Captain’s Log

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There’s a concept that I tend to think of as “Haha, only so serious” for lacking a better way to describe it.

I tend to view seriousness and humor as a balanced dualism that goes hand in hand rather than as diametrically opposed sides of the coin. The best humor tends to filter through by taking ourselves seriously, but not oh so seriously that we forget to laugh in the moment.

Perhaps I feel this way because life tends to be more like The Joker’s laugh after Batman wins and pawns him off on commissioner Gordan. Far more than our laughter in the real world tends to be as brazen as a chorus doing the can-can. Thus as someone who enjoys a good laugh, I tend to appreciate humor that stems from not taking oneself too seriously.

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When I originally designed Centauri: it was with the spec that it should last at least five years before it would be cost effective to replace it. By that, I mean it has to take so long to do shit that it’s worth money not to have to wait on it. Dear Centauri made it to eight years with most of its bottle necks only showing up in the last couple. I’d say that’s pretty good.

Enter the new generation: Rimuru is reincarnated born.

Since my 5 year design ended up pulling 8 years of duty, I opted for the biggest influencer of that spec. Centauri rocked a Core i5-3570K based on the assumption that it would retire by the time it became the problem, and lo and behold it really was the main bottle neck. As such, Rimuru rocks a Core i7-10700K because I’ve specified parts based on a 10 year service life.

One of the primary goals aside from that was the modernization of technology. Two pieces of tech have been on my mind as possible final retro fits for a few years now.

I’ve reached a point where USB-A only exists for old technology and existing peripherals that have nigh indefinite life span relative to their host computer. Things like my web cam and mouse.

Rimuru sports a snazzy front panel USB-C port perfect for the fact that most of what I want to connect now functions through USB-C. Likewise the motherboard rather resolves one of my gripes with its predecessor. My old Z77 chipset was a superb motherboard but it sadly was a bridge chipset, literally. Coming from the era in which USB 3.0 became standard only two rear ports and the two front ports were 3.0 with the otherwise ample ports in back being 2.0s. On the H570M the only 2.0 ports are header; all rear ports are USB-A, and two of them are rated for 10 Gbit/s. A perfect solution to having to be careful which USB goes where in the back.

 Second temptation was the insane speed of NVMe drives. It’s been on my mind the last few years that there is no point in buying SATA drives anymore, except as external SSDs and use cases where big, cheap HDDs are the win. While I could retrofit an M.2 slot to my old Z77 it wouldn’t be capable of booting from the drive.

While I was at it: I decided on a fairly future proof power supply. My GTX 780 was the root cause of my last power supply upgrade, but is so powerful that it’s not typically the bottleneck Centauri experienced. 

Opting to take advantage of the situation: I picked up an affordable power supply off a list of PSUs capable of driving an RTX 3080. In terms of PCI-E power connectors I could run two 780s. It’s also a semi modular—meaning everything but the ATX power cables “Plug” into the power supply rather than having to be tied off and routed. Since Rimuru is operating M.2 NVMe only, and has 2.5″ SSD mounts on the side panel: there is nothing in the drive cages below. As such I tossed the power supply’s remaining cables in there, so I don’t scratch my head in the years to come wondering which box in the closet they landed in.

Somehow it does seem ironic that the first live fire test of Rimuru’s capabilities was playing a DOOM (1993) 😁.

Raw performance testing in more interesting vectors has also been promising. Tested one of my projects that takes Stark about 15 minutes to compile from scratch, and Centauri pulled it off in about 7½ minutes to compile. Rimuru did it in 3 minutes. Bare in mind, Stark is the development system in the family and a laptop of similar vintage to Centauri.

Like her predecessor, Rimuru gets a nice “Assembling” album that tracks and marks things as part of the build. Centauri was the first PC that I built in the era of phones and cameras everywhere, and that really worked out. In a similar lesson from Stark, she also gets her own entry in y note system to serve as a log book of major changes and configuration. I’ve actually got pretty good at coping with that puzzle over the years.

Wait, no wonder my beard is turning grey…lol

Various thoughts I didn’t expect a decade ago

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That my greatest joy for voice assistants would amount to “Open {show name} on {service name} on {device name}” as a way to power on my entertainment system, and being able to use Alexa to pause/unpause my video.

That I wouldn’t give a shit about privacy because the most eaves voice assistants may drop is me talking to the dogs 🤣.

That I would own an Apple product. Never mind two (not counting my iPad accessors).

That Microsoft would release an operating system that I actually like, but isn’t itself a Microsoft managed GNU/Linux distribution.

Google would piss me off so much.

That tablets would kill my use of laptops for uses that don’t involve editing code for several hours at a time. Thanks for that, Android.

That buying a voice powered smart plug would probably be worth it if I could say, “Alexa, turn on my desktop”. Yeah, might have to look into that one actually.

That I’d be thinking “Clap on, clap off” more instinctively than “Computer, lights!” when getting up in the middle of the night. But really, that’s a job for Alexa.

That my handwriting quality would be restored thanks to Samsung’s S-Pen.

That my relationship to files would become so abstract. I don’t often keep note files anymore, I have tools like Evernote and Nebo.

