Categories
Life in lockdown

Camping in the Time of Covid-19

Went camping over the weekend with Ella, Todd and Paige. It was a good time but it sure rained. Ella and I were in the tent about 9pm on Saturday night and it had been raining for a while. The tent did ok but water started into the tent and there was lightning (no thunder). Ella gets nervous; I say she is safe with me. She says ok but still nervous. Next flash she says we go sleep in the cabin with Todd and Paige. Ok, I agree — not 30 seconds later another flash. I agree and we get dressed and pack up sleeping bags to walk in pouring rain the 200 yards or so back to the cabin. Todd and Paige were waiting up for us and the cabin was warm and dry.

Categories
Hardware Software

The Curious Case of the Slow Performing iMac

So, Sunday night, I decided to login to my iMac to download photos from my camera and my 27″ 2.7 GHz (symmetry, I love it) core i5 iMac is crawling — like fall asleep waiting on a mouse click to register slow. I reboot, no help. I close all my apps so nothing is running, no help. I check thermals on the iMac and it’s at 39 C which isn’t to bad… I check dmesg and I see a bunch of io errors. Curious!?! Why would there be IO errors. I checked top and I couldn’t see anything alarmingly wrong. I get nervous because I’m working from home due to Covid-19, so I really need a working computer. I end up putting my old 2009 21″ iMac back together — it was in pieces next to my desk for several months. I decided at least I could use that 21″ iMac to work in case my 27″ doesn’t come back to life. I go to bed worn out and when I wake in the morning; low and behold the 27″ iMac is back to normal….? curious why it was slow before, was it a hardware issue or was it trying to run something? I’ll make sure I get everything important off it just in case it is a hardware issue.

Categories
History Science

Tough Day

My mom texted me today to suggest that we cancel her planned trip to Houston in April. I admit I was thinking the same thing but she said it first. I would worry for her health if she were traveling. I’ll work with the airline tomorrow to reschedule the trip. I told Abby and she was sad. I used the word cancel and Abby asked if we could reschedule. My mom said she was so excited to come and I know Abby and Ella were too. All in all a sad day. The world is still panicking due to coronavirus; school is canceled for a month. Restaurants, bars and gyms are being shuttered. God speed to this planet so that we can find some resistance to coronavirus soon.

Categories
History Science

Coronavirus & the Global Time-Out

The Coronavirus is currently gripping the world with fear; flights are restricted, all sports shutdown and schools are closed. It almost seems like the world is on one big time-out. Today I went for a bike ride with Ella and I saw loads of people out enjoying the beautiful day. My work has authorized global split teams (team blue and team green) to limit the effects of a spread of infection on a team. I worked from home a bit last week & it was fine. I do miss the room and the camaraderie of the staff. While I’m at home I have the girls; Ella has been really good and is getting herself cereal and such. Abby for her part is staying in her room and coming out for food, ha. The weather was very nice today; I did all my yardwork yesterday and today — mow, edge, weed, sweep up. I also cleaned up in the house and did the dishes and laundry. At least in my neighborhood folks are enjoying this time with family and loved ones. Fathers and Flashlights has officially been cancelled (the camping trip) and we got no refund! I sorted knew it would get cancelled and I started prepping Ella for that fact. Todd (Paiges dad) invited us to go with him to do our own fathers and flashlights. In many ways I think this one will be better! Anyways, god speed to the world and hoping this all blows over some time soon.

Categories
History Software

Soldier, strategist (Houston Business Journal)

Soldier, strategist: How Hurricane Harvey redirected an Army captain’s path to a technology career in banking – Houston Business Journal
— Read on www.google.com/amp/s/www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2020/03/02/soldier-strategist-how-hurricane-harvey-redirected.amp.html

Look at that tall guy next to Jake. Lol. Great article and Jake is a great guy.

Categories
Software

FreeNAS 11.3-U1 now available : freenas

F
— Read on old.reddit.com/r/freenas/comments/f9dsw0/freenas_113u1_now_available/

Oh boy! Some fun to upgrade this weekend! I don’t know why but I do get a thrill upgrading my components and making sure they are properly configured.

Categories
History

Samuel Pepys

Pronounced peeps (or so I’ve been told). So I found out the other day that he was only 34 years old with a nice estate and a good job and wealth. He wrote every day and the filthy stuff was in other languages (French, Spanish, some Latin). He also wrote in code shorthand for his diary. One wonders who he was writing it for? One wonders if our ramblings online will be reviewed in the way that Pepys diaries are. Who knows? He was a cad; that is for sure.

Categories
Software

Stardew Valley

Such a cute game. I got it on my iPad; Cameron and the girls have it on their switches. I named my farm Cooper’s farm and I chose Wilderness farm for a challenge. I have my fall turnips just planted and I’m working on meeting all the villagers. I reset it this morning as last night I worked too hard on my first day and collapsed from exhaustion and was charged 50g from the local clinic, lol. I figured I can do better on the first day so I reset.

Categories
Software

Please Explain the Various Versions of Minecraft?

Oct 2nd 2020 Update: Please see my latest post on how to configure Minecraft MineOS for hosting your first server on FreeNAS!

Documentation is terrible; it’s all about getting and installing mineos. It says nothing about using mineos! I had to do a lot of trial and error last night. I compiled sphigot — I had no idea what it did. I had to read up separately what it did. It looks to be a more efficient Minecraft server. I’m game so I set it up on a sever 15.2 running survival mode. I setup another server for Abby running forge so her mods could be installed. I haven’t gotten any mods yet I was just focused on getting it up and running. Lastly. Installed a third server running feed the beast egg hunt. Again limited documentation so it was more trail and error.

Categories
Software

Mineos and FreeNAS

I messed around with mineos today on the freenas server. I got it configured and running for several different Minecraft servers. I had some challenges on 12.2 forge. Also I couldn’t get ssl working.