Kayray has been writing recently about librivox, a project to make public domain audio recordings of public domain material (much of it present in Project Gutenberg).

I’m interested in volunteering to read some material. But I don’t have any nice microphone. After doing some research, it looks like I’m down to a couple of different options.

The first option is described by The Roadhouse. It has a $60 MXL 990 mic and a Behringer Eurorack UB802 mixer at $50. I assume that he is running an output from that into a standard sound card. So the total cost of that setup would run around $110. I don’t really need to mix more than one source, but having something that can power condensor mics with XLR connectors looks good.

The second option is to get a dedicated USB mic. The mic of choice here seems to be the Blue Snowball at about $140.

I don’t know enough about this to know which setup would get me the best quality for voice recording that is going to be going to wind up digital on the PC in the end.

I guess the third option is something such as the m-audio mobilepre USB preamp at about $120. So if I used that with the MXL 990, I’d be talking about $180. That’s rather more than I’d like to spend, but it would give me more options down the road.

If any of you have suggestions, I’d be happy to hear them.

This was a nice quote from the British miniseries Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy:

“The true measure of a nation’s morality is how it operates its secret services.”

I think we’re not quite up to par in that department right now.

Halstead Hospital and Hertzler Clinic in Halstead, KS are both for sale on eBay for $1.9 million.

This was once a thriving hospital in central Kansas. It shut down abruptly a few years ago after it turned out that the management was engaging in their own mini-Enron with its finances.

My family doctor was in the clinic part of this building for several years. It’s still surprising to me that it’s closed.

There’s been a bit of a plot in the air at church this Christmas. Mystery. Intrigue. Conspiracy. Even some good-natured holiday ribbing.

And it’s my fault.

So let me explain. A little awhile ago, my dad and I pooled some money and purchased a nice Nikon Coolscan V negative and slide scanner. My first batch of slides to scan on this consists of 3 reels plus one box of slides from the church archives, some 600 images or so. I’ve got 350 scanned so far. We’ll be using these in the centennial book we’re working on, and I’ll burn some DVD-Rs for use by the church in the future.

There are some real treasures in this set. Some extremely rare color photos of the old church building (torn down in 1965), including its interior. All sorts of people in their younger days, plus photos of quite a few people that have since passed on. There were also many photos from 1983 for the church’s 75th anniversary celebration. It’s safe to say that few, if any, people have laid eyes on these photos in the last 25 years.

About two weeks ago, I was remembering how I surprised Aunt Viola by giving her a print of a photo of the choir she directed in 1946. It occured to me how many photos are in this slide set that people would love to see. I started thinking “Hmmm…..”

As I was sitting there scanning, I had lots of time to think. (Each slide takes about 3 minutes at 4000 DPI). I finally decided that I could make nice prints of these images by uploading them to a photo printing service. I’d surprise a few people with an anonymous gift of photos on Christmas.

Well, a “few” grew into “as many as possible”, and I wound up ordering 175 prints. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I ran into a problem early last week. I don’t know who many of these people are, or who their relatives are that still attend our church. I needed help. I had to enlist my dad in my conspiracy — he knows many of these people and who they’re related to.

With his help on Monday, we identified people in some 300 photos. I rushed to get them uploaded to Shutterfly and place an order with overnight shipping to make sure they’d arrive by Christmas. They finally did.

I had help stuffing envelopes while I sorted out the photos. Each envelope had the name of the recipients, plus “Merry Christmas!” written on it. Our names were nowhere to be found.

Saturday afternoon, before the big Christmas Eve program, my brothers and I (who had heard the conersation with my dad, but were good at keeping secrets) helped me stuff mailboxes at church. We escaped without tipping anyone off to what we were doing.

The Christmas Eve service came and went. I tried to listen for conversations about pictures, but didn’t hear any. I was a little concerned — hopefully people liked these photos.

I knew that the moment my aunt saw her photos, she would be able to figure out it was me behind it, and would spread that, but I figured I’d remain anonymous for awhile. It’s fun to keep people guessing.

Well, I accidentally blew my own cover this morning. I asked my aunt about her pictures, but she hadn’t opened the envelope yet. Oops. (In my defense, that’s not very like her!)

But it turns out that these photos have been a topic of many conversations over the past two days. Lots of 70- and 80-year-olds “blaming” each other for delivering surprise photos on Christmas. Wild speculation about who this anonymous Santa is. And where did these old pictures come from? Whose closets would still have such a thing? Plus, lots of checking to see exactly what photos each person got. (I tried to give people photos that would be meaningful to them — friends, relatives, etc.) There was even some amateur handwriting analysis going on. Apparently nobody even suspected me at all.

