The Most’est of the Post’est

Brought home my new pedals yesterday but have had no time to play. Also received my 360 UFO IP camera for the basement, the bastards didn’t send a power supply so I had to send it back. Hopefully, I can get another on special. Last night, went to the gym but had to kind of cut it short to get back home to help Vikash. Got to do my 30-30 and push some weights around and do basic stretching. As it turned out, Vikash didn’t need any help but still felt guilty not logging on to lend moral CNC support. He didn’t complete builds and maintenance until 2:30am. That’s frickin’ brutal. On a related but separate note, I just made the cutoff at Costco for the gas pumps. Hopefully our bikes will be ready tomorrow.

-Rat

So, yesterday I busted out the M5 Synth Pedal and was having some fun. Very cool. I have no idea what pedals I would want to purchase, but I think this one with a Cry Baby will do nicely. I still have the Octavix coming with the Cry Baby, but I think I will find out that the Octavix is probably duplication since the M5 does so much. But I need to find out. I think I still need something like a tube screamer or Plexi – something that does a lot of signal overdrive. I will admit, it’s fun farting around. Was doing some Nirvana rifts and with the pedal, it sounds like Cobain. Fun. I wanted to set up the Apple TV today but my CAT 6 cables are about 15ft to short so I need an F-F Ethernet connector. Ordered it from Amazon. Should be here Tuesday – ha. On a different note, Vikash and I took our bikes in to get them tuned up, flats fixed and checked out at Ricks. They had a coupon so I saved 40$ – nice. Vikash got his for free since it was a Trek and never looked at from a checkup perspective. Lucky guy. We can pick them up on Wednesday. The wife ordered a new fridge, should be here on Thursday. The other one was way to big for the space. This one is counter depth and is more expensive to the tune of about $500.

-Rat

Anyway, got my M5 synth pedal delivered today, can’t wait to bust it out. Last night, I didn’t get to bed at a decent hour 🙁 11:30pm. Ugh, a rough morning and was falling asleep at my desk at 3pm. I hate these crappy builds because they impinge on my social life and free time – every other week: less sleep. I’ll be glad when this is over and we are live. Yes, while it pays the bills, id rather be doing something else with my free time, say guitar or painting. Ha, DV done. Starting PY. Taking my bike in tomorrow morning to Rick’s Bike Shop in Palos Hills. I am going to have him put my new inner tubes on and look at the tires to see if there is any reason my tires can’t stay pumped. Just got an email and luckily, our data refresh has been cancelled this weekend due to concerns with overwriting business configuration. Thankfully, tonight should be an early night, everything is going smooth. I’ll post some new header pictures, artsy-fartsy pictures of my guitar, pedal, and bike.

-Rat

So, yesterday I decided I wanted to learn how to read music. I ran across my old music books from my old guitar teacher, Joel – that’s another story. I started on the high “E” string and learned some really basic EFG stuff, then moved to the “B” string where I’m finding it difficult to mix in the BCD stuff. Yea, its only my first day but hey, I have expectations that I can warp my mind enough to learn this stuff. So I busted out the Washburn acoustic to fart around with. I just killed 45min no problem. Now I have to do my daily code builds. I hope I can get through this crap so I can go to bed at a decent hour tonight. I really want to start getting up at 5am. Want to do some early workouts in the way of stretching, tai chi, and running. Today I was scouring the net and “Reverb” app to get a few pedals. So I ordered a “Line-6, M5 synth pedal”. a “Elecro-harmonix Octavix Octave Fuzz” pedal, and a Dunlop “Cry Baby Mini Wah”. Cant wait to test drive these, it should keep me occupied for weeks. My modeling amp can do quite a few of these natively but not very well, but nothing beats the raw pedal power. Should be fun. As it turns out, my Evil Twin is a pretty good amp. It needs some TLC in the way of new tubes and some pots replaced. Later this year for that – after I get a new soldering iron. I have an old clunker that is the size of an 80’s blow drier and weighs a ton. I need something small and nimble for my projects.

