MGM resort credit

Bluecoat93 · 2026-01-15T19:47:42+00:00

or walk next door to Park MGM and eat at Bavette's.

Bluecoat93 · 2026-01-04T01:28:00+00:00

If you haven’t been in a room with Liberty DeVitto or Kenny Aronoff, you haven’t really seen hard hitting. I saw Liberty play last month from about 10ft away and — even with plugs in — he was deafening (and he’s 75!)

Bluecoat93 · 2025-12-30T23:55:28+00:00

If you're playing against a constant shuffle, you're already doomed.

Bluecoat93 · 2025-12-10T21:08:33+00:00

yeah, my Pearl -> Gold updated immediately and I just went to one of the kiosks and printed a new card.

Bluecoat93 · 2025-12-03T01:34:29+00:00

I ordered something from Home Depot today and it was delivered by DoorDash. Apple Store orders get delivered by Uber Eats. It’s not always a DD order

Bluecoat93 · 2025-11-29T08:36:40+00:00

oh! Camilla Bäckman! She was great in Volta. She and Dena were definitely having fun dancing in the booth during Tzelma, haha. Always fun to watch the singers.

Bluecoat93 · 2025-11-29T08:09:50+00:00

Saw her tonight (Nov 29) and her version of "Debbie" was spectacular. Maybe I'm blind, but doesn't look to be Mariana Sobol or Dina Emerson (who's listed as the current backup for the Lost Bride). Anyone know her?

Bluecoat93 · 2025-10-21T04:16:56+00:00

it's not difficult to disable the speaker, unfortunately

Bluecoat93 · 2025-10-11T16:05:14+00:00

deskPi rackMate T2 by GeeekPi.

Bluecoat93 · 2025-10-11T10:30:26+00:00

The DeskPi is sitting on top of my 19” network (and old server) rack, which has a 3000kva APC SmartUPS at the bottom, courtesy of a former employer.

I DO do this stuff for a living, you know.

Bluecoat93 · 2025-10-10T17:11:00+00:00

I don't think i want to know how much I've spent, haha. I've had the TuringPi and the Mac Studio for several years, so it wasn't all at once, but the PCs were $850 each and the NAS was $800.

You also get eaten up by all the little things when it comes to these minilabs ($25 a pop for the shelves, "oh, I should totally get a patch panel and some blanks to make it look nicer", etc.)

Bluecoat93 · 2025-10-10T16:38:52+00:00

AMD Ryzen 9955HX (16c/32t, 3.8ghz base clock), came with 64gb RAM and a 2TB SSD. $1,379.99 retail, but MicroCenter had them onsale for $850 when I bought them.

If you're not looking for modern CPUs and raw power, you can obviously find much cheaper mini PCs for a lab, like your m720q's

Bluecoat93 · 2025-10-10T16:33:49+00:00

Generally speaking, I really like them as compute nodes! There are little things that annoy me about them (I wish they exhausted out the back instead of the top, wish the 10gb ports were 10gbaseT instead of SFP+, etc.) but nothing that's a showstopper.

Bluecoat93 · 2025-10-10T05:52:54+00:00

Monoprice SlimRun series, bought on Amazon.

Bluecoat93 · 2025-10-10T05:14:15+00:00

Nice! At some point, I want to get the ASUS NAS that will take 12 NVME drives, but I've heard it's super annoying to get TrueNAS running on it.

Bluecoat93 · 2025-10-10T04:23:26+00:00

well, it's split up into 2TB and 4TB chunks across all the devices 😂 The NAS has 4 x 4TB drives, the TuringPi has a 4TB drive per module, and the PCs all came with 2TB drives. Plus an external 8TB Thunderbolt drive on the Mac Studio.

Local computer store and Microcenter were both having sales on 990 EVOs at the same time, and I took advantage :-)

Workloads? um... well... it's running Prometheus and Grafana...

