You know its going to be a bad day when...

[Garnaralf]

You wake up, having the next 4 days off, and find that your wife decided to do ALL of the laundry. Leaving you a pair of jogging shorts (yeah, like I really jog) and a black tshirt that says "Plays with swords. Doesn't play well with others"

You go down cellar, and decide to do some airbrushing on a rocket. You turn on the compressor, get all set up, and start painting.

30 seconds later... BANG! Then, a few seconds after that starts the smoke. Then about 10 seconds later the compressor starts to catch on FIRE!

You run across the cellar to grab the fire extinguisher, twisting your ankle on the way there. You hop back across the cellar on one foot, extinguisher in hand, and start yanking electrical cords as you're using the extinuguisher on the compressor. Of course, you pull the one going to the computer, crashing it and it takes you almost an hour to get it to work right again.

So, after all of this, you decide to move the furniture around in the living room, so you can finish painting the walls. You move the couch, and it scrapes the wall. The wall you just painted yesterday.

That's when I wrote the day off. Wife is ordering pizza, so I can't burn the house down cooking.

I really need to clean up the mess from the extinguisher, but I'll do that later tonight.

Can I get an official "do-over" on the day?

~Bob

 

[AKPilot]

Hey at least the extinguisher worked, eh?! Yup, you can have a "do-over."

Maybe I'm sick, but that's why I like mornings, especially Monday mornings. It's the beginning of a new day, and/or new week. You still have control over your life, and noone's making demands on your time. Each morning is like a brand new start!

Now afternoons, thems I hate!

 

[danc]

Everytime I launch rockets they end up in a kiwi orchard. Kiwi trees are awful things to get rockets out of. Today I twisted something in my hip(and I'm young) going through the darn barbed wire fence. It hurt. Feel my pain please....

I once used an extinguisher to put out a fire in a homebrew ham radio transmitter I was building. It was a bit overkill actually and covered everything with fine yellow dust.

At one place I worked as an IT guy we were going to have a halon system installed in the Super Fancy(TM) computer room. Unfortunately we also learned that the problem with that is it will flush out all of the oxygen in a room very quickly which is how it works... So.. you have the dilemma of either saving the computer gear from fire and water damage or suffocating your employees.
*Chuckle*

 

[Garnaralf]

Well, everything in the 15x15 foot area is covered in white dust right now.

Hell, it scared me more than anything. We had a fire in the chimney right after we bought this place, and all I could see was that happening again.

So now to clean up. The cellar really needed cleaning anyways, so now I have a reason to do it.

~Bob

 

[cliveroonie]

Your rocket painting can be inspired by Japanese raku ceramics..... heated in a can with smoke creating cool effects on the glaze.

Raku-Rocket.... I kind of like the sound of that. In graduate school, one of my MIDI interfaces caught fire while I was working on a project. That was darn-right scary.

Clive

Originally posted by Garnaralf
BANG! Then, a few seconds after that starts the smoke. Then about 10 seconds later the compressor starts to catch on FIRE! /QUOTE]

 

[KermieD]

For a moderately sized company, a halon fire suppression system in the server room, if you have one, is mandatory, not optional. If the company doesn't keep people who don't belong there and understand what a halon system involves out of the room entirely, they need to establish a physical security system that keeps those people out of the room. In our company, if the fire alarms go off, you have 15 seconds to get out of the server room. It's maybe 10 steps, but you'd better make it. After 15 seconds, the doors lock both ways and you're screwed.

IF your company has a specific server room and IF the IT director toyed with the idea and IF your company plans to move forward and IF the IT director thought about it and backed off because he was afraid someone else might be caught in the system, he needs to either re-evaluate the personnel he allows in the room along with the security measures that let people into the room (keyfob, thumbprint, ID card, whatever works), or he needs to be replaced. I just about guarantee you can be replaced easier than the servers can (if you're not the controller, CFO or CEO, you can be replaced easier than you think, particularly if you spend time talking about how you're irreplacable) and if you're authorized to be in the room, you should know that or you and your server admin should be replaced for letting you in there to start with.

 

[WiK]

Originally posted by KermieD
In our company, if the fire alarms go off, you have 15 seconds to get out of the server room. It's maybe 10 steps, but you'd better make it. After 15 seconds, the doors lock both ways and you're screwed.

Wait a second, they value the servers more than the employee's lives?

Phil

 

[OARJeepr]

Halon extinguishers do not work by smothering a fire, at least not by driving oxygen away. Halon works by interrupting the oxidation reaction. This is a very common misconception, to the point that people who sell halon systems don't know how it actually works. Under normal circumstances halon won't suffocate you, like a CO2 extinguisher might. Still you should evacuate a halon filled room because its not very good to breath.

 

[danc]

I don't know about other states but I know in california there is no way a door would ever be locked like that especially automatically. Even a school door has to have a bar across it so that a crowd of people trying to get out will push up against it and unlock it. A person's life is always more important than the equipment and the liability issues would be huge. Our agency was part of the local government and we had around 3000 employees but only about 25 people had access to the computer room. We had magnetic card readers to get in. The place was disney land for a computer geek. I think they eventually gave up on the halon idea because of the issue of trapped personnel. If anyone is going to follow the rules about safety a gov agency absolute MUST to set the example.

