Last week or so, I’ve been a bit under the weather. But I still managed to get things done.
Small things.
The technical term for which is “Low Hanging Fruit”.
First was a drainspout that Aria was eating.
She was after a Chameleon. Those bastards are all over around there. Makes sense. Lots of plants, lots of bugs, lots of bug eaters. I’ve noticed a fair amount of ghekos and ladybugs. I opened my hatch at Home Depot the other day and a big cahmeleon popped up on the roof. Head to tail, maybe 8″. Screw him. I drove off. He’s in a better place. They have landscaping, after all. He’ll be OK, not that I care.
The lizards fancy the drainpipes, or thereabouts. So no doubt one darted down to get away from the dog (they do it to me too). So Aria went full retard and started tearing the drain apart. Hence the rebar and wire.
That PVC fitting is super cheap. But I wanted to avoid doing this again. So I bought a chunk of drainage pipe, also cheap. And took the thing apart. Extended the drain and replaced the eaten fitting.
A little tin snipping, a few pop rivets and screws, and I’m back in bidness.
The real solution here would be to install rain barrels on the three downspouts on this side of the house. Yeah, it doesn’t rain much here, but when it does, it does a lot. Full rain barrels would have me watering for free for a month. Maybe more. I’m too cheap for millenial quality rainbarrels so I’m thinking I’ll have to get a big trash can to work, redneck style. I told Herself I may get a septic tank and make it a cistern. A fish pond liner is probably cheaper. And there’s the mosquito factor here. We’ll see. But think about it – Under my shed, put a cistern, the top of which would be the floor? Great use of wasted space, I’m thinking, and a good excuse to rent a digger.
A word about pop rivet tools. Behold:
The one with the red handles I got from Harbor Freight when I was in high school, or soon after. It slips sometimes, but still works consistently, more or less, and it’s what – 40 years old? The DeWalt I bought when my ancient tool started failing, and it’s a piece of shit.
While the rotating head is useful once in a blue moon, the stubby business end sort of sucks. It doesn’t eject the spent rod, you have to bang it, and it’ll bust a rivet at 1/4 shaft long before it’s tight. I need to get on their site and hector them into replacing it. For what I paid, I could’ve bought three Harbor Freight tools. Or one and an air riveter. ‘Tis Bullshit, I say.
Last week, I lamented about my SAN issues, and trying to figure out how to preserve my digital life. I can still get to my Seagate NAS 440 with FTP. Not great, but does the job. At least for archival purposes. It had a bad drive, which I’m guessing needs to be a certain seagate full size SATA drive. So I bit the bullet and bought one on eVilBay. I hate using them, but they are about the only place you’ll find old parts that are refurbed. So I plugged the new drive in, claimed it, and assigned it to the gimping volume.
It still functions, for now. I’ve moved off most of what I wanted. But Herself has data on it I need to move. And it still works. I can add/remove stuff. So I’ll keep it running as a backup-backup for now.
That said, The Buffalo LS210 you see above it is it’s replacement.
It has twice the capacity – at 4T. It has bittorrent. It has web. It’s network enabled.
It has SMB 2.
Fuck.
Now, a struggle.
I had a hell of a time convincing windows to let me use it as a shared drive. I think, for the most part, it’s an authentication thing. Window wants to use my ID. And while the LS210 can do Active Directory (AD), I don’t have my AD server running 24×7. Once I logged in once and made it work, it seems to be OK.
I was on a call with two of my old friends, peers from my pre-buyout days, trying to unload my NAS troubles.
I was promptly called a pansy for not buying the right NAS. Matter of fact, one of them threw a ton of shade on me saying I didn’t, in fact, get a NAS.
Now, some qualification.
They are both hardcore IT engineers. Matter of fact, the Tech Support and Pro Services guys that were part of my group, but are now seperated (but still support the same product) are literally the smartest, most driven dudes I’ve ever met. IT Alpha Dogs All.
I worked with them often. And on this post I was with two of them, One I’ve known since I started in 2005. Wonder why I didn’t mention this back then. These dudes are hardcore. Used to managing million dollar deployments. We went up the street looking for food and drink in Montreal. Consider; one is my age. 6’3″, Black dude, looks like he could’ve been a pro wide receiver back in the day. The other, 6’5″ or better, tats, long goatee, fit. Super fit. Once I was on a job with him, met him at the hotel breakfast bar. He was in shorts and a tshirt, just having gone up and down the stairs for nearly an hour.
They were walking in front of me, side by side. I in the back, at 6′, short inseam, doing 2 steps to their one, trying to keep up, marveling at how the short, skinny frenchies were quailing in their path, looking at them concerned as they looked forward, ignoring all in their path. I still laugh thinking about it. I was a man-o-sphere moment for sure.
Both also hardcore IT Smart.
Back to the story. One of friends rules his roost, and sets up what he needs. His wife is OK with this. He’s a good, attentive dad, a good provider. The other is divorced, kids all adults. I’ve known him since the 80s. He has something like 12+T on a pro storage network.
Thats when I sang them this:
“And I have no wife to blame me, I’ve no chains upon my hands. I take my ease at what I please ’cause I’m a rambling man..”
I can’t up and drop $500+ on a new device.
The new NAS – is on the top on that pic. 4T. And I’ve struggled.
It’s slow. But it works.
So now, I have to move stuff to it. The endgame here is TrueNas. I can build one cheaper.
Coming up:
I’ve gone all in on Ryobi. In the past I’ve bought a drill press, band saw, and my new table saw. They all work good enough for me. Actually they work quite well. So I went to replace my cordless drill with a drill/impact set and added a hybrid – 120V/18V DC blower which has been spectacularly convenient.
But these here are chinese battries. For the price of one Ryobi, I got two.
We’ll see. Hopefully they don’t detonate and burn the place down.
I’ll report later on those.
Inspected By Pat 