-Rat

Just saying. On a completely unrelated note, the gym has been tough this week. I started doing 30min of elliptical interval training vs. instead of just 3 straight miles on the track. There is a setting called 30-30. It does 5 sets of 30sec interval runs with 30sec interval walks, and a 3min rest (walk) period between sets. It seems like its way harder from a cardio perspective although its much easier on my joints. However, I am finding that its not so gentle on my back. We shall see. On to the basement for some needed guitar practice. I feel like I’m getting a tad better. It’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks. Lets roll JamPlay!

-Rat

This last week has been busy… Valentine’s day, Ash Wednesday, my wife’s birthday, had a weekend away with the extended family, I finally got my attached NAS drive – surface scanned and attached, I carved out an iSCSI cloud volume for ITunes, downloaded all my ITunes, started practicing my guitar in earnest, the Cyber with the new cab is really cool – lots of Strat fun, gained 2 pounds over the weekend – thanks Gibson’s! We bought a new fridge – finally (ABT Electronics is very cool). Hopefully we will cut the proverbial Comcast cable cord soon and go with DirectTVNow, Apple TV’s and a MagicJack for VOIP.

Its wonderful having Vikash at work now. I can actually have a night off or a weekend without work. I was getting burned out and angry. Not a good combination. He is now my CNC partner in crime. On Saturday morning I stopped at the local bike shop for some new inner tubes – a nice shop with nice and helpful people. I may even get a chance to get a new bike for my birthday if I start riding like I want to. I want to do 2000 miles this year on my trusty Schwinn.

-Rat

Just another day in paradise? Not really. Gotta work still. I received my stretching strap yesterday from Amazon. Need to find some exercise pads to put on the floor at home.  No time for much.  Working a ton of hours for work project.

-Rat

So, the surface test was negative. That means I can put the drive back on the USB connector on the router. I reconfigured it for the full partition of 8Tb and NTFS format. I still haven’t done any guitar this week – ugh. No motivation. Working late and sleeping in a bit except for snow blowing and putting out the garbage this morning. I’m also getting my groove back (slowly) on “Fitbrains” site. Still have to drag my speaker cab in, clean downstairs, and get my cyber on.

-Rat

The new 8Tb Seagate drive that I attached to the AC5300 – after being attached is and re-partitioned (thank you – MiniTool) is deciding to have surface and write errors. I am now doing a surface test on the drive which much to my chagrin is supposed to take almost 70hours. So this wont be done for another 3 days. I hope Seagate is as good as Western Digital in honoring their warranties.

Picked up my “as-new” Fender Mustang 4×12 cab the other day – that sucker is HEAVY. Wow, not something I expected. It didn’t come with casters so I have to get 4 of those. Can’t wait to try it out with the Cyber head.

Superbowl Sunday today, a reminder of a couple of years ago when I got some shitty infection from the gym and woke up with “Bell’s-palsey”. Anyway, go Patriot’s! or Go Eagles!

-Rat

So I get my new Asus AC5300 Tri-band router set up, and the broadcast footprint doesn’t seem as large as it should be. Now, it could be my location. But from what everyone says, it should be larger that what it is – I have expectations. I will admit I like the USB 3.0 and 4 gigabit ports. I attached a Thermaltake BlackX external hard drive docking station with a 8Tb Seagate 7200rpm drive. However, I can’t seem to get it partitioned greater than 2Tb, I think I may need to go to Linux to do that, or a buddy was mentioning https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2581408/windows-support-for-hard-disks-that-are-larger-than-2-tb So, I guess there is a way to do it with Windows. On that same track of thought, the other day, I set up my 2 cloud storage devices – one large, one small. The large one is a WD EX4100 with and a RAID 5, 12Tb Volume. So, it no sooner boots then one of the drives get an unrecoverable SMART failure. I have to go to the WD site to find it is out of warranty – missed it by 6 days. Had to order a replacement – doh! The same bud noticed that I can set up VPN on my new router, so after my cloud and disk issues, that is the next hurdle. Too much like work – ugh. Update: I purchased a Fender Mustang 4×12 speaker enclosure and am waiting for it to be delivered to my local Guitar Center. On a related note, I am finding it difficult to find time to practice. There are not enough hours in the day.

-Rat