started rattling! The UPS was turned off and removed from the circuit, but until I got home I didn't know if the thing would still work.
Turns out that the fan dying caused a lot of heat to build up in the entire case, which basically fried the sealed lead acid (SLA) batteries. They no longer hold charge. Which is unfortunate because they are expensive! But fortunately, after swapping in an older set of batteries and replacing the fan, I found the UPS was otherwise undamaged and is now back in service. I sourced new batteries at a cost of $12.50 each (including shipping) from this supplier and they arrived within two days of my order. Problem solved!
Failed Thing #2: RAID Array
This was totally unexpected. The day I get home from Mexico, I am on my computer checking mail and whatnot. Two hours later, the system starts to get very s-l-o-w, then freezes, then starts working normally again. Ugh, this behaviour seems familiar, like a hard drive is failing.
Sure enough, one of my primary OS drives in my RAID-1 array died. The annoying part is this was virtually a brand new drive, having been in service only about four months. Nice Thing #1 is that the diagnostic windows not only told me which drive failed but the serial number and model number -- all that I needed to start an RMA with Seagate.
Nice Thing #2 is that Seagate has a "no questions asked" warranty replacement policy, and for $20 you can have a replacement drive expedited to you, with a return UPS label included to send back the old drive. Done!
(Really) Nice Thing #3: Got the new drive yesterday and I am totally impressed by how the Intel Matrix Storage Manager handled the replacement. All I did was swap out the old drive, then confirm on boot-up that the new drive was to be imaged. Then, to my surprise and utter amazement the system booted up immediately and performed the imaging in the background... while I was able to use my Windows XP with only slight degradation in performance!!
I don't know how long the imaging took... probably two or three hours... because I left the computer to its own while I went out rock climbing.
Failed Thing #3: Hand Grip
If my body is a machine, then that means that one part of it is always going to be a weakest link. Currently it's the grip of my hands while rock climbing. I hadn't been climbing for three months while in Mexico, although I did maintain fitness by working out in a gym in Cozumel.
My first day back to the gym was with a regular climbing partner, Peter. I also had a new toy: a Petzl GriGri given to me by Tracey for Christmas. Great device, that. Climbing went pretty well for about an hour, then my hands just started to fail halfway up a wall! I simply couldn't hold onto anything and my grip would suddenly let go. Geez! I need to get my hands back in shape.
So what do I do to work out my grip endurance? Rubber balls? Grip ring? Squeeze putty? Any suggestions?
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