Decided to spring for a small UPS unit for the server here. Mostly so I can keep my Internet up during brief power outages. It’s a Cyberpower CP1500 1500VA/900W UPS, and it’ll run at current load, which is about 6-10%, for about an hour with no power. This should make the blog a lot more reliable too. I’ll be pulling the plug out later tonight and seeing how things hold  up. For now I’m configuring the daemon in the Linux server to shut it down gracefully if the battery runs too low.
UPDATE: Running off UPS power as this is updated. Have a few glitches still to work out with making sure it e-mails me to tell me power is out.
UPDATE: Worked out all the glitches. Seems to be working nicely now. You can tell it’s a cheap UPS since any power supply if feeds while on battery hums like a large flying insect. I don’t have an oscilloscope to look at the output from the inverter, but I’m betting it’s ugly.
If you pardon the espression – w00t.
All of my computers and the networking “glue” have UPS or other forms of non-mains power (laptops have working batteries), because there’s nothing I’ve experienced like the feeling of having the lights go out and the monitor stay on when you haven’t saved your work in the past x minutes; especially when the save location is either on another machine in the house or out in the cloud someplace. I suspect it’s a pale imitation of having been shot at and missed; but it is a very affirmative feeling nonetheless.
I thought all of us gun nuts had generators and tranfer switches!
Are you sure it isn’t the UPS itself humming? That would be more normal. Otherwise, I would definitely look into that.Could just be bad voltage output too.