I’m excited that it’s the second day of spring. I like the time change! I’m going to have to bring the bike in to Richards this weekend with the new wheels, tubes, tires, and have everything tuned up.
I finally have ripping working on the M50, the procedures are understood, and the external drive is set up. It seems so slow… I’m used to speed ripping, and this is single speed. 20min per disk. However, it’s better than nothing. I don’t think the Vault 2i is any better. The nice thing is that it’s using a 8Tb HDD. The problem will be when I am approaching 6Tb. This is going to take a while. I may have to take it off and back it up soon, since I am starting to get into “I wouldn’t want to lose this…” territory.
Gotta love a good “Three Stooges” quote. Well, I finally got the M50 to both have an external device and rip a CD. I just need to figure out a bunch of odds and ends now from a procedure perspective. I feel like dancing. The exFAT format worked in lieu of the FAT32 format. They are supposed to be similar, but I wasn’t confident. It’s not ideally what I would want, but at least I now have external storage. I am still going to try and work out how to get my external storage addressable via the network. Currently, it can only be seen via the M50. I now have to get my Carver and speaker fixed. Hopefully, it won’t cost too much.
If it’s not one thing, it’s another. I was running out of outlets, so I just left a couple of components on instead of turning them off – this is because, once upon a time I decided that switched plugs were the way to go. The long and the short of it is – I am short on non-switched outlets. Have to fix that. So, I think my amp had some thermal issues, since I cranked up the MTBF numbers. I don’t see anything fried. But one of the sides of the amp seems like its dying. I pulled the amp out to let it cool off. Hopefully it will return to operation. If not, I’ll have to troubleshoot it.
I think I am going to try a couple of different tactics on the storage side. I investigated FAT32 and found that it’s a “USB” format and really has a 32GB file size limitation, but on the partition size, a 3TB upper limit. I am going to look at my buddies NAS and see how it’s set up and mimic that setup. Also, I’m going to try and use a single drive, formatted to FAT32 and hook it directly to the M50 to see what it does.
Nothing works like it’s supposed to. I was supposed to be able to rip a CD from my NAD M50 streamer to my NAS drive which I configured last week. First of all, my iTunes server that was installed, works like advertised. I never knew that there was such a thing – nice. The Twonky media server looks into the iTunes and indexes it in Twonky as a DLNA compatible file. Both work. What I still have to figure out is how to keep iTunes from changing it’s .ini directory hierarchy on the C drive on the laptop, or my backup device on a separate drive. I need it to cement it to the NAS drive. Also, I need to figure out how to rip CD’s to my NAS attached to the M50. One thing at a time 🙂
So, I got the new NAS drive and set it up on the network yesterday. I added Twonky and iTunes server. Twonky is a DLNA-compliant media server that runs on the Western Digital platform. It will, if directed also reach into iTunes and index all your iTunes stuff and allows you to play music and whatever on your DLNA receiver. In my case, on my Pioneer Elite SC-72 Receiver (glorified pre-amp). I can actually send music there and it automatically plays. I can also push it to my NAD M-50 streamer. It works “just like downtown”. Amazing. I am hoping that I can figure out how to rip CD’s to the NAD and consequently to the NAS drive. That’s my next hurdle. iTunes server is supposed to allow you to share or play your iTunes content on other devices without the need for a MAC. We shall see…
So, I grabbed the NAD M50 streamer from my buddy for a song (bad pun) and am trying to get it connected to my network. I got it connected and it seems to be working well, except that I cant see any way of ripping CDs since it only seems to play them. In the meantime, I think my old “MyCloud” NAS died. I was planning on using it on the M50 as an external storage device. Now I have to troubleshoot it and see if it’s worth saving, or just buy another replacement NAS drive. Everything’s a flipping project.
Update: So, I get home from work Friday night only to find my small NAS drive dead – I had a sneaking suspicion. I saw that it has a USB 3.0 male plug so I went on Amazon, just for kicks and ordered a male-male USB 3.0 cable. Got it today (Saturday) and got my NAS drive working. My concern is for how long? I am currently copying all of the files off onto a backup drive and ordered a new NAS.
I did get a painter’s diary though from “Jerry’s Art Supplies” for my watercolor paints. I also got some extra paints that I was running out of – cerulean blue, cadmium red, and alizarin crimson. I still need to order burnt umber. I’m fixing 3 of my last 4 pictures. Little changes – fixing things that bugged me. I’m also working on a picture from about 2 years ago that I never finished. As a matter of fact, it was only about 40% done with it. I’m interested to see how it finishes. Looking at it with my current eye, I think I was very timid with my tones and colors when I walked away from it.
