The weather outside is frightful...

but the warm air blowing out of the back of the servers is so delightful...

It snowed on my way into work today. So of course, during my drive, I thought of all the things I was going to have to start doing. Among them was annual maintenance on the work generator.

Typically, maintenance on a largish generator is done on a per-hours-run basis. My manual says to check the oil every 8 hours of running, change the oil every 100 hours, and change the spark plugs every 500 hours. There are other things that should be done annually, however, and for those, we hire a local contractor to come over and take care of things.

In central Ohio, we can have nasty winters, but they don't typically start early with the bad storms. Since the daylight savings time has migrated to the first Sunday of November (this year, Nov 2nd), it makes a great reminder for me to schedule the service call. People in different climes may have to use different milestones, but whatever you use, use something.

I wrote in June about a generator failure that I don't want to experience again, so learn from my mistake and perform regular maintenance on your equipment.

If you haven't done it yet, now is as good a time as any!