Today’s Business: 2009-10-14
07:45 AM: Just woke up. Looks like this gray day is the coldest of the season so far, at 34 degrees at present. Hopefully, the sun will come out and warm up the shingles so that they’re easier to bend with cracking. I had hoped to apply them to the final sharp bend in the shed roof for the  Shed Roof Replacement Project. But it just might be too cold. I’ll keep an eye on the weather conditions throughout the morning, and go out when it warms up enough (if it warms up enough).
09:00 AM: Heard from Roger a little while ago; he gave me the name of a fellow who can deliver a load of gravel for the Wheelchair Ramp Project. So I’m calling this person shortly to arrange delivery of five tons today.
01:30 PM: A customer from the valley called. Apparently, they had a power failure, and when the lights came back on, they could no longer view their security cameras on the Internet. They asked for my assistance.Â
Well, after about twenty minutes of trial and error, we narrowed the problem down to their camera controller box. The status light on their router for the port that connects to this box does this fast, rhythmic flashing when the box is plugged into it and powered up. We tried moving the cable to each of the router’s other ports and got the same result. We also connected a computer to each of the router’s four ports and were able to access the Internet through all of them. So the problem is not likely to be the router.Â
However, I believe the port light for a healthy and active port is supposed to remain on continuously, except when data are flowing in the wire. In that case, you do get a non rhythmic blinking that consists of very brief off periods. The light is on however for most of the time in this case. So something might be wrong either in the cable they’re connecting between the router and the controller, or in the controller itself.Â
They said they’d try rebooting the box a few times and see if that helps. If not, they’re going to bring it over here on Friday and plug it into my network, to see if we observe a similar, faulty connection. We’ll try known-good cables, and if it still does not work, then their controller box requires repair or replacement. Looks like a power surge that happened either at the beginning or end of the outage might have caused this.
03:40 PM: Finished spreading the first batch of gravel in the east parking area, for the Wheelchair Ramp Project.
04:00 PM: Replaced two fluorescent bulbs here in the office. Man, these dimming lights sure burn out quickly. Well, some of them do anyhow. Actually there are around four of the sixteen tubes still working from when I first installed these fixtures in 2002. But other bulbs burn out in just a few months. I guess that even after all the years the fluorescent bulbs have been in production, that there’s still wide variation in quality from one bulb to the next. Then another drawback of this type of lighting is that you really should recycle the burned out bulbs, as they contain mercury, which is unhealthy to us humans. Thus, they should not be thrown out with the regular trash.
06:00 PM: Watched The Young and the Restless.
07:53 PM: It remained gray and cloudy all day with only a few glimmers of a foggy sun. No rain, but the temperatures only got up to the upper 40s. Winter is coming.
09:15 PM: Talked with [Emmy] and we listened to some of the hockey game. Currently the Penguins are tied with the Carolina Hurricanes 2 to 2 in the third period. Â
10:40 PM: Journaled for a half-hour or so. Tonight’s topic: How to reconcile the short-lived nature of eroticism with my fantasies of having a long-term, monogamous, yet highly passionate, long-term relationship. Can long-term relationships have long-term passion? And if not, then maybe I don’t really want a long-term relationship with a single woman. Perhaps I only want a long-term relationship for as long as the passion lasts. It sure seems like that anyway. This has been (and will be) discussed more in the  Tom’s Love Quest  blog.
11:00 PM: I’m off to bed.
Tom