WordPress, ISP’s (Internet Service Providers), ICANN, 3rd Party software providers. Damn. Why can’t we all just get along. It’s tough running a simple blog. WordPress upgrades its code, PHP is out of date, update PHP and the site breaks, the new WordPress doesn’t play well with the 3rd party apps that are supposed to support it. Your domain is expiring, if you want to own the domain from a technical standpoint, you need to register with ICANN, but the ISP who supports your site, for some reason can’t send emails to ICANN with your domain emails. Do that and your information can’t be private, don’t do that and you get all kinds of spam calls (calls from numbers that don’t really exist). Lie about it and ICANN finds out and your domain is shut down. That’s the dark side of ICANN. All this to keep things “free”. Get the government involved and nothing works right because business’ keep it that way, get business involved and nothing works in your favor (meaning you’ll have to pay for everything and if they can’t monetize it, they won’t develop it – so you’re stuck with what they give you until someone figures out a way around it. And then there are the hackers who exploit your stuff just because they want to experiment on stuff that is meaningless.
Ugh, to have a blog. How do all these people stay fat, dumb, and happy? I don’t get it. Maybe because they stick to monetized sites with tons of crappy ads that charge little to nothing. I dunno. Fuck em’.
So, I’ve wanted to do some creative stuff with my blog and websites and have been stymied by things in WordPress that don’t integrate well together. It’s really starting to piss me off. Almost as much as getting my site hacked by people that have nothing better to do. I’ve had this plugin that is supposed to help migrate a site by doing an export. Sounds simple in theory, but it’s been only going so far and then dying. I’ve also wanted to use Elementor and for some reason, it also crashes my site. So the other day, I got a brainstorm and decided to do a parallel site that I really don’t care about, just to experiment. I’m using Bluehost as a provider and domain ratpuke7.net as another site – kind of a developmental site. We shall see…
Ah, it’s “Fat Tuesday” better known as “Paczki Day” in my Polish household. I almost ran into Ana Balaval this morning from “Channel 9” at the Orland Bakery. She was parked in the car beside me waiting for her segment time. I missed it by about 10min, but I had to get to work. Speaking of work, this celebrates my March First tie to all those “divine” friends I had who were “Xqsite”. You know who you are. What is it, 20 years or so?
Seems to be getting nicer outside and I’m tempted to bust out the hybrid. A much better prospect than riding in the basement. Tomorrow is a high of 54F at 4:00pm.
This is my first post of the new year and I have art class tonight (watercolor with John). Maybe I can enlist him in a leisurely ride tomorrow afternoon.
This Gutenberg editor is what I have been using all along or at least for the past year. Doesn’t seem like much of a change for WordPress. Ill have to dig into my WordPress classes to review the differences. Truth to tell, I don’t remember.
For the first time in over a year, I finally feel like I’m catching up at work. Just in time for audit to knock me down a peg or two. Its been a long, strange, trip. 2 Data Center moves, splitting the AS400 up, upgrading JDE – wow.
Lets see… updates… It’s been a while… I got the new Whoop 4.0 which adds a couple of extra metrics to the 3.0 group – skin temperature and blood oxygen level, which reminds me… when I needed the metrics most, I didn’t have them. I got a cold on Monday evening, upgraded my Whoop. Felt like total crap on Tuesday thru Thursday, feel 10 times better today. But, I wanted to check my metrics to see if I had possibly contracted COVID. Don’t think so. I was worried for my wife who as you may or may not know, has a suppressed immune system. It’s Friday and I have no idea where the week went. I felt like the lights were on, but no one was home from a work perspective. I did work from home most of this week and got quite a bit done, but yesterday… I don’t recall most of yesterday – I do know I was listening to music and doing busywork.
Vikash will be heading back home on December 31, which will put quite a bit of pressure on me for most of January. I’ll have to do his stuff, plus my stuff. On the flip side, I am taking the last 2 weeks of this year off – stay-cation. Yay! Ryan is coming home on approximately the 20th. He’s scheduled to stay here. I’m excited to see him and get updates. I really haven’t spoke with him for what seems like forever.
The 4th of December was my last official bike ride of the year (yep, mother nature was kind that Saturday) and rode our typical path – but in the reverse direction. It was like a new path. I knew exactly were we were but the scenery was different! It was kind of weird – I admit. It’s only 13mi but for a weekend warrior, it was enough. I have too get a bike stand so I can change the wheels.
Watercolor class has been fun and interesting. I have done a couple of paintings lately. I’ve been working on smaller paper (8.5″ x 11″), so while color control is difficult, owing to the smaller path on the paper, the paintings are accomplished more quickly.
