Posting to the blog has slowed down for a couple of reasons. It all started when I tried to put together a big file server that would be separate and lower power than the XP game box. This proved difficult for a variety of reasons and then the XP box died. Weeks and weeks have gone by without a good solution. Some long standing drives have also taken this moment to bow out. One of them seems to be my music and photos drive. Almost all my music is now on someone else’s computer. The Mac has a minimum. And years of photos; taken and scanned; are lost. Thank God I burned those Christmas DVDs of Grandma’s photos. There may be copies on the other drives. I can’t see all 12 for some reason. 3 died and 3 are unknown.
Last weekend my ass was all over a backup solution. I have the beginnings of a post about that. It will be very long, involving every possible <$2000 type of solution. It seems to come down to being a RAID solution. There are many, many, many ways to do this. I revel in these types problems, but this is tougher than normal and finding the right solution is taking a whole lot of time.
In the mean time, there are two dead computers on my desk and ALL the possible parts are strung out. Right after I got through cleaning and organizing. The RAID solution is minimum $500 and I don’t want to spend on computers. I got through; a Mac Mini and 28″ monitor are enough. But the loss of all music and picks, much less DVD scans is hard to take. When the computers come back on line the XP game box will have a RAID and a super RAID will keep this from ever happening again.
I need to keep moving on something and the computers aren’t. That whole room isn’t even twitching. So, I decided to finish painting the hallway after a 6 month pause. This weekend I got four doorways done and last night I taped, sanded, and put down 3 coats of primer on the baseboard. I can’t wait to go home and knock out the rest tonight. That’s half the hallway. The front door area is getting done separately. Those door frames take a depressingly long time to do.
It helps to cut the job up. Then I focus on every little detail of that piece. I’m really good about detail. That’s something I wanted to work on when I got this job. Now, if I can’t do it right I walk away. When I’m excited again, I’ll rake it over the coals till it’s exactly, precisely done.
Another area of interest is the wash room. It connects the house and the garage and is the first and last room I see every day. It has a version 2.0 of the texture job that the hallway had. I want to sand it too, not as much though. And repaint it to match the hallway. The room is tiny, but the W/D have to move, the ceiling is high, and other issues. Painting will be the easy part.
When I’m not on the computer I’m not posting.
This might go on for a little while. Many parts of the house were outright offensive when I moved in. The master bedroom, hallway, and guest bathroom were the worst. Two out of three are done.
The grey guest bathroom is a lot of work. Almost total demolition, down to the studs. Adding outlets, if reasonable, to both bathrooms. Retiling, replumb the fixtures, the sink, and perhaps retile the floor. If I could move a wall shared with a master closet or add outlets to the closets, blah, blah, … You get the idea.