Originally posted by KermieD
For a moderately sized company, a halon fire suppression system in the server room, if you have one, is mandatory, not optional. If the company doesn't keep people who don't belong there and understand what a halon system involves out of the room entirely, they need to establish a physical security system that keeps those people out of the room. In our company, if the fire alarms go off, you have 15 seconds to get out of the server room. It's maybe 10 steps, but you'd better make it. After 15 seconds, the doors lock both ways and you're screwed.

IF your company has a specific server room and IF the IT director toyed with the idea and IF your company plans to move forward and IF the IT director thought about it and backed off because he was afraid someone else might be caught in the system, he needs to either re-evaluate the personnel he allows in the room along with the security measures that let people into the room (keyfob, thumbprint, ID card, whatever works), or he needs to be replaced. I just about guarantee you can be replaced easier than the servers can (if you're not the controller, CFO or CEO, you can be replaced easier than you think, particularly if you spend time talking about how you're irreplacable) and if you're authorized to be in the room, you should know that or you and your server admin should be replaced for letting you in there to start with.

 

[AKPilot]

I thought Halon was banned. Something about Halon and the EPA not getting along.

 

[user 13]

Originally posted by OARJeepr
Halon extinguishers do not work by smothering a fire, at least not by driving oxygen away. Halon works by interrupting the oxidation reaction. This is a very common misconception, to the point that people who sell halon systems don't know how it actually works. Under normal circumstances halon won't suffocate you, like a CO2 extinguisher might. Still you should evacuate a halon filled room because its not very good to breath.

I was always told that Halon will not hurt you if you breath it, but after it has been exposed to heat (by putting a fire out) it breaks down to a toxic soup of chemicals that's not good for you.

 

[KermieD]

Originally posted by WiK
Wait a second, they value the servers more than the employee's lives?

Phil

No. The only people allowed in the room know that priority 1 is to get out of that room, no matter what.

Perhaps OARJeeper is right, I'm not familiar with the mechanisms of halon.

If you have 25 people with access to a server room, you're doing something wrong. In a company that does $250 million in sales annually and has gone 90% paperless, we have 2 people whose key fobs will let them in the server room.

 

[quickburst]

Halon MSDS.

See:
https://www.wfrfire.com/website/msds/halon.htm

 

[KermieD]

Did some more asking around. The doors do not lock, but if for some odd reason the doors are open, they do close. There's a 10 second hang time, then the system is designed to fill the entire room in seconds to protect the equipment. So, if you don't get out, you're still in trouble.

 

[danc]

Well we had two unix programmers, 4 system administrators, 1 grand master poomba network admin, the management types, then of course there was me(I ran a document management server and the web server), also there was the medical care servers(All 7 of them,, HP9000 mini computers with one hp3000) which were ran by an old cantankerous ex airforce guy, then there were a couple of assistants to the programmers, the telephone exchange system guys who were contractors from atandt I believe etc. We had many many different kinds of systems that all had special people to run them. Room was about 50 feet long with the mini computers on one side with monster APC backup's and on the other side was a full room length rack of servers for all kinds of various services the county provided,, primarily in the welfare dept. I believe all of the higher ranking IT hardware guys had access as well. I was considered the jack of all trades so I had access everywhere whether I was in the development side of things or in the desktop support. I wore many hats... However we were all professionals so no one would ever dream of touching someone else's server etc.

There were actuallly regular evaluations about who should have access, and since we had so many different specialized systems a lot of people had to have clearance(and the really cool cards). That place even had keypads on the bathrooms!! I forgot the combination once or twice...and was not pleased.

Place was neat, but depressing to work at since it basically ran the welfare/social services system for a large county.

Originally posted by KermieD
No. The only people allowed in the room know that priority 1 is to get out of that room, no matter what.

Perhaps OARJeeper is right, I'm not familiar with the mechanisms of halon.

If you have 25 people with access to a server room, you're doing something wrong. In a company that does $250 million in sales annually and has gone 90% paperless, we have 2 people whose key fobs will let them in the server room.

 

[Chris B.]

The only place I ever worked with a halon system had a combined isolator/door lock thingy. Unlocking the door to get in the computer room disabled the halon system. It armed again when you locked the door on the way out.

There was also an emergency door release on the inside (just in case a colleague "accidentally" locked you in) and a bloody loud alarm to let you know you were about to be suffocated and it was time to start running...

 

[danc]

Kinda like those funny t shirts:

"If you see me running, you better catch up!"
--Bomb Squad

 

[Garnaralf]

Well, today was quite a bit better.

Got an investor to actually be interested enough to do his own research.

And my best friend Jeff did one of his infamous "Just happened to be in the neighborhood" stops. And he brought with him...

... an air compressor.

This guy seriously rules.

Oh, and he wants to get back into rockets himself!

Hat Trick!