Killing Time

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dandanio

Active Member
Oct 10, 2017
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Building a new vSAN cluster out of some spare NUCs. :) Oh, oh! And I tried Ubuntu 20.04 on desktop.
 
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Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
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I watched two movies on Saturday night! Same night too.

Actually, I had no idea HBO had on demand movies since I do not watch TV much.
 

mackle

Active Member
Nov 13, 2013
221
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Working harder than ever. Doing more non-digital (wood working etc) things in my downtime to stay sane.
 

T_Minus

Build. Break. Fix. Repeat
Feb 15, 2015
7,625
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Working on client work, probably slow down after this week or next.
 

dandanio

Active Member
Oct 10, 2017
182
70
28
Working harder than ever. Doing more non-digital (wood working etc) things in my downtime to stay sane.
About that. When I had my kitchen redone I asked to have the piece of granite from the island saved. Now I need to get some 2x4s and come up with a design to get the legs done and I will have myself an outdoor/patio granite top table. :) Any ideas for legs? :)
 

turgin

Member
May 16, 2016
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My wife is a stay at home mom and I moved to work from home about 18 months ago so not much has changed for me other than the short humans are here a lot more.

The only thing is we had a sewer leak in the slab under the kitchen cabinets in February that necessitated removing most of the base cabinets, including the sink/garbage disposal, and dishwasher to jackhammer into the slab. The leak is repaired and the 12' long trench is filled with concrete again but we only received the insurance money about 3 weeks ago. We have purchased the new base cabinets that are still sitting in a warehouse in town but my wife couldn't settle on new countertops (they broke our countertops when removing them) before all this virus stuff hit so we're still without a fully functioning kitchen. What makes this even more frustrating is that we had just remodeled the kitchen 3 years ago!

But, I know how very fortunate I am to already work from home and still doing the same job for the same money when so many others are not so not having a kitchen is not that big of a deal right now.
 
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cperalt1

Active Member
Feb 23, 2015
180
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Working longer hours Supporting a Health System working from home, projects have been standing up an Acute Care Clinic, a Drive Thru Testing workflow, and everyone's new favorite Telehealth. Navigating Payer Billing requirements makes learning how to do server design and management look like a walk in the park. When not doing that, some time for finally getting around to pruning automatic ZFS Snapshots of my MythTV server.
 

edge

Active Member
Apr 22, 2013
203
71
28
Mastering storage spaces through powershell. After that, I might try s2d clustered, but I would need to up my home lab network which is still in the dark ages of 1Gbe.
 

CreoleLakerFan

Active Member
Oct 29, 2013
485
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Busting my tail building infrastructure to support remote workers for my client. I've worked 3/4 of the last weekend and been up late nights on after hours maintenance windows 4/5 days for the last three weeks.

In my "spare time" I finally got all of my gear that's been sitting on tables and in boxes racked. Added some a new lab server, relocated my ESX All-in-One from a custom iStar to a SuperMicro 825 (more reliable hot-swap, smaller profile). Rebuilt some virtual appliances. Built a new gaming rig/workstation based on a Ryzen 3900X ... it's quite the upgrade over the Ivy Bridge 3612QM-based Lenovo W540 I was previously using as my daily driver.

Built a full gym out in the garage - it's a little wierd working out next to a set of screaming servers. Maybe my next project will be to tone down the fans in the 825 to something more tolerable ... If this CA shelter-in-place last as long as the governor says so I'll have plenty of time for that and other projects.
 

Markess

Well-Known Member
May 19, 2018
1,146
761
113
Northern California
I'm recently retired myself, so no "work" changes for me. But, the wife runs a small educational non-profit and I'm helping her shift the instructional format from on-site to virtual for her staff, as schools here have gone virtual through the end of the year. My kids are in high-school, so are pretty self regulating when at home.

My big computer related project is a challenge from the wife: She says that if the rest of the family can turn off/sleep their computers when not in use, I should be able to too. She also wants me to reduce the power draw, noise, and heat coming from my home office/lab/workshop/cave (yikes!) Makes a certain amount of sense, as almost nothing in there is actually in use unless I'm in there using it. Even the media server isn't needed if nobody is wanting to watch anything. Plus, while power here isn't too expensive (Sacramento, CA area), we do have tiered billing. So, the more we use, the more we pay per kilowatt.