This was probably the most time I’ve put into a Christmas gift in a long time. But also the most fun and rewarding. I got to see somebody run out the church to show a picture of some high schoolers in 1965 to a friend before they drove off.

This is what makes Christmas such a fun time of year — touching someone’s heart. The sort of thing that can’t be found on any Walmart or mall shelf.

I’ve never been able to give a meaningful Christmas gift to so many people before, and it is a really wonderful feeling to have surprised so many this year.

You know, I really hate it when e-mail inquiries to customer support departments are second-class citizens. The same company that will have me on hold for less than 30 minutes, then resolve my question in 10, won’t even attempt to look at my e-mail inquiries to the same department for 1-2 business days.

Ugh.

What’s the deal here? Why should e-mailers be treated poorly?

Today’s company to shame: Shutterfly, which otherwise has been very good. I’m e-mailing them because my UPS next day air package was delayed by UPS. UPS said they’d issue a refund, but I have to ask for it through Shutterfly.

The fire didn’t do any significant damage to the building, but it did cut off our power supply because it burned it all up. We have the phone system and a skeleton network back by mid-day Tuesday and a full network back by Wednesday morning. Thursday afternoon, temporary utility power was available which provided enough for the office to return to normal.

Our factory was scheduled to shut down for the holidays on Monday. With work, it looks like everything will be back to normal on January 2. So we really will lose only 4 days of production.

The company’s business interruption insurance will be paying the wages for workers that couldn’t work those four days due to fire as well.

So, busy week, but it could have been much worse.

It’s been an interesting 24 hours.

Monday
8:00 PM
I get home after working a regular day and having supper with a friend.

8:15 PM
One of our friend from church — who happens to live a few blocks from my workplace — calls. “Did you know your workplace is on fire?” “Uhh, no….” “Yeah, big fire, flames, dozens of emergency vehicles…” “Hmm…”

So then I call my manager… “Did you know the company is on fire?” “Uhh… no….” “Yeah, sounds bad, I’m going to head in and see what’s going on.”

8:30 PM
I arrive at work. Cops have blocked all the entrances. I identify myself as an I.S. manager and am directed to the “manager area”. (Others are kept across the street.)

An eerie orange glow — and lots of smoke — is visible above the rooftop. This looks bad.

We learn that something in the compressor room caught fire or exploded. Fire spread upward quickly.

Most importantly, everyone got out without any injuries.

8:35 PM
Our T1 provider calls my cellphone. These are really, really good folks. I answer, as I’m standing next to a noisy fire truck.

ISP: Hi. Just calling to let you know that your T1 is down and we’re looking into it.

Me: Hmm. That might be because it’s on fire.

ISP: Uhm, did you just say it’s on fire?

Me: Could be. There’s a fire in the building and we’re not allowed in just yet. Plus the electric company is trying to cut the power.

ISP: OK then, I think we’re going to assume the problem is at your end for now.

This sounds bad. I know the I.S. dept. still has UPS power, since the phone system attendant is answering. But if the T1 is down, it seems that it must have burned up (its run goes very close to the affected area), and taken some phone lines with it.

9 PM
It’s below freezing already, and I didn’t bundle up very well. Several waiting — but unused — ambulances are nearby and the paramedics invite those of us waiting inside the heated vehicles.

9:30 PM
The CEO and CFO are permitted to tour the building with a firefighter. Word is that sprinklers have come on and there’s water in the I.S. dept. This is potentially really bad news. The I.S. dept is in the basement and water has been a problem before, so we’re prepared, but water and computers are never a good combination…

After a little while, we are allowed inside as well. There is 1 to 2 inches of water on the floor in the basement, but fortunately nothing has reached the raised floor yet. The fire department supplies an AC generator to power the sump pump, plus 6 squeeges. We supply 6 people. We keep on the squeege duty until about midnight.

Meanwhile, it turns out that a water pipe broke out in the shop near the fire. Water gets shut off. But the floor up there appears to unfortunately slope towards the staircase that leads to the basement. Water is coming down fast. We find what we can to block the path, and that seemed to just make the collection deeper.

I periodically try to find someone that can bring a pump and a generator — or something — to help this get cleared up.

Midnight
I head home. The water situation is improving, but not resolved yet. Others remain.

Once home, I post a notice on our public website saying that our power, Internet, phone, and FAX lines are down. You just might have a problem reaching us.

I also e-mail some consultants, saying that the reason the VPN doesn’t work is that we had a fire. I also e-mail the new I.S. person who has an hour commute and advise him of the situation.

Our fire was top story on one of the local newscasts. We watch the video of it, sigh at the annoying “on the scene” reporter (motto: “things were interesting an hour ago”), and turn in.