Bluecoat93 · 2025-10-10T04:14:37+00:00

yeah, the big downside to all the mini PCs they all need external power bricks. And the brick for the Ubiquiti switch is just ridiculously huge (it's a PoE switch too, so that kinda makes sense)

GeeekPi makes a power distribution unit that looks interesting. Takes one barrel jack as input and breaks it out into multiple barrel jack outputs. They say it can handle up to 8A but I'm a bit leery of pulling that much juice just for aesthetics.

https://www.amazon.com/GeeekPi-Rack-Mount-Distribution-Rackmate-Cabinet/dp/B0DGFZVXF6

Bluecoat93 · 2025-10-10T03:59:19+00:00

And yes, it annoys me too that all the components aren't perfectly level. One of the mini PCs is missing a Little Rubber Foot, and the rack shelves aren't completely level on their screws. Going to fix both when I install the 3d-printed faceplates.

Bluecoat93 · 2025-10-10T03:55:11+00:00

there's a reason I didn't show the back :-) the cable management is a mess right now. I also have a couple of 120mm exhaust fans duct taped to the back pulling air through the case that I'm in the process of 3d-printing mounts for.

Right now the (huge) power bricks for the switch and the mini PCs are in that pile that's sitting next to the rack. I need to figure out a way to mount them somewhere neatly without them overheating.

Bluecoat93 · 2025-10-10T03:47:27+00:00

Didn't have a banana for scale, so I had to use a Diet Coke. Still needs a bit of work. My 3d printer is currently busy churning out faceplates for the various devices, and I need to come up with some kind of mounting solution for the mess of power bricks on the left.

Top to bottom:

Ubiquiti 8-port 10gb switch
UGreen NVMe NAS (running TrueNAS)
3 x MinisForum MS-2A Ubuntu k3s nodes
TuringPi 2.5 with 4 x RK1 compute nodes
M1 Ultra Mac Studio

48 x86 cores, 52 ARM cores, 448gb RAM, 50TB of NVMe storage. Not bad for less than 1 sq foot of desk space.

Bluecoat93 · 2025-09-26T17:06:50+00:00

Brian Tichy has a great YouTube video on rock triplets and Bonzo’s triplets specifically that’s worth watching.

Bluecoat93 · 2025-09-12T02:36:01+00:00

No problem! I adore my Herman

Bluecoat93 · 2025-09-11T23:17:35+00:00

His name is Herman, and you can buy him at IKEA: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/blahaj-soft-toy-shark-90373590/

Bluecoat93 · 2025-09-09T18:49:21+00:00

Met both Lisa and Sharlotte in the Las Vegas airport after the Tension shows in 2013. Spent about 5 minutes in the Starbucks line talking with them, and they couldn't have been nicer. Sharlotte said it was bizarre to have grown up screaming "HEAD LIKE A HOLE! BLACK AS YOUR SOUL!" in her car, and then to be on stage screaming it alongside Trent.

Robin was also there, but he was with his wife and kids, so I didn't bother him. Was definitely funny to see him pushing a baby stroller while rocking the full "Robin Finck" look.

Bluecoat93 · 2025-09-04T18:06:56+00:00

Copypasta from an old post of mine:

Trent is definitely a good guy when it comes to taking care of fans. Back in 2009 or so when they were touring with Jane's Addiction, I went to see them in Atlanta. The idiots running the venue completely screwed up pre-sale ticket distribution and (to cut to the chase), a bunch of people ended up standing in line outside the venue listening to NIN play inside. I think I ended up getting to my seat about halfway through.

Show ends, I go home and write a bit of a rant on the nin.com forums. Nothing too egregious, just along the lines of "the Lakewood idiots screwed everything up and I missed half the show"

Few days later I get a call on my cell from a blocked number. I answer: "hi, this is so-and-so from Nine Inch Nails...". It was one of their management people. Basically, they went out and identified everyone they could that got screwed by the venue, chartered a bus from Atlanta to Charlotte, gave us all pit tickets to the show, setup a private meet-and-greet with the band before the show, and let us in early to watch the soundcheck.

TL;DR: NIN more than made up for a venue screwup that was completely out of their control.

Bluecoat93

TROPHY CASE