I have gone from an rsync-based backup system to a borg-based one. I now have a Raspberry Pi-based server that will live on my LAN in another building, and I have a pair of HDDs I'll use locally. I'll plug one in for a week, and then swap to the other, that way I've got backups in cold storage should some uncouth jabronie write a ransomware virus for Linux.

The coolest part is the backup software checks to see if the drive is mounted, if the drive is attached but not mounted, it mounts it, and if it can't do that it fails gracefully. Still doing a bit of polish but so far it's working okay.

I've made tomorrow's meals today, but I've never made Monday's meals Wednesday. I figure doing them all in one shot while I have the energy will make me less sapped of energy later on (or able to spend my remaining energy elsewhere), and look forward to seeing how it goes in the next few days when meals are no longer a cooking endeavor after work or a decision, but just selecting the thing labeled with the right day of the week and following a few instructions I left for myself.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/50842014

When I moved into my home many years ago, there was this lock-box mounted to the water main on the side of the house. I figured it was one of those used by real-estate agents to store the house key for viewings, but months passed and it still remained there. No one from my buyer's agent's office had a clue what this was, and the seller of the house had already moved out-of-state.

Recently, I had some plumbing work done, and that also included replacing the main water valve for the house, allowing this lock box to come free from the plumbing. Now inspecting it up close, and looking up the model online, I realized that it has an alphabet wheel and uses a three-letter combination.

As it happens, Thanksgiving weekend was upon me, and since I was bored, I figured I'd try all the possible combinations. Just 17,576 possible combinations, how bad could it be?

The most immediate problem was that due to being out in the elements, the dial did not turn easily. It would move, but was rather rough. And since the knob is only ~1 cm diameter, this is an incredibly un-ergonomic endeavor. I had to stop after the first 100 tries, due to the finger exhaustion.

Knowing this would be untenable for the long-run, I decided to build my way out of this problem. Since a combo lock involves making rotations that almost go all the way around, I drew inspiration from rotary telephone dials, where one's finger starts with the intended number and then swivels the dial around.

But whereas a rotary telephone dial only needs 10 positions, I needed to fit 26 positions, one for each letter. I decided on each hole being 17 mm to comfortably fit any of my fingers, but that also dictated the overall diameter of the wheel. But that's good, since a larger diameter wheel means more leverage to overcome the rough lock movement. It also happens to be that this wheel has a diameter of 180 mm, which is just enough to fit in the 200 mm bed of my 3d printer.

Using FreeCAD, I designed this wheel so that it fits around the splines of the lockbox dial, which held remarkably well. I had thought I would need Blu Tack or something to keep it together.

Using this wheel, I'm able to "dial" combinations much quicker using one hand, while holding the lockbox with my other hand to press the lever down to test the combination. This should be good.

(note: some parts of this story were altered to not give away identifying details)

I know I’m late to the party, but I’ve finally achieved something quite satisfying: a house with only USB-C cables. Phone, tablet, laptop, headphones, earbuds, power bank, etc. Even my kitchen scale has joined the revolution. No more hunting for the right cable, no more “Wait, does this one fit the headphones or the tablet?” Just one cable to rule them all. The transition period is finally over!

Unnecessary details:
Here are some of the possible scenarios I considered:

1. Always buy new. The annoyance would have started in 2018 with the first iPad with USB-C and finally ended in 2023 with the iPhone 15. That would have been five years of cable chaos. No thanks! Over the years, there would have been gradual steps toward USB-C as more devices switched, and eventually, I would have had only one Lightning cable for my phone. Avoiding that frustration was the goal of this planned cable transition.

2. Always buy used. Stick with the older buds and iPads as long as possible. As soon as the iPhone 15 became reasonably cheap, switch all the devices at once. It’s a lot cheaper than option 1, and it minimizes the frustration period.

In reality, though, the transition period actually started much earlier than that, because I did have a few USB-C electronics long before 2018. For example, my work phone and my proper headphones started using USB-C very early. Fortunately, they didn’t need to be charged frequently, so the cable annoyance was minimal.

Over the years, I’ve also accumulated quite a few USB-C cables, but I never really put them to use. After all, I had only a few devices, and they didn’t even need frequent charging. Nowadays, though, everything comes with the same universal port, which means I can finally start using those old cables that have been sitting in a cable box all these years.

I have heard train conductors make (non-prerecorded, live) announcements before, but it never sounded as clear as what I'm hearing today! I guess the current conductor either has experience with making announcements over PA systems or talking into mics, or the PA system is just better in this train. Wonder which. Either way, it's a pleasure to hear.

Getting hurt is the worst, your safety is first.

—the conductor

I updated the closet under my stairs again today.

It's too small to be terribly useful, and my house is old enough to need frequent repairs.

So the under stairs closet is for tool storage.

Today I added wall hooks to keep my tool bags off the floor.

I'm trying to convince myself this will magically make me turn the corner and keep this closet responsibly organized. I'm failing.

But not having to bend down too far to pick up my tool bag should be nice.

I made what passes in my house for french onion soup (I follow Alton Brown's recipe, replace the apple cider with another can of canned beef consomme) and it produces more than a human should eat in a sitting.