And probably a lot more, but updates are almost done installing and no one wants to hear about my taste in kitchen knives.

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In the course of my life, often the solutions to problems have been “Put your back into it!”. Either because power tools are expensive, or it’s something I’ll probably use once every several years at best.

Repeat after me: “I will buy a drill.”

Then go buy a drill.

Honestly at this point, the only negative I can see is the dogs might swap from offering emotional support to running for cover. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing depending on what you’re working on.

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 There are days when I can sympathize with Mr. Spock’s plight in The City On The Edge Of Forever.

“I am endeavoring, ma’am, to construct a mnemonic memory circuit using stone knives and bearskins.”

My data migration plan is almost wrapped up, yay!

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Attempts to start Plex, or fire up Speccy to see if I could get a smart reading, was causing my 3 TB drive to dismount. Read access at least has proven reliable, and despite the drive’s age it doesn’t sound like hell.

Since the important stuff on that drive is copied to my backups drive, and a copy of the backups drive is periodically sent to it: data loss would have been minimal if it went duddaaa splat like my old 1 TB did. Risk of loss was most of my Plex content, and the local mirror of my backups.

Last time I replaced a failing drive: one of the 1 TB drives I bought back in January 2013 died. Of course it was the one used for backups, and a short time after I started backing up the backups in full rather than the most vital parts. Which turned out to be rather handy, even if most stuff on ny backups drive are files I won’t cry if they’re lost—unlike my photo albums.

Faced with a drive going wonkers, and limited time. I did some planning and found myself buying a pair of 8 TB drives — because the price was so good, I decided to get a spare.

Since taking a day to migrate my unbacked up media over to the new 8 TB drive, I’ve also decided to shift gears on how my dual drive arrangement works.

How it’s been done:

  1. Backups drive
  2. Plex drive
Originally these were both 1 TB drives. The 3 TB in question replaced one when various retro fittings occurred. The 1 TB that failed a year or two ago was replaced with a 2 TB. But otherwise things remained the same.
Rather than backup vitals pike photos from Plex to Backups, and then mirror Backups to Plex just in case. I’ve decided to integrate everything into one drive. 
Such that one new 8 TB drive is the complete data set. Backups, Plex, etc. Thus the 2 TB drive can go on to replace either the 2013-era 1 TB drive hanging out of my xbox, or the roughly as old 1 TB used to backup my laptop’s 0.5 TB drive. It could even serve as an extra backup of the most important parts. I’ll figure that out later.
I chose to buy a second 8 TB drive in part because the prices are so nice. And because it’s big enough that whatever fits on the new “Master” drive can also fit on the spare.
The open loop is how I want to handle backups in this new arrangement.
Periodically mirroring the master to the backups would leave me with an automation that makes the spare ready to rock and roll. Syncing up once or twice a month is sufficient risk prevention for my needs. In that time period, data at risk typically exists on other devices or offsite.
Alternatively, I could simply use the “Spare” as a destination for backups of the new master. Similar to how I take care of my file server’s system drive being backed up to the “Backups” drive that is now a folder on the master. Ditto other machines are backed up to that location in similar ways but less frequently.
As I see it the differences are moot from la failure rate perspective.
Mirroring on a monthly basis will generate ample file accesses; the difference is the “Spare” won’t have the wakeful workloads of the “Master”. By contrast the various backup software I rely on, can easily toss differential backups but doesn’t make the drive ready to rock. Doing so will still generate load on the drive whenever the operation occurs.
Thus I find myself favoring the approach where recovery is change mount point, go by new drives. One to replace failure, and one to decommission the spare for less sensitive uses.

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Going on somewhat of a cleaning kick, I managed to sort through and clean various artifacts that haven’t really been gone through in a few years.

Along the way I decided to put some stuff with my treasures box. Not sure if everyone does, but ever since I was little my mother had these jewelry box like things for us. Mostly made up of artifacts from when we were born. Like buttons or coins with our birthdays, or stuff that was my father’s. Various stuff has been collected here since I was a kid. Troll dolls, a folding paper fa from Chuck-E-Cheese’s arcade, etc. More recent additions include a Pokemon TCG coin, my wristwatch, yadda yadda.

The box also contains various things like my dad’s driver’s license and registration. Can’t remember how much has been there next to forever, and what has been merged into that over the years. Most of Dad’s personal artifacts are in one of his old containers. Likewise my mother’s are in various containers she kept her personal stuff in.

In debating where to put some of my mother’s stuff, I opted to put it in my box with some of my father’s stuff. Makes sense to me that her driver’s license would end up next to his. While I was at it, also incorporated are things like the fob and last registration from my first car.

Also a little happy. Looking through my parents things, I found dad’s other dog tag in one of my mother’s boxes. Next to important stuff of her father’s. Last time I moved, I had feared I might of lost it.

And then of course there’s irony. In knocking the box with comments that I should really get something bigger to store this stuff in the frame of the lid finally came unglued. Considering it’s at least thirty years old, I suppose I can’t complain, lol.

Think if I was smart, I’d find some time to clean and organize that entire shelf and make it more orderly. Family albums on the bottom shelf might even be worth the sneezing attack.

