Nerd Porn

Ok, those of you that read this blog but aren't nerds, may I suggest surfing over to The Dieline. (that's a recent addition to my RSS Reader and the reason that I always stop by the vodka aisle every time I go to a new liquor store)

Ok, so I've been wanting to get a NAS (Network Attached Storage) device for quite a while. And when Bloyd got one a while back, that just made it worse. (gadget envy)

I wanted something that would accomplish the following:
1) Backup my lappy--a lot of my critical data is somewhere in the Internet cloud, but there are some things that are nowhere but my lappy. Especially things like my pictures. If my laptop drive dies, I would loose years worth of irreplaceable pictures.

2) More storage space--I've got a 250Gb USB hard drive in the office and a 150Gb travel-sized USB drive that stays in the laptop bag. But they are getting full and I've had to start making decisions on what to keep and what has to go.

3) Redundancy--since this will be both a backup and storage solution, it needs to be redundant so that the failure of any single hard drive in the house (including its own) would not cause the loss of any data.

4) Access to all my files when not docked in the home office--right now, the 250Gb drive in the office has all of my media and some other data that I can't access unless I'm plugged-in in the office. It would be nice to have access to them when using the laptop on the couch. (like now)

5) Ability to print when not docked in the home office--I do quite a bit of stuff either in the living room or at the dining room table. It sucks to drag the lappy to the office and plug in just to print a receipt from Gmail.

6) Not ugly--I want all of this in a device that doesn't look like a giant, ugly computer. (especially since this might be placed in the living room)

7) Cheap--I could buy something pre-built, but I'm *way* too cheap for that.

After hearing several opinions of people who know more about this stuff than I do, I decided to build my own little PC that would run Windows Home Server.

Windows Home Server (WHS) is server software designed to be used exactly for these kinds of purposes. It's Windows Server 2003 with additional software designed to be used as a home backup / media / storage solution without the regular maintenance sometimes required by server operating systems. (handy, no?)

After some research and a stop by my local Fry's, I came home with:

Shuttle K45 barebones case (cheap, tiny, cute and uses significantly less power than most Shuttle PC's)

Pentium Dual-Core E2200 (cheap but fast enough to power what I need)

1Gb RAM

(2) 1.5Tb Seagate Barracuda hard drives (yes, I bought 2 drives at 1.5Tb each--another good sale)

Extra case fan

OEM copy of Windows Home Server

All told, it put me back about $550. Yeah, I wish it didn't cost that much, but if wishes were horses, we'd all be eating steak. Also, you've got to remember that this setup includes a total of 3Tb of hard drive space.



I really like the case. It's slick, small and doesn't look much like a computer. (pill bottle added for size reference)



As expected, there isn't much space in there. Just enough room for me to put in what I bought. (note that the PCI slot at the front of the pic takes up almost half the length of the mobo)



There's barely enough room for the fan that just came with the CPU. It still amazes me that they run so hot that they need a heat sink and fan that big. (CPU on left, fan on the right)



Here's about halfway through the Windows install. I copied the install DVD to a USB memory stick and didn't have to touch the keyboard once during the install. Smooth as could be.



So, here's what it looks like all finished. But it still looks a bit too much like a PC...



Ah, that's better. (replaceable face-plates and a color printer--such a good combo)



It doesn't even look too out of place sitting on the entertainment center.



Now I've got a fully-functioning NAS. And since it just needs a power and network cable, I can hide it virtually anywhere in the house and not have to worry about maintaining it.

And it's still a fully-functioning Windows machine. I've got remote-control software so I can do things like install a BitTorrent client or anything else I want.

But the built-in Windows Home Server software looks sweet. It comes with some client software you install on all your home PC's and it automatically takes care of backups. It does such a good job that I know of someone who had a WHS like mine when his wife's laptop hard drive died. When he bought a new hard drive from the store, he literally booted from a custom CD that comes with WHS and an hour later the laptop was fully restored to exactly where it was before.

The client software also gives me a nice interface for maintaining most of the server settings I need. It also supports a "plug-in" interface so anyone can write plugins for WHS that you can then maintain without touching the server.

It also has a web interface so I can maintain or access my files from anywhere in the world.

I'm pretty impressed so far.

Quick Health Update

Ok, I'll keep this one short. I wouldn't even write one, but I just got a little inspiration that I wanted to share and get feedback on.

Part of my personality is that when I get into a habit or start something new and interesting, I sometimes go *way* overboard. As is relevant to this story, I sometimes do this with music.

As it happens, when I was first diagnosed with cancer and checked into the hospital for the first week of treatment, I'd just downloaded the newest Jack Johnson CD. And since it's not too bad and very calming music, I listened to it a heck of a lot during that week.

But now, whenever one of the tracks from that CD comes around on the iPhone when I'm working (as it just did), it's like I'm back in the hospital. I can see my room. I can feel the IV in my arm. I can remember that one bum wheel on my IV machine. I can even smell that cleaner they use. That's a heck of a memory trigger. Does anyone else have memory triggers that strong, or is it part of my obsessive "trigger-creation" by listening to the same CD over and over?

Anyway, I went it for my last round of tests / scans the other week. My doc says that everything looks good and he's moved out my schedule so that I only have to go in every 4 months. (that's a good thing)

Grinch Cat Disapproves of Your Traditions

The Awesome

I just can't get over how friggin' cool NPH is.

