Questions answered pt. 1

bigreddee asked:

You've written a lot about being a "tinkerer" and someone who is fairly adept at working on a lot of different things. What is your favorite kind of project to take on?

That's actually a toughie. I guess my favorites are ones that make life a little bit (or a lot) more enjoyable, or find everyday use, or ones that I feel a lot of satisfaction in. It could be something as simple as putting up a new light fixture, or something as involved as the deck or even building the house itself. I like stuff that gets me thinking and designing, and really putting in some effort.

Note that these projects/tinkering/tasks are not just things I do for myself, but for others too. Putting aside things like car repairs and modifications I do for others, I have been involved with construction and renovation on friends' homes, for example. Seeing the extra room, garage or deck or redone interior or exterior and seeing how much they enjoy it gives me a big feeling of accomplishment. Being able to do these things allows me a sense of pride, and more importantly a big feeling of independence. A coworker was recently lamenting the need for a new water heater, to the tune of something like 1300 dollars. This was for the heater itself, the installation, and some minor upgrade of some such to the plumbing. This is something I could have done myself (and, ironically, something I should do soon since my own water heater is now 20 years old) in a few hours time. This would also be something I would do for myself at about a third of the cost, with guaranteed better workmanship and even a higher quality heater. The savings alone is substantial, and contributes to financial well-being, and, of course, more fun projects and acquisitions of tools and gear. :D

There are also those countless other little (and not-so-little) things I do just because I enjoy doing them. My hobbies are outrageous in number it seems. I've always been the sort to explore and tinker, build and learn. So it is with the electronics and computers, crazy car mods, wood/metalworking and whatnot. I've said that if ever I am somehow not able to do all these things, then my life is severely diminished. I can't just sit around watching television. If I am laid up with some sort of injury, I get stir crazy and absolutely have to do something. Maybe it's a form of OCD, but it's a disorder that has served me well for as long as I could remember.

Questions answered pt. 2

ptownnyc asked the following:

But seriously - just what exactly are you building in your basement? You are constantly adding more servers, etc. - what's it all for?

This falls sort of in line with the previous answer posting I guess. It often sounds like a lot, and I guess to some it is, but there are in reality only two servers now and there was a big upgrade to the network that went in about the same time, this was all done in an effort to bring all that stuff into this century and make it usable for many years to come.

Some background info I guess will help here. My basement is actually set up in two sections. There is the big, unfinished part under the main house that has everything from my woodworking tools and workshop, the laundry area, a bit of a rumpus room setup, and the entire basement area itself that is piled up with boxes, lumber, old computers and electronic junk, furniture and accumulated cruft. The junk I am slowly dealing with, and as the weather gets nicer I am taking lots of it to the dump as well as to charity outfits. The smaller section of the basement exists under the sunroom, which originally was going to simply be a filled-in foundation until I figured it would actually be more effective to make an opening in the basement wall separating the two areas and make some use of the space. Since the floor of the sunroom drops a foot from the level of the house, the basement under the sunroom has a low ceiling. This 14x24ft area originally started out as a big closet space. The problem arose when my woodworking shop created so much dust it was impractical to have my electronics setup anywhere near it. I set up another workbench and moved all my electronics into a portion of the space under the sunroom. It was much cleaner there. I eventually finished off that third of the space to make it a sort of 'clean room' and to make it more comfortable in the winter as well (since the sunroom and upstairs woodstove do most if the work heating the upstairs, it gets cold in that damn basement when the heater is not running). This became known as The Lab Of Mayhem, a counterpart to the similarly named garage (and the name of my blog).

In the last couple years I've been putting forth a concerted effort in modernizing things around the house, including the home theater setup, the LAN, appliances, lighting, etc. Since a lot of this involved running lots of various cabling around, a convergence of seemingly unrelated projects started to happen. I wanted to finally have a network setup at home that was robust enough to handle high definition video, since I am soon buying a new big-screen TV for the home theater, I also added to the multi-room sound/music system at the same time, that prompted the running of TV cabling to finally bring the satellite programming into the studio and since the area where all the LAN and RF cabling was being overhauled, it was time to finally connect a phone line in the same wall plate, because I was putting the fax/printer in the hallway closet along with the color laser and running LAN cabling there as well the phone line was also added there, since the cabling was finally done in the studio I could now finish off the lights in the woodshop that would have blocked easy cable routing but now the upgraded lighting was too much for the original circuit it was on so I added two more branches and...

The paragraph above demonstrates also how my project planning goes, which usually means lots of balls in the air at one time. To make things a bit clearer, the home network is ready for just about anything I could ever throw at it, as well as being totally remote accessible. A hodgepodge of ancient computers and hubs and switches is now a tidy pair of servers, a single big managed switch and standardized cabling all at gigabit speeds. Much of the wiring for the home theater is all in place, all that is needed now is the toys. The workshop lighting is finally all installed after at least a decade, the area is nice and bright and I can work towards cleaning up and finishing off some areas of the basement. The unfinished section of the sunroom basement will become an office once all the crud is out and the drywall is up. The roof of the house and garage gets replaced this year (one of the few things I will not do myself simply because of time constraints). All this complicated-sounding work is an effort to finally simplify a lot of things here at the old homestead, so Jeff and I will be able to entertain guests and have some more free time. This is infrastructure improvements for day-to-day life. It's starting to pay off.

Questions answered pt. 3

The pedigreed kymutt says:

Just out of curiousity, what would you say is your greatest strength, and what is your worst flaw?

I think my greatest strength is my analytical nature. Confronted with a problem, I am usually able to think through a solution even when the pressure is on. Sometimes the pressure will have an enhancing effect. I guess coming in close seconds are my compassion and empathy.

Oddly enough, my worse attribute is probably my self confidence. You'd think the former would negate the latter, but I have a nasty habit of second-guessing myself at times. This has a spiraling effect. I tend to not be satisfied with an end result that would be perfectly acceptable to 99% of other folks. My low self-confidence will also make me a wallflower in social situations and put me on the losing end of bargaining situations. I need to trust my gut instincts more often and not to give a fuck what so many people might think.