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Revisiting the problem of sending custom alarm tones to iOS, this time around I opted to save myself some pain. The first thing I did was locate where I stuffed my audio file; the second was plug my iPhone in to iTunes. Because when you utter enough profanities doing a thing it tends to leave a mark 😛.

I’ve been thinking for a while of setting a new alarm for the weekends. Presently, Misty’s morning meds rely on the fact that I’m usually awake around that time and if not, Corky makes sure I am; much as he made sure my mother didn’t dose off instead of testing her sugar in the morning. Habitually waking up around the same time has been useful, but lacks fail safes. Thus the alarm clock.

During the week it’s kind of wrapped around my trifecta of alarms. One to wake me up, so I can’t sleep through the others; one to tell me to get my ass out of bed; and the third to tell me I better damned get my ass out of bed if there isn’t a tooth brush in my mouth yet 😲. Each of these have different tones to help know the pattern. Normally on the weekend there’s just a late alarm in place to make sure I don’t literally sleep the day away, and I’m usually up long before then.

In thinking about whether I want to put the extra alarm on my phone or my tablet, the notion hit me. Separate device, separate why the frak am I waking up reason. I might even migrate that time slot from tablet to phone during the week as further reinforcement that it’s time for Misty’s meds.

As such the time frame overlaps with the first weekday alarm, as that’s the most convenient time to give Misty her meds, and bribe Corky into letting me go back to sleep. Peanut butter is important here, lol. In much the same vain: I’m inclined to use the same alarm tone for the same time of day and purpose.

That just so happens to be the protagonist’s morning alarm from Pixel Fade’s Ace Academy. Which is a heck of a lot more pleasant to wake up to than the 90 dB alarm clock I had as a kid, lol.

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Google’s solution to the end of Hangouts is Messages. My solution to this problem has been, “Screw that”.

For the majority of my use case my SMS roll through my tablet. A process that Hangouts, as meh as a chat app is it has always been: handled well. In the years prior, I had relied on a Bluetooth connection between my Android phone and tablet to make the magic happen. In the post Hangouts world, I pretty much just relied on its integration.

Google Fi and Hangouts started the GTFO and use Messages push a week or two ago. Since Hangouts ends in January, I decided to give it a go and see how good the results would be. Well, an iPhone SE is how well that experiment went.

Using the web version on my tablet shifts from how Meh the current iteration of Hangouts is to “And why the frak am I using this?”. I figured, at least, it had to be worth while on my phone. Whether it’s the natural way it works, or an aspect of Google Fi: Messages sucks ass on my Moto X4. I dislike using the web version; I despise using the Android version. Even more so where the combination of web + phone often leads me to to using multiple profanities when the phone eventually catches up.

Originally, I had assumed that I would be using android messages when I upgraded from my old Galaxy S5 to the Moto X4. But most messages arriving through Hangouts rather than that, pretty much lead to me ignoring it. Not broke, don’t care. Well, at least for a few more years at that time.

My primary computer when I’m not doing real work is a tablet. Many of the Android tablets I’ve used ended up full blown keyboard/mouse/monitor driven workstations on top of being my general purpose tablet. Thus my phone doesn’t really see a lot of use.

Typically I use my phone when:

  • Checking off my shopping list at the grocery store.
  • I’ve gone to bed, and it’s easier to reach for my phone than my tablet to answer messages or read Wikipedia with one eye open.
  • I’m standing in the checkout line at the grocery store.
  • Waiting on food at the microwave at work.
  • Suddenly need a calculator or a stop watch, and other things that were cool on a wristwatch when I was a kid.
  • The rare times I actually want a one hand device more than a better device.
  • The few times I rely on Maps to make sure I don’t take a wrong turn.
  • The every few years I’m driving out of range of my favorite radio tower, and choose to jack a playlist into my car’s head unit.
In effect this means my phone represents 10 – 15 % of my non-productivity minded computing, and aside from answering messages in the middle of the night: I’m usually found on my tablet or I’m occupied and not available. Since I’m usually using a tablet, my phone’s data use represents an average of up to a hundred megabytes of cellular data. Drastically down from the years where I averaged several gigabytes.
Apple’s iMessage doesn’t really interest me. But it does two things for me. It fixes the suck-ass experience of using my iPad Pro with Google’s new plan for my Messages, and it makes me not want to flip my phone out a window whenever I wait for messages to sync back up 🤣.
Thus Bean Sprout has been retired in favor of Benimaru. So named because the Project (RED) design reminds me of Rimiru’s commander in chief in TenSura.

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Every now and then, I kind of wish I had a camera capturing what I see. This morning was one of those breakfasts.

I often make frozen sausages with breakfast on the weekends, so that I can share with the hounds. Microwave, slice up, and vola. Well this morning was some roll off the counter, like a my ooor meatball impression. Corky nabbed it and trotted off. Had to grab hold and with my nose on his head, convince him to let go of the frozen sausage. There were teeeth marks where he resisted this, lol. Should probably just be glad his tongue didn’t get stuck to it.

As an apology, tasty dog treats were issued before breakfast, and Corky got the first helping of sausage.