My 2fer today solar panel wifi repeater and fast internet isn't cutting it on a win7 pc from back in the day
Posted by ascii122@reddit | talesfromtechsupport | View on Reddit | 21 comments
So I had two calls today to take care of. The first one was a retired firefighter I kind of know who just got fiber 300mbs internet and he's not seeing any difference in speed on his pc. OK
So I drive up through the boonies and find him and he's running a dell shitbox with windows 7 .. which I worked on like maybe 8-10 years ago and got rid of all the spyware etc and put ublock on firefox etc and told him back then that he needed an upgrade. I get up there and he proudly displays a fresh copy of 'windows 7 for dummies' along with a cd/dvd that he want's to finally understand computers. So that kind of cracked me up but I'm like yeah read that book .. wtf it can't hurt. I check his computer it's clean but not fast he's got the latest firefox and had a few bogus extensions that I removed and I test his comp vs this crappy win 10 laptop I rebuilt that stays in my go bag and i'm getting 250 ish mbs and his is getting 90-100. I check the device manager and look up his adapter and naturally back in the day -- it's capped at 100 mbs cos I'TS 15 YEARS OLD. So this mini dell has no slots and i'm like if we got you a new card .. who knows if there are drivers for it. I tried plugging in my geek bag wifi usb and naturally it didin't work.
I told thim this is a 70 VW buss going up a hill.. it still works and it's as good as it's gonna get. Took like half an hour so I charged him 20 bucks (I usually charge 50 an hour but 40 an hour for cool people). He's like that's more then last time (5-6 years ago) and I'm like well hotdog prices are up you are paying the same amount of hotdogs as last time. He laughed and was cool about it. Took so long to explain that his old machine was maxing it's little heart out but he refuses to get new hardware so it goes.
The solar one was pretty funny. I build these solar powered repeaters for wifi on ranches and farms etc using tp-link CPE710 using POE from a lithium battery and a charge controller and a timer so it shuts off after dark (when no one is working). They work pretty good so I get a call from a customer that the wifi is down in the far field. Ok So I go down there .. and wtf. The grape leaves have grown over the solar panel and the battery is dead. They had moved the panel nearer to the grapes at some point. So I sent a pic to them and said um.. this isn't in my contract .. I cleared it out but 'omg the wifi is down should I maybe see if the solar panel isn't covered with giant leaves!'
So i fixed that up
and that was my day. I got a giant bunch of free strawberries for debugging the solar issue!
Melvolicious@reddit
The world of IT is so large and it's impossible to be an expert at everything in it. yet when you're in it you're expected to be able to handle anything that comes up. That's why I think people who are good at IT are also good at problem solving all sorts of technology. The solar panel story is a perfect example, most people would just throw their hands up in the air and let themselves be intimidated by some technology problem they're sure they don't understand, the IT guy takes a look at it and clears the leaves off the solar panel. Just another IT guy finding root cause and solving the problem.
DoctorPlatinum@reddit
Think you meant 'Deleafing'.
TinyNiceWolf@reddit
Don't stop deleafing
Hold on to that feeling
Streetlights, people
meitemark@reddit
"Sprays server room with Agent Orange; There, that should take care of those sprouts of manglement and fresh MBA's. Managed to trap a few Good Idea Fairies^TM as well."
grond_master@reddit
I reached TFTS through a now-deleted story that was about a rural operator whose computer restarted every time he flushed his toilet. This was from 2014, but I'd also read this version in 1998.
TL;DR: Low power from utility lines + electric pump + pump kicking in every time he flushed = low power for the computer, hence shutdown.
Smith6612@reddit
I have one even better. A relative of mine (very elderly, has since passed D: ) would regularly have issues where the TV would shut off on her, and she would get confused about that. Her troubleshooting was completely valid - Unplug the TV and Cable box from power, and plug it back in. However, the Cable Internet modem and the router were also on the same power strip, and every time that would happen, her caretaker would get kicked off of the Internet.
One day I was over at their home and noticed the behavior would happen whenever I would rock the light switch in the bathroom from "On" to "Off." Simply turning off the bathroom light would cause the cable box to reboot!
I ended up bringing over some some tools, including a clamp meter, because her cable signals were otherwise fine. I ended up finding about 6 amps of current going out of the house to the Coax provider, starting from where the Coax grounding block was attached to the Coax. I checked the Coax going to the Cable box and modem, and found nothing notable. After a bit more digging and inspecting the grounding situation, I found that the electric panel's ground was not tied to a rod outside of the house, but instead... was tied to a water pipe via a bracket that wasn't even properly attached to the pipe. It was just resting on top! I took the clamp meter to the water pipe, and was able to follow another 6 amps of current from where the bracket touched the pipe, all the way out to the city main.
