For the past two days, one of our customers (a power utility) has been attempting to link up reading devices in their meters to our satalite reading system.

Here’s the concept: a device goes in the meter on the side of your house which reads your power consumption. Then, at a designated time (or when triggered by a request), it broadcasts that read via a 2 way satellite pager to our servers in Washington state. We then process that read and provide a billing file to the utility (where ever that may be).

In practice, it gets a lot trickier. There are a lot of things that will interfere with the signal coming/going to the meter.

All the devices they’re working on have had problems in the past, and the meter installers are trying to correct the issue on each meter. This can lead to frustration (because you’re never really sure what the issue might be). It could be something stupid (they didn’t plug the pager module in when it was installed in the meter) or it could be more complex (they need to install an external antenna to get around an obstruction).

Then there’s the variables: A U-Haul truck was parked next to the meter the last time we tried to read it so the read failed. It’s gone now, and it works fine, but next month it’s back again and we fail again. Trees also play havoc with the system. In the winter, everything works fine, but come spring, all those leaves reflect the signal to the point that it’s difficult to get viable data (these aren’t the most powerful transmitters. Sure, we could boost them up, but would you want that on the side of your house?).

So the meter installers keep calling to have me test the devices after they “fix” them. If they fail again, the typical question is “what do I do now?”. Dude… I have no idea. Installing and testing devices is what YOU do for a living…. I’m the software/server guy.

It’s gonna be a long day.

I have an appointment to see my neurosurgeon again today.

He’s going to stick a couple more of those 4 inch needles into my back… all the way to the bone… and inject me with stuff again. Fortunately, this will be the last time that they have to do that. If the pain around the screws come back, they’ll go in and remove the hardware.

That’s supposed to be a fairly easy procedure… check into the hospital in the morning, go home that night. Of course, last time I went under the knife, I almost died (complications due to anesthesia). Good times!

Other news:
Yesterday was my brother-in-law’s birthday. We all met up at the Season Ticket for drinks and such, then they went off to watch the Spokane Chiefs take on the Seattle Thunderbirds. Our Chiefs got their butts trounced (3 -6). I really wanted to go, but I had to work the damn graveyard shift (so I had to go home and get a nap in).

If you don’t want any spoilers for Star Wars ROTS, don’t click here (actually… you can click there, because the site has been removed, damn it!).

OMG!! HOT HOT WOOKIE ON PRINCESS ACTION!!!!