Nice Rack! (And other nerdy witticisms)

[Just a quick preface – I began crafting this post in mid-July (oops).  Well, better late than never.]

It’s been a couple months, and boy does life keep me busy.  I much prefer “doing” than “writing about doing”.  Seeing how not writing about anything would result in a web site more boring than it already is, however, I will give it the old college try.

Nice rack!

Since I left you last, the “nerd zone” (i.e. the less cluttered side of the basement) has been rearranged and deep cleaned.  The main file server is now off the floor and sitting on top of a brand new cabinet, right beside a new 12U (10U usable) network rack.  All of the gear that was sitting precariously in a nearly-unreachable-corner of my basement has now been moved to the rack.  This includes a new Google Nest Wifi Pro router provided to me by my ISP, since my existing 10-year-old router was deemed out of support.  It also includes my 16-port switch, my VoIP hub, and 3 brand new mini systems I procured recently from eBay.  These boxes came with Winblow$ 11 on them but it was not there for long.  They are now running Ubuntu Linux and I will be utilizing them to learn some Kubernetes clustering and whatnot.  I will be starting that learning process as soon as this week [note: aforementioned K8S learning process still not started (oops #2)].

The new “hotness” (see what I did there?)

Also since I left you last, my air conditioner died.  We went just short of a week without conditioned air and, with temps hitting the high 80’s/low 90’s, it was an interesting time.  Thankfully, our new system has been humming along for a week now [Update: now nearly 2 months] and we are quite relieved.  As an added bonus, I can now manipulate my HVAC settings from anywhere I have an internet connection and that has already come in quite handy.

This adventure with box fans and open windows happened over the July 4th holiday, and for the 2nd year in a row we bought no fireworks.  Last year we ended up at the Kansas City Royals game on the 4th and they were extra generous with their fireworks extravaganza.  This year, after firing up our driveway fire pit and cooking up a very respectable assortment of 4th of July vittles, we opted to shoot off a handful of surplus fireworks from previous years and then retired to our lawn (driveway) chairs to enjoy the goings-on throughout the neighborhood.  A wonderful holiday and holiday weekend was had by all.

[Fast forward to September the 1st]

They got the band back together!

In non-nerd news, my son and I just yesterday (August 31st) returned from a short road trip to Chicago, where we were unfathomably blessed to attend the Oasis Live ’25 tour.  This was the first time the boys had played the US since 2008!  The experience was absolutely amazing and, since I’m really having a time attempting to properly describe it but not able to find the appropriate words, I will leave it at that.

Souvenirs from the trip

We spent the next two days in Chicago; Friday was a recovery, of sorts – we didn’t get out of our respective beds til nearly 11 a.m.  We hit up the hot/cold bar (also known as the buffet) at the local Whole Foods Market for brunch, and then traveled across the street to Woodfield Mall to get some steps in.  Afterwards, we invested some time hitting up some of the local liquor stores looking for that “elusive bottle” and ended up coming away with three bottles.  We have decided that we are finally finished acquiring bottles for our collection at this point.  You heard it here first.

Afterwards, we met up with the kids’ “PaPa” Randy and his wife Kim for dinner at a delightful Mexican place and then we retreated back to their place for an evening of Euchre and small sips of the Town Branch and Stagg Jr (we left the Weller uncracked since it is a screw top bottle and we’ve had issues with those in the past that we did not want to have while traveling).

The brewery – we first showed up at the closed location (oops)

Saturday found us road tripping even further away from home base, to the New Glarus Brewing Company in (wait for it) New Glarus, Wisconsin.  My son became aware of this brewery through his girlfriend and her family, as they apparently are big fans.  And, since you apparently cannot find their products outside the state of Wisconsin, we had to go check it out.  We ended up trying 6 of the 7 brews they had on tap on that particular day, then we picked up a couple cases of their Spotted Cow to take home.  One of them went to the aforementioned son’s girlfriend’s family and the other will soon be chilling in our secondary refrigerator.

Once we got back to Chicago, we headed back to Randy and Kim’s place for dinner and more cards, which went to about 9:30 or 10:00 p.m., at which time we went back to the hotel for the night, as we had an early day ahead of us for the trip home.  We were on the road before 7 a.m. (!!) on Sunday, and rolled into the driveway at around 2:30 p.m.  All in all an awesome, albeit short, trip!

In nerdy news, I’ve got a few irons in the fire.  The first of which is I have been pricing out network gear upgrades, consisting of a router/firewall/controller, switch and Wireless AP from Ubiquiti.  These solutions, as you might imagine, are not cheap.  My options have ranged from $1,200 to $1,800 or so if I remember correctly.  Naturally, I’m taking my time and trying to control my breathing.  We will see how it goes as I continue to navigate this possible route.

It’s baaaaaack….

I’ve also recently pulled the FreeBSD box I bought on eBay out of storage and am getting ready to mess around with it again.  If memory serves, it currently has a version of pfSense installed on it, but the new plan is to wipe it and install OPNsense on it and then test it as a replacement for the aforementioned Google Nest Wifi Pro router (albeit without Wifi capability).  If I go the previously mentioned Ubiquiti route, this FreeBSD box will not be needed for firewall purposes so, in that event, it may end up becoming a media PC or something else altogether.  Obviously, that bridge has yet to be approached, let alone crossed, but we will get there at some point.  At the moment, I’m just curious to see if moving off Google’s gear is as simple as unplugging it and plugging in a replacement or if it will require me to collaborate with Google to get it done.  Testing forthcoming.

Okay, that’s pretty much it for now.  Hoping that the next update won’t be so far out but, as I noted early on, I’d much rather be “doing” than “writing about doing” so we shall have to see how it goes.

Thanks for stopping by!