We've gotten a new server to join the pile. It'll need some work, mostly just drives and ram, but once that big guy is set up and running, I can ditch the other two completely. To do that I'll need to put in about 500 bucks worth of work, again, just parts. It's got 32gb of RAM, which is a good start, but I'll need to get it close to 90gb to be useful. On top of that until I can move my storage over to it, I can't really use it for anything as it'd be dumb to run both giant power hungry servers all the time for the one to be doing nothing. I mean i guess i could give it all the VMs that dont need the massive storage on the other one, cut it down to one PSU, and have the new one on one PSU as well. I dont know, I've got some ideas. It'll take some time but we'll get there and I'll ditch the giant old machine (or stick it on a shelf instead im sure)

 This time of year is probably my favourite and my least favourite. Getting people gifts that I think they'll like and giving them those presents is lovely, and i really wish i could do more every year, but i never can. And therein lies the dichotomy. I love to give people stuff, and I love to do things for people, but I never have the money I need to be able to do it. 

 Presents this year are going to be sparse, but we warned everyone, including the kids. They are both grown now and I can't justify spending what I used to on them any more, if only because i can't do it. I just cant. money is so dumb, and there is never enough of it. Even if i started buying things six months ago I'd still be fucked on how many things I'd rather get for everyone. As of now it'll be fairly simple, one or two small things per person. I'm focusing on cookies this year i think. those i can make and give to people and not feel guilty like i'm giving them a cop-out gift or something. 

 I love the parties and the getting together and hanging out on christmas though. So much. It helps that every year I take off the week of christmas, and sometimes that actually lines up with new years (though not this year) so i end up getting them both off and with days to spare too since the actual holidays dont count against that. This year it didnt work out that way, but I'm happy since I didnt think I'd get to do it this year. Two coworkers are also off that week and generally the rule is no more than two off at a time, but we've got a new guy this year and my boss was trying to help me figure out where to use my remaining days, and I had exactly enough for christmas week. I'm very much looking forward to it. 

 Things around the house may actually be getting done and worked on, which is lovely. the cars are both happy for the time being, although i definitely need to get my oil changed. 

  I miss streaming and my friends. Life has it's way of getting you to places you didnt think youd be. Right now the thing ive been working on the most is tryign to get my head in order. There are too many requirements and too many responsibilities for me to keep track of most days, lists are the only way I can get anything done, and that's been working fairly well. Being the only working adult in the house makes things stickier. Hopefully in the coming year that changes, like really really hopefully soon. We aren't drowning yet. 

 Work has been work, nothing's really changed there. Mostly i try to pick up less stuff so I'm not on fire all of the time, and rely on the other people I work with to do their fair share. Mostly that works out but sometimes i sit here and wonder what tf everyone else is doing as i process the ticket queue one right after the other. Right now thats actually why i'm writing here, there are two sitting here that have been sitting here for a little bit, both fairly easy and I could have them done quickly, but then no one else gets the chance to learn something from those tickets. What does fair even mean anyway. Getting through the day is more than enough for me sometimes, and even then i start to feel like i'm not doing enough. No one has said i dont do enough, in fact most people i work with tell me i do too much but that just never feels like it's true. I feel lazy, like i dont try hard enough or something. 

 There is no goal to these rambling posts by the way. this is just what is going on in my head most of the time and it sometimes is nice to get it out of my head and onto something. We'll try again in a week or two. 

 

 

 Tuesday this time. Eventually we'll settle into some kind of cycle, but honestly lets be real, probably not. 

 The last two weeks have been alright. We've been getting out on the weekends quite often and having a good time with that, but definitely need to slow down or at least stop spending so much on crap (mostly fun food things we find while out driving).  Been mostly working on fixing things as they break lately. 

 The driver's side seat back in my son's car decided to just die on him and lay flat and not come back, so we had to spend a few days going to junk yards and finding the right replacement. We did eventually and it was mostly affordable and not too terribly far away. We got the old one out, put the new one in, everything's happy. 

 Moved some stuff around with the servers too since the last time we updated here. We've got two servers, one is a Dell T610 actual server machine, the other is a beefy desktop I used as a domain controller before the big one showed up. For a long time that one basically just hosted files because the big one did everything else. Well I wanted to get all my file hosting over to the big one too, so we worked on getting hard drives. 

 As of now it's got 6 3tb SAS drives installed, in a RAID 5 for about 15TB of space to work with.  That was more than enough space to spend three days copying the data over tot he new location, updating the shares, pointing Plex at the right thing, and getting the torrents all sorted back out again. I did install a 10gbe NIC into the desktop server, but the card for the big one doesnt fit so we are ordering a new one of those and trying it int he PCIe port. The last time I installed a NIC to the PCIe ports on this machine it gave me an error that performance was degraded due to too much power being used. apparently those PCIe ports are limited to 25w. I tried moving the RAID card to the RAID PCIe port, but that port is broken and doesn't recognize the SAS cable in port A, even though it works fine in the other ports. I did try cleaning it, but that didnt make a difference. So right now I'm sitting on the idea of replacing the motherboard, since it's only like 50 bucks and might fix the issue. 

 I've been mostly avoiding people. I dont know why, i just havent been in the mood to do anything with people lately. I did get on and play some peak with voods and the dudes on saturday after the oldschool guys and i played some stuff. The new game we started playing was pretty entertaining, but who knows if we stick with it. 

 Been missing jamming out with the records. Its fun to do alone but sometimes it's nice to have people around for it. Mrs Potato and I did that the first weekend i didnt stream and it was really nice but we havent made it down here together to do that again since. There was a moment this weekend when I thought about maybe doing a little bit of a party/jam thing for an hour or so, but never did.  I dont know why. I think it was the game that was one (baseball) and people's birthdays and i just didnt wanna add anything to the mix, even if it was brief. 

 Well I just got rear ended driving home form the office, but someone that is definitely half my age and not paying attention. Made a report, but in my state we have "no fault" insurance, which means you pay for your own shit. So thats worthless. Awesome.