Hey, nice rack!

Apr 19, 2003

It took more than four weeks to sort out but I got my 19" 38U steel equipment rack and reorganized the room around it. This is the first and last time I buy anything off ebay that I can’t ship using UPS or FedEx.

The seller, who couldn’t have been nicer, quoted me $50 only to call back the next day and tell me his shipper wanted $180 to get it to Brooklyn. More than the cost of the rack. It was funny as he opened the call with an apology, even offering to cancel the buy, and that he couldn’t believe it as he had shipped these cross country for $50 and according to his rate schedule it would be about the same to go 250 miles. He then asked if I could pick it up at the Brooklyn depot and I explained that I have a two-door Volkswagen and there was no way a 72" tall rack was going to fit. A friend in New Jersey with a pickup truck- thanks Rocky, I owe you big time- took delivery and dropped it off today. The shipper screwed up the delivery address a couple of times and neglected to call any of my home, work, cell, Rocky’s home or his cell. If this is from “the best common carrier” that “defines excellence in bulk delivery” I can only imagine the hassle when using the others. At least it arrived intact and in very good condition. A credit to the seller not the shipper.

Maria is pleased with it, too. The old storage failed to meet even the single lowest aesthetic criterion. For the past five or six years I’ve used a heavy wire baker’s rack I picked up from Ikea. The model was Omar, I think, but they no longer carry the size and gauge which is a shame because the 48" shelves would easily hold 150 pounds without deforming. I know this because it held a GDM20 monitor (45kg)and two SPARCstation on the middle shelf for three years. The old bakers rack, the lower two shelves solid with equipment and mismatched plastic storage containers, stood in front of the South-facing window in the spare bedroom and had all my plants on the top shelf. It had oxidized a little and was a dull gray and probably better should have been located in a garage rather than a bedroom. While I got to my work, she made a valance for the, soon visible, window.

I used the opportunity of having the systems down to clean everything and do some upgrades. No more peecees except my main Debian Linux workstation, so I pullednout the KVM. Untangle all the wires, try to plan the wiring for the new rack. Juggle plugs on the UPS. Move the bookshelves. Reorganize. Winnow the plants. Put up the brackets, bar and valance. Mop the hardwood floor. Washed the windows inside and out. Put 512M into the Ultra1 I picked up from one of the guys on the workstation rescue list. I’m glad that my secondary MX worked- thanks Dave- because one of the UPSes failed a battery and after a serious whine started beeping and giving off a whiff of cooked electrolyte. Great. That’s the second battery. Great. A new battery is more than half the cost of a new unit. Great. So I’ll deal with getting a third-party battery down the road and order a 2kVA UPS. The old unit was too small anyway. I hope it arrives before the next burp in the power, everything is plugged into one 1kVA APC smartups, that’s probably a hot sixty to ninety seconds if the monitor and Wyse are on.