It's aliiiive

What happens when one has a Friday off, a partner stuck at work all day and dreary nasty weather outside? If you were me, you'd blast music all over the house and tinker with crazy computers. I promised myself not to build any more 'god boxes', and I did. I made a tidy little server with low power components and lots of connectivity for future use, and a pair of tiny yet capable PC with energy efficient processors and integrated graphics and all that. But I just could not help myself. I can no longer stop building crazy computers (or most anything for that matter in fact) any more than Mormons can stop baptizing the dead in their faith. Even if you tell them to quit it. I pulled out the megasuperultraserver that had gotten set aside while trying to get ready for a party that never happened and I built another drive array in it. All the hardware seems to be working beautifully, now I gotta spend some time with all sorts of software to get the thing running like I want it to be. So far, five arrays are up and running, using a mere seventeen drives. I have one more to go, this will put the total at 21. Yes, I am mad, mad I tell you.

This is what it looks like at this point:



Yeah, I know, it's Vista. Shaddap. At least it's 64 bit. It will eventually get a proper server OS (most likely MS Server 03 or 08, and I will experiment with Home Server since I have it). The second RAID 1 set is there for another OS, and I can select which to boot from.

When this is finally put into use, it will be a repository for everything digital I have, as well as Jeff. It will be a full-on media and file server and a place for automatic and redundant backups, something that I got burned a few times for being lazy with. And it all sits in a gorgeous black monolith that will sadly be kept hidden in the basement and accessed remotely. with eight Xeon processor cores, it should be able to do everything I want of it.

No more god boxes for a while after this one, that's for sure.

Another proposition

I could not take part in the Prop 8 protest in Baltimore today. I had a prior commitment to finishing up electrical rough-ins and some carpentry issues on a friend's house since he was getting all the drywall hung this afternoon. Add to that the fact that Jeff had to hang close to home due to potential work issues and being completely exhausted from the long week of stress and lots of extra hours and it just was not doable. I know, I know, bad gays, no marriage for us.

At least all the drywall is up. And the guys doing it? Well, they are from the "there's nothing that cant be fixed with spackling" school. Big gaps, crooked seams, lots of joints, holes around electrical boxes bigger than the eventual device covers, etc. *shudder* I am of the belief that the joints should be nice and tight, minimal in number and cutouts should be as close as possible. In other words, things should fit and look very good before taping and mudding that you could paint the walls as they are and not be offended by the look. In any case, my involvement is done until the dust literally settles and I mount all the devices and power everything up.

Tomorrow, Jeff has to, you guessed it, head into work. Weather permitting, I will catch up on outdoor stuff and car/truck maintenance. If not, there's no shortage of domestic stuff to do.

I need a vacation.