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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 17th, 2023

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  • One of my most “this isn’t what it looks like” moments? Picture this: it’s dark, I’m in the campus parking lot, and I’m standing next to my truck with a crowbar, trying to break off a locking gas cap. Earlier that day, I’d discovered the lock was stuck and just spun uselessly when I tried to get gas.

    For context, I’d bought the locking cap because of a recent string of gas thefts on campus (including from my own truck), so yeah—ironic. Just as I’m mid-pry, campus security pulled up. It looked exactly as bad as you’d imagine. They actually didn’t give me any trouble at all. They asked what I was doing and then went on their way. I suspect it was because I didn’t have any type of fuel container or siphoning gear, I also hadn’t tried to hide what I was doing.

    So a little anticlimactic as these types of stories go, but I was relieved when they drove off and the mangled gas cap finally popped off.


  • I use Emby and catalog my music using MusicBrainz Picard. Before Emby I used Ampache but I want to serve up as much of my media through the same interface as possible. Adding all the proper metadata and sorting the music can be time consuming, but it makes all the difference in serving up the music properly. Music is much more varied than Movies or even TV so it is a bit more difficult to get right and there are sooo many artists. MusicBrainz Picard makes it pretty easy though. I will be checking out Beets.io after reading this thread to see if it can help any more with organizing my library.


  • I have two IoTaWatts (https://iotawatt.com/) for all the circuits in my home. I also use Z-Wave and Zigbee devices to monitor individual plugs (I love these). I send data from all of this to an InfluxDB database and then into Grafana for displaying pretty graphs. Everything is running on my Windows desktop. The IoTaWatt doesn’t require internet access to work. I have been very happy with the setup and once setup it hasn’t required much maintenance.

    The system is also good for recording temperatures, solar power information, and anything else that can make an API call. Not sure why your Z-Wave is falling off the network, for that I use a Hubitat and mostly Inovelli, Zooz, and THIRDREALITY ZigBee plugs.


  • I back up everything. I use Stablebit Drivepool with duplication for all of my source code, media, photos, documents, music, books, laptop backups, etc. I back that up periodically to a Drobo DAS and 8 Bay USB enclosure setup under Drivepool. I also have off site backup (working on a new NAS which will be accessed over a VPN). I don’t want to spend the time worrying about loosing anything I have put time and effort into. Been there and done that. Drives are relatively inexpensive but can fail without warning.


  • After looking at other’s lists I think I am missing a good document server. Emby isn’t the best music and photo server so I could look at improving that, but it has been good enough for those purposes that I haven’t felt like going to the trouble of installing anything else.

    • Aster: Multiseat software for Windows allows several users to work on the same PC.
    • LaunchBox: Frontend for DOSBox, modern PC games and emulated console platforms.
    • Blue Iris: Video security and webcam software
    • Calibre: E-Book management and server
    • Emby: Server for videos, music, audio books, and photos.
    • Firewalla: VPN server, internet monitor and control
    • Foundary Virtual Tabletop: Online role-playing game server.
    • Grafana: Dashboard interface
    • Hubitat: Home automation
    • Hyper-V Manager: Tool that allows users to manage Hyper-V hosts and virtual machines (VMs)
    • InfluxDB: Real-time database server.
    • IotaWatt: Open WiFi electric power monitor
    • Microsoft SQL Server: Database Server
    • Octoprint: Web interface for 3D printers.
    • PCem: Emulator for various old 8086 through Pentium PCs.
    • SmartSync Pro: File sync program
    • SnapRaid: Backup program for disk arrays.
    • Stablebit DrivePool/Scanner: Disk pooling, file duplication, protection, disk surface scanner, and disk health monitoring
    • Steam Link: Access and play steam games remotely