October 26, 2012

Hey, the internet is a series of tubes after all!

These colorful pipes are responsible for carrying water in and out of the Oregon data center.
The blue pipes supply cold water and the red pipes return the warm water back to be cooled.



Each server rack has four switches, connected by a different colored cable. These colors are kept the same
throughout the data center to know which one to replace in case of failure.



Hovering above the floor in Council Bluffs, Iowa, the scale of google's data center there begins to take shape.
Huge steel beams both support the structure and help distribute power.



Water storage tanks below the cooling towers ensure they have water available whenever needed.



Insulated pipes like these have a U-bend so they can expand and contract as the fluid temperature inside the pipe changes.



The system of pipes composes a water filtration unit underneath a cooling tower outside the data center in Lenoir, North Carolina.



Lots more cool photos at http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/#/tech

via http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/16/view/24303/where-the-internet-lives-behind-the-scenes-at-googles-data-centers.html

October 24, 2012

Nya nya nya nya nya. Look what we have.

So a local OFA guy was driving by our house and noticed that we have lots of Dem signs but we didn't have an Obama sign (ours hadn't arrived in the mail yet). He rang the doorbell and asked if we want one or two.

SURE!

He said he'd be back the next day with two of them. We live on a corner and get a lot of traffic - so one for each side of our property.

Sounds good to me.




This is what I saw when I came home:











They are frickin' HUGE!


Yeah, I know, I need to do some yard work. Gimme a break. I've been on the road for most of the last three weeks.

And yeah, I've been a critic of the President and a thorn in the side of a few DUers (I got banned from the BO group after just two posts ). But that doesn't mean I'm going to let him lose. I'll be at the local office this weekend working the phone bank and/or doing some door knocking again.




So, suck it RW neighbors! Our signs are bigger than yours and our guy is gonna kick your guy's ass!





Edited to add. Our normal sized sign showed up in the mail a day later. We gave it to my parents.