Fah. Electricians doing lighting work at Quirk Middle School shorted one of the main panels, which in turn killed power to the computer room there. When they turned the juice back on, the aged UPS in the room did not come back.

I was literally on my way to the GPIP board meeting when my pager started going. I turned around, assessed the situation from home, called the GPIP Pres. with my regrets, called the Boss with status information, and headed in to Hartford.

Getting things back in service was as basic as commanding the UPS to startup in 'bypass' (meaning it's not running as an UPS, it's just feeding raw street power to the equipment). It's probably a combination of age and being run dry, but all of the batteries in the UPS had failed.

So, tomorrow I need to:

1. Triage the power situation in the computer room and get some temporary small UPS units in place
2. Look into my budget and see what I have left to get some new batteries (it'll probably cost just under two grand to get four new batteries, and I don't even want to contemplate overnight shipping on 4 x 65 = 260lbs of lead and acid)
3. Also, find some other money somewhere to get the f*cking air conditioner in that room fixed (long-term, the excessive heat probably had a role in frying the batteries)

With all of the shootings in Hartford in the past month, I will admit to feeling more than the usual prickle of fear driving onto Albany Ave in the twilight. I was at the Albany Ave. Police substation today with my contracted engineer swapping out a bad VPN/router box. The room where the network cabinet is located is where they have their tactical board -- now festooned with the pictures of all of the known CNN and Ave gang members. Forgive me for saying this, but what we need in Hartford is not a dozen Troopers from the State Police. We need a battalion of Army MPs, and maybe a company of Strykers to back them up.