Tag Archives: UPS

Jul 2 2011

disposing of electronics scrap in Israel

In my job doing IT system administration and technical support for a Christian organisation called Bridges for Peace here in Israel, I am installing new equipment, mostly PCs and servers.

Back in April, we has an unfortunate week where three different network switches in two buildings fail suddenly, this paralysed our network access for about 25 staff, one of these switches broke the same time we had a power outage in the building I was in and the emergency power back up systems did not do the job of protecting the equipment.

What I want to know is, where is the correct place to take scrap IT equipment here in Israel?

It appears in most neighbourhoods, like mine, there are these big skips shared by three or four apartment blocks for putting in domestic rubbish in.  People also put broken furniture and electrical items in.   Some dead computers were left out in the hallway of my block, so I took the Pentium chips and memory out, and put them in the bin as well.

In my work, I have a pile of dead batteries from laptops, large brick batteries from UPS systems, several whole ‘shoebox’ sized UPS devices that were defective, two dead LCD panels from laptops,

All types of batteries contain highly toxic materials and LCD monitors contain small amounts of mercury.  How can IT people here in Israel dispose of stuff safely, legally and responsibly here?

Jun 3 2011

A day in Christian IT work in the Galilee

As I have mentioned before, my job as a volunteer IT support and system administrator for the charity Bridges for Peace means I am normally based in one of two offices in Jerusalem, and on odd occasions I work up in Karmiel, which is a city in the centre of the Galilee.

This means a 180km visit by car or bus when I have to do work up there.  The food bank I work does a huge amount of service in helping the poorest people in this area especially new immigrants to Israel mostly from Russia or some of the other ex-Soviet Union nations.  Every so many months I need to do a trip probably not that different from journeys Jesus did himself.

I have learned since being here this site requires careful planning as its an awful long way if something breaks unexpectedly.

This empty room in the middle of the warehouse seems like a good place to put the server.  This server will replaced later this year as its running Windows 2000 which is very old now and we need a new more reliable system that helps us with our day to day food bank operations up here.   This room is good as it means an easier job of adding some extra wiring here as its close to the network cabinet which is in the cupboard opposite the door.

This rack full of network kit needs a good sort out.   I manage to swap cables around to enable computer network use in some offices that moved around.   We only have 5 staff up here and there will be at least 3 more and there is not enough ports on the 16 port switch here so I have to put in another switch.   The glass door on the cabinet does not shut as the wires are in the way.   I think I can rotate the brackets on the switch at the top 180 degrees so this sits flush better and should make the glass door shut properly.

There is an other switch supplied by Bezeq (Israel’s no.1 telephone company) for several VOIP phones.   Not quite sure how this works as I think they maintain it.

The black things are UPS power back up units to keep equipment running in case of power failure or spikes in the electricity supply, these are a few years old, most of the equipment was set up when this building got running in 2007 and the chances are the batteries are no good as they have a 3 year or so life span.   I want to get a new UPS that has network connectivity so I can see the status of it using my Spiceworks network management software.   These small ‘shoebox’ type UPSes should be able to be refurbished with new batteries and they could be used on regular office PCs in another part of the building.

When I was staying at one of the staff’s place over night, looking out of the balcony, I get to see an Arab bedouin house across the road, and modern (Jewish) flats in the distance.   Here in this city, these two types of communities seem to be get on well it seems.   It does mean you get woken up up by roosters at 5.30am though!

I have to speak to the rest of the IT department to get some more telephones installed, test wiring for network ports and telephones, get 3 more PCs installed and test the spare server.   This trip was mostly about planning to give extra capacity for this site for future expansion as I know the Lord will provide more resources so we can help the most needy people in this area.  I will need to do another visit up here in July I think.

The main thing I was doing, is a careful back up of the main server and applying all the latest updates and patches.   This is always a delicate thing for IT administrators to do, it puts you a big security risk if you don’t bother, and if you do it without carefully planning it can crash the server.    One of the team had their monitor suddenly stop working, so a local computer store (thanks to KSP)  I got a new Samsung 18″ wide screen TFT monitor.

I really like this job as I always have plenty of interesting and varied challenges so work is never boring and I get to know everyone in the organisation.   It also means I can combine this with a weekend seeing some friends who moved from home city of Portsmouth UK to Karmiel Israel, and later visiting the city of Tiberias which is right on the Kinneret, or the Sea of Galilee, and a few significant places of the bible, I will show soon.