1AM
Time to sleep.

Tuesday
6AM
Get up, in to work by 6:45.

Everything is dead. No power, no water, no phones, no heat, no gas. Also, fortunately, no more water coming down.

I call the other I.S. developer and tell him not to bother coming in right now, but maybe we’ll call later.

8:30 AM
An impromptu meeting happens. The CEO sets communications as the #1 priority: phone and basic Internet access. Plants 2 and 4 have working power, so if we can bring up some servers and network gear on a generator, computers over there will work.

No water in plant 1, where my office is.

So nearest restrooms are a 5-10 minute walk through dark and damp areas. Bottled water, coffee, and donuts appear at the halfway mark to the restrooms ;-)

9:00 AM
Generators start appearing near the I.S. dept. After getting them powered up, proper extension cords found, etc., we start plugging in the phone system.

Power strip 1 works.

I flick the switch on power strip 2, and it all goes dead. This generator’s circuit breaker keeps doing that every time we try to turn on the phone system.

So we try generator #2. Phone system finally powers up. But all incoming lines are ringing at phones in sales. Volunteers go up to answer those phones.

Meanwhile, phone tech shows up, and orders his own, larger generator.

I call our person that’s an hour away and tell him to go ahead and head in.

10:00 AM
Now we turn to the computers. We’re going to have to be careful what we bring up so we don’t overload the generator (and thus have an unclean shutdown on anything that’s already up.)

I recable power to some switches, our T1 router (ISP calls: the T1 just came up! yay!), and our firewall.

Flick the switch on firewall.

Generator stays up. Firewall emits a high-pitched whine. Eeep. Flick the switch again!

After checking things out, we adjust the voltage a bit and determine that things are generally OK. I run the firewall on one of its two power supplies. At least if it burns one out, we can still run it off the other later. Turn it back on — whines again, but it goes away after a few minutes. Phew.

Next step: our main Linux file server. Flick the switch, and there’s a satisfying “whoosh” from the fans. Excellent.

Our developer shows up and observes later: “John, this was odd. When I got here, there were 7 guys standing around watching you boot up machines.”

11:00 AM
Decision time. Our main ERP server is an AIX box. 8U. About a dozen disks. Certain to be a large draw. Can the generator handle it? Yes, it should.

Should we power it up, given that it takes 45 minutes to come up and 20 to go down? We opt to try.

I cable it up and press the power button.

Nothing happens.

But that is normal for AIX. After a few minutes, we start seeing hex codes on the LCD. A few minutes later, disks start coming up. All looks good…

11:15 AM
Orange alert lamp comes on for the AIX box. Uhoh.

Turns out one of the drives in the RAID is bad. Time to call IBM, but at least it’s mirrored to the box is up.

IBM service calls are always “fun” for this. I spent a total of about an hour on the phone with them, 90% of which was spent with them analyzing error logs trying to find out what exact part number to give is, and 10% spent trying to look up our account information.

Plus, the phone guy is now switching the phone system to his genset. He tries to hook it up through a home-type UPS, which is giving him fits. I get disconnected from IBM at least twice.

Noon
My supervisor goes to Subway and brings in lunch for all four of us in I.S. since we don’t really feel like we can leave.

Word arrives that the generator that’s powering the servers is leaking oil. Eeep. But it should be good until evening. On the plus side, the generator will automatically shut itself off when it runs out of oil. Won’t damage itself.

1PM
IBM calls, trying again to get information about what exact part they need to bring out. Only 29 minutes on the phone this time.

Word arrives that a 60kW generator has arrived that they will attempt to hook into the mains supply for the building. The main power distribution center has been burnt. Plus we aren’t allowed to touch large parts of it since fire inspectors and insurance adjustors aren’t done yet.

But no ETA on the big generator.

We make a preliminary decision to cut power to computers & the network at 5PM, and maintain the single phone system generator overnight.

2PM
Local IBM rep calls. He’ll be out between 3:30 and 4. I say that’ll be fine, but warn him that if he’s any later, the power may be down.

3:45PM
IBM rep shows up, replaces the dead disk. It works. Whee.

4:15PM
I start powering down the AIX box.

We then learn that ETA on the big generator is 5PM. So we start shutting down other servers as planned.

5PM
Big generator comes up. It works. We slowly bring up our systems. Everything is good.

BUT — we are basically maxing out the capacity on the generator. People will not be able to just come in and work like usual tomorrow.

We’ll be meeting in the morning to figure it all out.

6PM
We post signs at entrances warning people to not turn *anything* on.

Finally head home at 6:30.