Summer in the Sun

Looks like I’ve fallen a bit behind in my updates. The tl;dr of it is that June was all about travel, and July wasn’t. I traveled to London for a few work meetings from July 4-8, and then literally a few days later, Jen and I went to Florida from the 12th to the 18th. Then we went to her parents’ to celebrate Jim’s birthday. At that point, it felt like we’d be in some kind of vehicle until the end of time.

Oh Woe ISP

Given all of my work on my basement project server, it occurred to me that I would eventually need to override my router’s DNS settings if I wanted general availability through the house. I can modify the DNS settings of my desktop or laptop, but that doesn’t really scale to every cellphone, TV, media device, or other janky tech strewn around our domicile. There’s just one problem: ISP-supplied equipment does not allow that.

Project R730 Part 2

Following up on Project R730 - Part 1, it’s time to expand the tale. It took a while, but the few remaining parts I still needed to finish the R730 finally arrived. I installed, upgraded, or otherwise swapped several components, and I got the server up and running with TrueNAS SCALE. It wasn’t just a job, it was (and still is, really) an adventure! Tripwires The first complication I encountered was in regard to the m.

Ursula the Unlikely

Since her adoption, Ursula has spent two weeks with free reign around the house, yet she primarily constrains herself to my office. Perched atop the cat tree, she surveys and judges, and growls should any other feline dare to darken her domain. Or at least that’s how I imagine her view of the world. Because Ursula has also finally attended her official veterinary checkup, and the findings are a bit surprising.

Project R730 - Part 1

Warning: this post contains copious amounts of impenetrable technobabble; read at your own risk. It’s been a while since I’ve started a project, so of course that means it’s time. As it stands, my r720 is getting a bit long in the tooth and R730s are now the same price I paid for that system. So to Lab Gopher I went in search of a great deal. For anyone who is looking for a server, that is seriously the best thing I’ve found for sorting through all the eBay cruft.