Girl Geekette

Lately, with storms coming though, I have had to go on a lot of trouble tickets from possible lightning damage to some Wifi equipment.

This is what some of the equpiment looks like

Airspan 900

As you can see, there is a cable that goes up to the right of the radio. This cable is Ethernet. It has an RJ45 end on it that is housed in an Ethernet to serial converter which is attached to the radio.

This cable is used to link the radio to a Power Injector which then goes to a next device – a computer, a router, or the like. When everything works right, with this setup you can get a wireless internet connection that sends and receives transmissions to a tower that hosts more wireless equipment.

As with all electronic equipment, these may be susceptible to lightning and storm damage. Hail hitting the attached antenna can even knock it out of alignment and therefore drop the signal coming to the radio for internet access.

The cable run itself is susceptable too. It can carry a lightning hit through it. (In theory, so could the cable attached to a tv satellite or many other devices can carry a lightning hit . This is how many computers get damaged from storms – when lighting hits a cable or near it, and carries an electrical surge that can knock electronics – tvs, phones, computers – all out.)

Serial to Ethernet

Now, back to this Ethernet cable with an RJ45 on the end. As I mentioned, it is housed in a Ethernet to serial converter – the black housing shown where the arrow points to in the picture

The radio was hit by lightning. I am still trying to find the actual path on the radio outside. But, while changing out the radio, I took the cable run out and replaced it. When I unattached the RJ45 from the converter, I got to see a taste of what lightning had done to the cable nad RJ45 end itself.

RJ45

RJ45 Side

And, the final outcome was that the lightning traveled through the cable, to a wireless router. The Power of Ethernet Brick too a hit, was knocked out and also wireless router took some of the damage too making it.. work and then not work, work and then not work.

These are some of the things I see out in the field with my job. I have seen other things too that were amazingly done by storm damage. Imagine an old tree being hit by lightning, falling down near a house, and the sound of the repercussion from the lightning hit knocked out 5 lower level windows on the house near. (No one was hurt, but it was a shock when the homeowners came back and saw it.)

As I go along, I hope to take more photos in amazement of what is out there!

Chrome Canary Build

For those who love bleeding edge technology and want to try out the latest of the Chrome, there is a new Chrome in town. It is called Google Chrome Canary Build.

It is the newest of the new bleeding edge browsers that will one day become the next Chrome released. It is a preview of what is to come.

At first glance, it is even faster than the regular latest build of Chrome. It loads up pages at lightning speed.

Google Chrome Canary Build

The best part of this build – unlike the beta’s , is that when it is installed, it runs via a different path to which it is installed (%localappdata%\Google\Chrome SxS\ on Windows) . This means no more overwriting your regular Chrome build if you have it installed. You can even run both simultaneously. Also, since it is installed apart from Chrome, you can also run different sync profiles, themes, and browser preferences with the Canary Build.

Google Canary Build is the bleeding edge technology that falls between Chrome dev and the Chromium snapshot builds. It will recieve more updates than the developers version does.

The ‘Canary’ Part could be named that after the old tradition of miners bringing a canary into the mine. If the canary died, it was not safe. With Chrome Canary, if a new feature is added, and it ‘dies’, it is not carried over into the developers build.

The look and feel of the Canary Build reminds me of Chrome – on steroids. This launches faster, searches faster, and loads web pages up faster. And, if it crashes, I have not lost the stable version of Chrome I have.

Want to give it a try? You can download it here from Google.

What a way to remind you:

Warning to Restart

Well, it may not be as obvious as it is in IE or Mozilla browsers, There is a new icon that let me to investigate further.

new icon

When I clicked on it, the menu showed:

Chrome Menu

Notice the Update Google Chrome !

And that is what led me to read the error about Restart to Apply Update because it has not crashed or been restarted lately

After a restart the icon went back to ‘normal’.

Literally. This post is about the about in Chrome

It started with a tweet from MattCutts:

Matt Cutts Twitter

so, I decided to experiment.

I was not even sure what version of Chrome I have.  So, I went to the tool sign  and clicked on the about

This is what I saw

About Chrome

In the Chrome Address bar, I typed

about:

I get this – The Google Chrome About Version Page

Chrome About Version

Here is the dev one of the Chrome Version I just installed.

Chrome Dev

now, in the address bar I type

about:about

Chrome About About

Just a little more humor from the Google Side of things.

A search for Anagram returns with a suggestion, which of course is an anagram itself

Google Anagram Suggestion nag a ram

Kudos to googleos on Twitter for pointing this out.