I made my soup fresh yesterday, had me a bowl or two, meanwhile the rest stayed on to simmer, and it reduced some more. The leftovers spent the night in the fridge, and I went to cut myself just a slice of the cheese as a snack, but I decided what the heck and fixed myself a whole bowl of soup, and you know it was better today. I think the extra time to reduce helps it out a lot. Doesn't make the crouton nearly as soggy.

I used my toaster oven to melt the cheese. Took more time than the oven but my oven's broiler can go from underdone to burned in a second, the toaster gave me some room.

Served with the same wine I made the soup out of. I've certainly eaten worse meals.

Leather steering wheel, and I cannot get this residue out. I've only tried leather cleaner / conditioner so far though.

It's 6am. I woke up because my CPAP stopped. It's going to be a long day.

It's a bit cold outside, so I'll have to fire up my little generator if it goes too long. That's a pain in the ass.

TL;DR: I switched the leads inside my Kensington Orbit Fusion to better fit how I use it without needing software solutions.

My everyday mouse is actually a Razer Basilisk corded. Good balance of price, performance, and features (freewheel scroll toggle is a must!). Turn off the 1337 lighting and it's even visually inoffensive.

Sometimes though, my wrist would prefer a better angle for a few days, or I need to do some real mousing on the couch or while traveling. That's when I grab my Kensington Orbit Fusion. I used to have an old-style Orbit with scroll ring, and the ring is by far my preferred scroller on trackballs. Unfortunately, it the older design has no third button, to say nothing of buttons 4 or 5 or adjustable DPI. The Fusion is an obvious "homage" to the Elecoms that have become popular in this niche corner of the market, and while it got some iffy reviews, Kensington's patent on the scroll ring hasn't run out yet, so it is the one that had the features I wanted. I also found that it breaks in pretty decently and really isn't bad at all, though if you are not wedded to the ring and form factor, something else is probably a better choice.

I also realized that if I swapped the left button with "button 4" in software I could use a grip very similar to the OG Orbit design that I liked so much, and with a slightly improved wrist angle as well. However, it was tedious to set it up on every computer and OS I was going to use it on, and for my work PC I didn't even want to try to figure out if I'm allowed to install the Kensington software, which is bloated AF anyway.

So, I decided to simply commit. I looked up how to get into it and saw that its guts are pretty old school, well labeled and easy to service once you locate and get past the stupid tri-wing screws, but they are not particularly tight so careful use of a flathead worked fine. I was ready to do some soldering, but instead I just gently lifted the retaining tabs on the molex connector and flipped the leads for LB and B4. The duty cycle for something like that is probably in the low 2-digits, but for a one-time change that might someday be flipped back if I pass on the trackball, it should be more than fine. The trackball now meets my needs better than before without resorting to annoying software solutions.

I have an ongoing project that involves a lot of shipments from digikey. In an effort to get rid of boxes I decided to get some gridfinity storage up and running.

Related Futurama gif:

35000 power-on hours. SMART still reports it as OK.

Time to figure out how to rebuild a RAID 5 array. The other two drives are probably nearly cooked too, but I have plenty of spares that I got for free.

Kids liked it. Moms liked it. Gave some candy along with it.
Nobody gonna remember the fun sized snickers guy but they will remember the potato house.

It was not designed to be fixed. This required breaking more than one glue joint. But I did it. Amazing how much of my face was packed into all those tiny parts. It had little springs in it. "fun."

Couldn't figure out how to get a specific ticket I wanted digitally, so I bought a physical one feeling I had no other option. I figured out how to buy the ticket I wanted digitally and now I have a digital train ticket. I will no longer need to dig through my purse for a train ticket and hold it in my hand for awhile while trying to do something else on the train, I just flash my phone (already on) at the conductor quickly. I am glad I got this done.

I like target shooting and generally that isn’t dull for me. But this was the indoor range and earlier this year I was introduced to an outdoor range with steel targets. Being inside shooting paper just isn’t the same. Unfortunately the outside place is 1.5 hours away; indoor is literally about 7 minutes.

I just thought 5 5s in a row was neat.

It’s been 10 days. How long until they fix it?

I’d like to thank my back and knees for being there for me when I needed them.

I have not seen the leaf changes because it's so dark going to and coming home from work, but taking a walk in daylight showed me that the green leaves have indeed gone yellow for fall.

This thing is stupid powerful. For once, I didn't go cheap. I wanted something, I dunno, nicer. It's especially good for extracting pet hair. Don't have pets, but I am a hairy bastard, so...

Now it was not on because my tires were low, I have an aftermarket monitor that shows my actual tire pressure. It was on because my spare was stolen out of the bed of my pickup last year, and the light was to let me know one of my TPM were not connected. I picked up a new spare off Craigslist list shortly after mine went missing, but I never got it connected to my trucks monitor, but this morning the light that normally flashes for a minute then goes solid... never came on.

I went to the doctor. He looked down my throat and said it's a little red before giving me ibuprofen. Didn't even take my temperature 😒. But I guess there's not much to do but wait.

You know what I could use right now? A livestream called "lofi beats to be sick to"

The door key at the girlfriend’s house was not interested in entering the lock let alone turning. Went to Home Depot, picked up a small overpriced tube of graphite and lubed them up. Works like a brand new lock now.