A day in my work in the Galilee – The Jesus boat in Ginosar – The Kinneret Lake – Tiberias evening light show – Preaching and miracles of Jesus in Capernaum – Tiberias city centre and Muriels and Maimonidies

Mar 12 2011

Karmiel food bank IT work

Whilst I was on a break up north, I did one day of work just doing preventative maintenance and planning for back up power.

This cabinet has switches and routers for our Karmiel food bank.

The top device sticks out and the cables protrude too much stopping the glass door from closing.

There are two UPS battery back up units here, some of these small shoebox sized units have not been reliable in other systems I have used and my guess the batteries which normally have a life of 3 years or so, probably need replacing.

The server room sits down the corridor, I plan to do is to install a bigger UPS here and run all of this equipment here and the other room too.

I need this week making diagrams on how the wiring for this is going to work.  The electrical sockets in the computer room need to be labelled as ‘IT only’ as a vacuum cleaner or some other device with too much power will overload the system.

The wiring closet will need to have all of this junk removed, but, there is a fire hose here, not the best place to have this..

The new UPS needs to have a network port, as I want to check its status 160Kms away in Jerusalem, as we are not at this site very often.   Ideally I would like to see this item appear on my Spiceworks monitoring software.   In the past UPS manufacturers like APC require it to be connected to a PC via serial port (hopelessly out of date)  to check and monitor and issues with the power, and you have to pay extra for software.   Spiceworks integration would make this great.

Fixed a our server that handles back ups at this site, every once in a while this machine would turn itself off or crash.  When I visited this site, I notice the power supply on the back of this PC has a fan not working, when poking it with a pencil it would not turn.   I got a new power supply from a local computer store in town.   I found some scrap batteries which were left from UPS devices that had been serviced with new batteries by the IT guy who was there before me.

Left: Some UPS devices that are spare I need to bring back to be tested and possibly fit new batteries in.  These are quite important as they are needed to stop spikes and brown outs in the power from cutting out the computers and other important equipment.   Right: scrap stuff labelled to be recycled.  I am not sure exactly where old batteries are supposed to be disposed of in Israel.  It seems irresponsible to throw them in the bin as all batteries are highly toxic.

I also done some tuning and updates of several PCs at this building, and set up Skype and a few other small jobs.

Oct 30 2010

Parcel bombs from Yemen to US

Just heard in the news about alerts that parcels containing explosives from Yemen were bound for a synagogue in Chicago in the United States.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11654390

It would appear from a lot of news stories, that this was a bit of an amateurish attempt at terrorism and this was a test run, to analyse security on delivery and logistics companies like UPS.

I think Muslims and the media that says that try to convince 9/11 Mosques are a good plan, have questions that need to be answered here.

I know people who worked for an IT company in Portsmouth UK, 7 years ago that did some overseas installation work all over the world including Yemen.   It sounds like shipments from this country are likely to be suspended.    What kind of impact does this have on people in Yemen with ordinary businesses that want nothing to do with terrorism?

Yemen is a poor Arab country, nestled between the polar-opposite economies of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.  With strange things happening this month in the news like ex UK PM Tony Blair must be hugely embarrassed of his sister in law Lauren Booth who is ultra pro-Palestinian and become a Muslim recently as already an apologist for Iran and Hamas.   Shouldn’t spokesman in Yemen and other the Arab countries, regardless of what they think of America, Israel and Judaism, ought to be condemning these attacks, as this is only going to hurt the reputation and economy of their own nations?  This is a good opportunity to do some PR work for Islam and shun extremism is it not?

Yemen had a sizable Jewish community, but its one of a few countries that is now more or less a void for Jews as they all moved to Israel or America, in the same way that other Jews from the other mostly Islamic Arab nations had faced hardship.

But in recent years, Yemen has some people coming to Christ.  http://islamdom.blogspot.com/2007/10/2000-converts-to-christianity-in-yemen.html Please do pray for Yemenite people to see ‘dreams and visions‘ and find Jesus, and for those who who already believers to be safe from persecution.   Of course Israel and the west, US and Europe are likely to be on higher alert, so pray for terrorism activity to be exposed and stopped.