Multitasking Sucks

The title says it all.  For years, this was a staple in gauging how efficient, effective and productive was.  How many things can you do at once?  How much can you juggle?  More = better.

And being the good little worker bee that I am, I tried to do my best against that metric.  I tried to be working on as many things as I could at once.  Outwardly, I felt like I got a lot done.  But inside, I always felt like it was wrong.  (probably just the stress involved)

But recently, I (and several other people) have crossed to the other side of the tracks.  Multitasking sucks.  You *aren’t* more efficient.  You *don’t* get more stuff done.  You just look really busy and it takes longer to get anything done.

In addition to a lot of other things I’ve done (I’d like to write about them, but it’s damn boring to anyone not as big of a nerd as I am), one of the things I’ve been doing for about 2 weeks has made a big improvement at the office and might benefit other people here.  I turned off my email.

No, not totally.  But at the office, I only check email twice a day—10 AM and 4 PM.  Other than that, my email is shutdown.  No notifications for new mail—nothing.

I’d been putting this off for a while.  I’d heard people talk about it for a while, but I kept telling myself that it didn’t apply to me.  But Tim Ferris finally pushed me over the edge after he kept writing about it.

Damn, it’s nice.  I get a heck of a lot more done during the day with those fewer distractions.  When I get to the office in the morning, I just start right back where I left off the day before.

I used to worry that I’d miss out on important things if I didn’t see/respond to every email quickly.  But that hasn’t been the case so far.  I’ve got IM and a phone, so if there’s an emergency, that’s how they are going to contact me.

Anyway, I figure that most people don’t care about crap like this, but it’s the things like this that reduce stress and make my life just a little easier.

Out.

Who Has Two Thumbs and Doesn't Give A Crap?

There are times that I worry that I'm getting old and jaded and therefore find more fault in movies than actually exists. And then there are times that the movies live up to (or down to) my expectations.

(for those of you that are not familiar with the Rotten Tomatoes scoring system, the 0% rating means that of the 72 reviews they pulled for this movie, not a single one of them was positive)

Steak My Claim

At one point, I was a decent cook. I wasn't anything spectacular, but I could cook up a pretty good meal. That was back in Tulsa. I learned quickly that when I only have myself to cook for, I don't. I need someone to cook for. And while I've had the occasional friend stop by or short-lived-significant-other to entertain, it just hasn't become a regular habit again. (kinda tough to talk people into driving 30 minutes out to the burbs just because I want an excuse to cook duck)

But the guilt over eating crappy food has finally broken me. The money I've spent on restaurants, fast food and out-of-the-box meals from the grocery store just can't be ignored anymore--especially when it's really too easy to cook a simple meal.

So, in addition to trying to revive old recipes that were staples in Tulsa (which I've come to realize are generally not all that good), I've been immersing myself in the entire catalog of Good Eats.

Alton Brown is a damn genius. Food + geekness + basic gadgets + simple recipes = happiness. One of the episodes reminded me of one of the most basic methods to cook steak--the cast iron skillet.

I stopped by the grocery store and found a pretty good NY Strip and cooked it up the other night. I didn't plan to go all Mister Frost, but once I saw it on the plate, I just *had* to take a picture.



Holy hell. That was the best steak I can remember having. So good. So easy. Salt, pepper, oil and 10 minutes. (and to think that this meal cost me about the same as a bacon cheeseburger and fries from Whataburger--not even a contest) That's going into permanent rotation.

Christmas Vacation

My holiday season this year started a bit delayed. I planned to start vacation on the 23rd and head to Oklahoma and then to Kansas City with a return to Houston planned for New Year's Eve. But as I was packing the car, I got a call that one of my servers in Norway crashed.

It took me and one other guy from the office until mid-day on Christmas to get it fixed. So, for the first time I can remember, I didn't get to spend Christmas Day with either friends or family. Even Mouse (the cat) was in boarding. Kinda sucked.

But it was just a bit of a delay. It turns out that nobody else is on the road on the 25th, so traffic was really light. And I got to spend the last half of the drive enjoying the solitude of rural America at night.

Even though it was something like 30 degrees and windy, I had to take a couple of minutes right before I pulled into the folk's place to stop the car and enjoy a couple of minutes outside in the absolute quiet and dark. Living in a city the size of Houston, it's easy to forget what true dark and quiet is like. The stars on clear nights like that are amazing.

I got to catch-up with the family in Kansas City the next day. We got some really, really cheap rooms staying at a Marine Base. That was kinda cool.

We didn't do anything especially cool, but we stopped by a couple of notable places.

The first was Grinders. That's a really sweet pizza place featured on "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives". (check out the segment here) That was some dang good New York-style pizza. And how could I not love a place with a painting of Tom Waits and a graffiti'd poster of the The Daily Mirror Bush cover? It was a cool little Liberal oasis in the middle of the Bible Belt.

We also got to check out the Truman Presidential Library. That was really well done. I've also heard that it has the most faithful replica of the Oval Office anywhere. That was impressive. It was also interesting to see how people instantly stopped talking entirely when they walked in. It's impressive that even a replica of a room can invoke that kind of respect.

(* ok, this was the first part of a longer post, but it's getting late and I've still got some other stuff to do tonight, so I'll finish this up later...)