the Hearth @Felthry@awoo.space

@artemis@vulpine.club It's possible that it wasn't a low-battery beep, but an overloaded beep.
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@artemis@vulpine.club Ew. I was comparing that 69 watts to the earlier figure of 280 though and concluding that at least one of your monitors was using more than 100 watts, which is absurd for anything that isn't a CRT
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@Zest imagining you just hitting a button marked "rar" on the keyboard (which also has a button for "reh")

cute mental image honestly
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@artemis@vulpine.club oh that was with the heavy load turned off never mind the last post then
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@artemis@vulpine.club *that* makes me wonder now if something is wrong with your monitors, because I wouldn't expect more than about 20 or 30 watts for a flatscreen monitor (CRTs take loads more power though)
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@Lotherme Hmm. Being *me*, I'm now thinking about taking off my face and handing it to you :P
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@artemis@vulpine.club *hugs owa*

It gets easier with time.
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@rantingsteve @artemis@vulpine.club Sticking a voltmeter in an outlet is a perfectly acceptable way of doing things, but a kill-a-watt is handy!

https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=sr_1_5_mod_primary_new?keywords=kill-a-watt&qid=1639251392&sbo=RZvfv%2F%2FHxDF%2BO5021pAnSA%3D%3D&sr=8-5 this is the official/original one, and the one we have, but it seems it got much more expensive at least on amazon lately? that P3 logo means it's one of the original ones, I can't vouch for the reliability of the clones but it's not a terribly complex device
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@artemis@vulpine.club I owe owa a hug when he comes back front.

I'm glad he has you 💚
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sounds like you help each other in much the same way Fel and I do.
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@artemis@vulpine.club hah! i guess he's looking into the problem too?
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@artemis@vulpine.club (if you're not familiar, the kill-a-watt is just a little power meter that plugs into the wall and then you plug a thing into it, it can measure stuff like current, voltage, real and reactive power, and i think some models can even count up energy use over time. handy little thing to have around)
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@artemis@vulpine.club *nods* I'm guessing from the fact that you and Owa never said anything about my suggestions to use one that you don't have a kill-a-watt? They can be handy for things like this, so you may want to look into getting one; I think they're only like $15 or so.

Looks like the UPS has some non-protected outlets on it, those won't count towards UPS load if you want to keep the monitors plugged in to the same thing.
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@artemis@vulpine.club I was actually going to ask owa what's on the UPS other than the computer, because it's possible that that would add to the computer's 280 to push it over the limit

but he started getting stressed and i tried to help with that and it dien't end up working out very well and that got forgotten
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@artemis@vulpine.club still feels like it was my fault, but they're things i really wouldn't be comfortable *not* bringing up... it's not a good situation really
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@artemis@vulpine.club sorry. i hope he's okay
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@owashii@plush.city sorry. i don't want to just make things worse

i'd still recommend checking the voltage drop if at all possible (a kill-a-watt can do that if you have one), because it's possible that everything is fine and that would show that
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@owashii@plush.city i'm just worried about you
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@owashii@plush.city sorry

i didn't mean to make things worse
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@owashii@plush.city i'm sorry to make you worry, but i just don't want it to go unaddressed

what you can do without an electrician is: minimize the load on the circuit you suspect is bad, check the voltage at the outlet, then do what you normally do and check if the voltage sags significantly

if it does (whether constantly or intermittently), it's likely there's a problem. if there is a problem and you can't call an electrician to fix it, stop using that circuit as much as possible. Move the computer and any other large loads onto another circuit that doesn't show the same problem. If you can get everything off that circuit and just turn off the breaker to it, that would be best, but just minimizing the load should be enough to help a lot

If it doesn't, then there probably isn't a problem and I got worried over nothing, sorry about that. might still want to get an electrician in when you can
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