I could watch the current on both the Coax line going out to the provider, and the current on the water pipe go up and down, between 1 amp and 6 amps. The home itself had mostly two pronged outlets, with a few three pronged outlets that I'm not even sure were ever properly grounded. But whatever the case may be, I ended up referring that problem out to an electrician...
ascii122@reddit (OP)
Ha!
There was a story about how the break room microwave would draw too much power and shut the servers down since they were on the same circuit can causing an overload or something
meitemark@reddit
Few people have ANY idea about how much power kitchen stuff needs. Pretty much anything that is going to heat water in any timely manner is above 1.5KW.
syntaxerror53@reddit
Seen this somewhere where there were about four electricity rings.
One of those also fed the kitchen, as well as computers in the office.
whenever there was a full house, and someone used the kettle, out went the power on that ring (and on the odd one or two occasions, the whole floor). And the kettle user would end up getting angry looks from everyone else.
Fortunately the distribution board was adjacent to the kitchen so no walking a mile to reset it.
Even more fortunately the IT Department had its own distribution board as we were fed from the adjacent server rooms so unaffected when using the kettle.
SourcePrevious3095@reddit
I like the vw bus analogy.
ascii122@reddit (OP)
I had one for a few years.. got pulled over going 70 down a hill one time and I told the cop -- 'if you average my speed going up the hill and the speed going down the hill it's under 55' .. and he let me off
ApplicationHour@reddit
A story I tell to this day: In pre-wifi as we know it days, possibly pre-internet, we had a customer site with a wireless bridge. Every spring it was my job to drive over to this site and point at a specific tree. I had warned the customer when we set it up that when spring came and the leaves and branches grew out to a certain point, the wireless connection would be blocked by the tree.
Every April, like clockwork, customer would call and I would ask if that tree could be blocking the wireless connection between the antennas. They would swear that it wasn't and insist that it must be some other problem and demand that I go out there and check it out. My office would warn them that it was billable, including trip charge and minimum 2 hours but they weren't hearing it.
Sure enough, every year I'd walk straight over to the near-end antenna, look towards the far-end antenna and see only tree. At that point I would have get the customer to follow me to said tree where I would point at three things: The near-end antenna, the far-end antenna, and the tree branches that were between the two.
Preemptive response: If we could have put in a wired connection or even just put the antennas somewhere else, we would have. It was the wireless bridge or running floppy disks back and forth.
coventars@reddit
<--- Insert mandatory Tannenbaum quote about station wagon full of tapes here. -->
harrywwc@reddit
…points to the Institute of Backup Trauma video
ascii122@reddit (OP)
Yeah I feel you. I had a starlink install in a cabin down in a canyon next to a creek. Totally off grid so we had to cut a bunch of trees down in order to get a decent look at the sky but we did get it. Also the customer cut them up for firewood and it also helped his solar panels get more light so it was win win.
A few months later he calls and says his dish is sucking and barely getting a signal. Crap. I go up there and notice the dish had moved about 30 degrees to the south.. right where there were more trees. I guess Elon moved the sats a bit and didn't warn anyone so we had to do more logging. Kind of annoying ;)
asad137@reddit
That's not really how Starlink works. Starlink has thousands of satellites in multiple orbital planes that hand connections off to one another as needed. It's actually hard to find a place on earth and a patch of sky that doesn't have Starlink coverage.
ascii122@reddit (OP)
This was a number of years ago. They would adjust sats in orbit from time to time. All the starlink users in that area had the disks shift -- most didn't matter. This was before static and mini when the dish would move and track the best signal. It's much better now for sure.
asad137@reddit
Ah gotcha. Yeah I could see that being an issue when they were filling out the constellation.
MissRachiel@reddit
One of the biggest things I miss about private tech work is the work I could trade for a couple of buckets of apples off their tree or those clothes their kids had outgrown. I usually got paid, too, but people liked to feel like we'd helped each other out.
ascii122@reddit (OP)
I've done some of these solar repeater installs or local ranchers etc and nothing better than a few rib eyes or lamb or whatever. I'm always 'I will work for food' -- I mean 2 rib eyes is like 50 bucks in the store.
OinkyConfidence@reddit
Gotta love the creative solutions for creative problems!