What HASN'T broken this week?

The first sign of trouble was the sampo DVD player (thank you,
area450) that went belly up. Mind you, a year ago I _already_
repaired its power supply that had succumbed to bad electrolytics.
This time it was the drive mechanism, which is apparently a
non-commodity part and can't be replaced with a generic PC drive.
(Meanwhile the 1984 Hitachi TV just keeps on running, after its
last repair in 1994 to replace a blown vertical sweep transistor).

Next up was the UPS feeding the animated thumbtack railroad dollhouse
and all-around surprise home server (with apologies to Phillips and
Braswell). Although it has an indicator for "replace battery," this
indicator apparently only functions when the unit is actually running
from battery. We had a power glitch of around half a second, and the
UPS promptly barfed with no warning whatsoever. My fault for not
scheduling a replacement four years after purchase.

The following day the old trusty canister vacuum decided not to
retract its magic retracting power cord. Before you laugh, this
vacuum cleaner and I have been through a lot together. (Now you
can laugh.) The motor is only on its second set of brushes (to my
surprise, kenmore actually sells a carbon brush replacement kit).
Not hard to fix, but just one more thing I don't have time for
right now.

The hits kept on coming. The day after that, my DLT drive stopped
working, so backups have ground to a halt. This one scares me the
most. If we weren't doing Extreme (tm) Budgeting this quarter, I'd
just spring for a new one, but responsibility dictates I attempt
some troubleshooting first. Which I don't have time for ATM.

${VENDOR} shipped me replacement SLA batteries for the two
UPSs here. Unfortunately, the replacements bear date codes suspiciously
like last August[1], yet ${VENDOR} is currently claiming "oh, that?
Those are just meaningless serial numbers, they were really made
last November, so they are still fresh, and besides, they are
warranted for a year!"

I should mention that the manufacturer of said batteries has not
seen fit to publish any documentation of its date codes anywhere I
can gargle. ${Mfr}->US_Sales_ofc->receptionist says the tech staff
is out this week[2], but confirms my interpretation, although that's
not worth a pitcher of warm piss as far as persuading ${VENDOR}.
Pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each
one have been sent to ${Mfr}->Taiwan_ofc but who knows what that will
elicit, if anything. Grr.


[1] 060805A2

[2] Reminds me of a slightly extended stop I made to some crossroads
in the middle of Ohio between college and $coop_job some decades
ago. I had locked me keys in the car and called the local police
number for assistance:
"XYZ Fire Department."
"Oh, sorry, I meant to call the police."
"That's OK, we're also the police."
[I explained my predicament]
"Well, our officer is out on a call right now, so it might be a while."

--
G. Paul Ziemba
FreeBSD unix:
9:56PM up 6:40, 3 users, load averages: 0.36, 0.24, 0.18
.