The argument that its not good to keep turning servers on and off won't fly with her, as she knows I probably won't be using any of it hard/long enough to "wear it out" from powercycling. And, TBH, I agree with her. I upgrade stuff too often ;).

So, I'm tinkering with how to gracefully shutdown/sleep/hibernate/wake/turn on everything, unattended in the case of the switch in my office and the Unraid box (the media server), maybe others as well.

I see a bunch of forum advice requests in my future!
 
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IamSpartacus

Well-Known Member
Mar 14, 2016
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I'm recently retired myself, so no "work" changes for me. But, the wife runs a small educational non-profit and I'm helping her shift the instructional format from on-site to virtual for her staff, as schools here have gone virtual through the end of the year. My kids are in high-school, so are pretty self regulating when at home.

My big computer related project is a challenge from the wife: She says that if the rest of the family can turn off/sleep their computers when not in use, I should be able to too. She also wants me to reduce the power draw, noise, and heat coming from my home office/lab/workshop/cave (yikes!) Makes a certain amount of sense, as almost nothing in there is actually in use unless I'm in there using it. Even the media server isn't needed if nobody is wanting to watch anything. Plus, while power here isn't too expensive (Sacramento, CA area), we do have tiered billing. So, the more we use, the more we pay per kilowatt.

The argument that its not good to keep turning servers on and off won't fly with her, as she knows I probably won't be using any of it hard/long enough to "wear it out" from powercycling. And, TBH, I agree with her. I upgrade stuff too often ;).

So, I'm tinkering with how to gracefully shutdown/sleep/hibernate/wake/turn on everything, unattended in the case of the switch in my office and the Unraid box (the media server), maybe others as well.

I see a bunch of forum advice requests in my future!

Have Google Home? I use it paired with Automagic and WakeOnLAN to power on my VM's in Unraid. Could just as easily use it to turn on the server as well.
 

Markess

Well-Known Member
May 19, 2018
1,146
761
113
Northern California
Have Google Home? I use it paired with Automagic and WakeOnLAN to power on my VM's in Unraid. Could just as easily use it to turn on the server as well.
Brilliant! I hadn't even thought of going that route. I don't have Google Home, but I have an Amazon Echo that appears to be able to do WOL if I install the appropriate "skill". Its a lot less convoluted than my original thought, which was to use a Raspberry Pi as a "WOL Server".
 

edge

Active Member
Apr 22, 2013
203
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28
I decided to murder my time, not just kill it, so I am redoing my home adcs pki infrastructure and adding a direct access. The reading is painful.
 
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RTM

Well-Known Member
Jan 26, 2014
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I finally got around to assembling the 3D printer I bought a while back, ended up doing it twice because (according to reddit) it is apparently important to be mindful of the tolerances and how it is put together. Perhaps i'll even get around to printing that heatsink fan holder thing I have been thinking of for a while now. Also, I suppose if push comes to shove it may be usable to produce DIY protective gear.
 

Markess

Well-Known Member
May 19, 2018
1,146
761
113
Northern California
I decided to "tidy up" one of my systems that's a bit of an eyesore in my home office.

And a funny thing happened...

I've got a computer set up for digitizing the family's extensive DVD/Blueray collection. Lots of disks, so its going to be in use for a while. Its in an ancient Antec mid-tower case that's been seriously "modified" to fit the EATX motherboard (an Inventec B800) and a couple cooling fans. There's no extra room inside, so I've got DVD & Blue Ray burners stacked on top of it with the power and SATA cables passed back inside through the back.

In a word.....ugly.

Last week I found a 4U Chenbro chassis with three external 5 1/4 bays on Ebay for $48 shipped. I figured there'd be room to get all the bits inside and into the rack in my office, freeing up some floor space.

When it arrived, it was dusty (not good!), but they'd also thrown an entire handful of power cords in the box (good!). Who doesn't like spare power cords?

But most interesting of all, once I got it open, there was already a motherboard with an i7-4771 CPU, a 760 Watt 80 Plus Platinum modular PSU. and a GTX 970 installed (very good!). And even better, it all seems to work.

Not too bad for $48.
 
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