26 Jun 4705 - Beeping Battery Life

If any of you have the occasion to design a Universal Power Supply unit, please make sure to design a feature that makes the thing beep shrilly at intervals if unplugged or otherwise without wall power. That will make sure that blackouts are extra loud and annoying.

The competent designers of the UPSes in my lab certainly made that feature real, and I am extra-special happy about the fire marshal or whomeverthehell is responsible for the outlets in my half of the lab going out.

Right now I am using the last computer in the lab that still has power. One of our supplies drained completely when I tried to bring the printer back to life, and finally stopped beeping. The printer lasted about three seconds, which tells me that the same unit can power one of my terminals for twenty minutes for every second that I can power the printer. This would all be a fascinating science experiment if I could still accomplish my work.

Two electricians walked in a moment ago and passed the unceremonious "wellp, there's yer problem" referring to the printer that we have been using for the last two years without problems as the big drain on the breakers. I am at least pleased that he can recognize what is the largest drain on a system by simply looking at the setup, and ignoring my empirical study.

They went to the box, flipped the breakers back, and sure enough, here we are again. Powered. Like there's some expertise involved with flipping the breaker. Give me the keys, you idiots...but whatever. Back to work now.

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