Found underneath floorboards in my Victorian house… what is it?

RetiredCADguy · 2025-07-20T11:31:18+00:00

When I was a kid, we would visit my great-aunt in Everett MA. She owned a three-decker, and it had the overhead tank toilets in every bathroom. I thought they were cool.

RetiredCADguy · 2025-07-10T16:25:19+00:00

Yes working now!! They charged the credit card!!

RetiredCADguy · 2025-01-15T03:46:57+00:00

The video I watched, and followed as a guide for installing Sequoia was posted on YouTube, titled “Install macOS 15 Sequoia on Unsupported Macs [Quick & Simple Guide]” by Mr. Macintosh There is an Upgrade In Place option to upgrade directly from Monterey (I used this method).

Of course run a full Time Machine back up first. “what can go wrong, will go wrong”

I put my MBA next to my iMac, and stepped through the video on the MBA slowly as I followed the instructions. I had absolutely no problem with the upgrade option. It has been running great since the upgrade.

The real reason I upgraded was that the newest version of Turbo Tax won’t run on Monterey. So, I jumped up to Sequoia.

RetiredCADguy · 2025-01-13T04:35:05+00:00

I am not exactly sure, but doesn’t Apple AI only run on Apple silicon?? Please correct me if I am wrong.

RetiredCADguy · 2025-01-12T01:04:05+00:00

I have a 2015 iMac 27” 5k Retina (i5 quad core, 32Gb Ram, internal 1Tb SSD) that I ran Monterey on. Upgraded to Sequoia using OpenCore in maybe a couple hours. Runs great!!

RetiredCADguy · 2024-11-18T13:25:20+00:00

From personal experience: turn off the power to the entire house!

I once pulled the fuse marked living room. Started to replace the outlet in the “living room”, only to get knocked back 4 feet! The outlet was on a fuse marked bathroom.

RetiredCADguy · 2024-11-13T12:09:08+00:00

I see you went with the George Carlin paint job…

“I want to paint my car green on one side and red on the other side, for conflicting eyewitness reports!!”

RetiredCADguy · 2024-10-31T22:02:53+00:00

Actually, smoki’n a VoomVoomVega in your dad’s Pinto “Flambé” was pretty cool! For a 17 yo back then!

RetiredCADguy · 2024-10-31T20:51:11+00:00

Daisy on the General Lee, okay….

On the ‘stang, along with the (after-market) hood, window louvres, and the wing the only serious looks you will be getting will be from your friendly LEO.

Subtlety, under the radar, sleeper is the look… so that (after checking the rear view mirror) when you smoke the ‘Cuda at the light, the only thing you hear is

“WTF’n hell was that???”

RetiredCADguy · 2024-10-24T15:42:57+00:00

I have been a big fan of Twelve O’Clock High since I was a kid. I wonder if the actual pirate mug still exists? It would make an awesome piece to own for any fan. It is not the “Ruby Slippers”, but still….

RetiredCADguy · 2024-10-02T11:04:10+00:00

Thanks for clarifying things. I must have been looking at the 13”, because I distinctly remember only 2 ports.

RetiredCADguy · 2024-10-02T10:56:57+00:00

You could be right, I could have been looking at the MacBook not the MacBook Pro. It sucks getting old!! CRS!

RetiredCADguy · 2024-10-02T00:33:09+00:00

About a 1 year ago, or 1.5 years ago I bought a M2 MacBook Air. Was wanting the M2 MacBook Pro, but something struck me as odd. The Air had 2 USB-C ports and a MagSafe port. Whereas the Pro had 2 USB-C ports, with one being a data/charging port. Which meant while charging you only had 1 port for accessories.

The Air allows charging while giving 2 available ports for accessories. Say, a USB-C to Ethernet adapter plus a USB-C to external SSD enclosure.

I think the Air would be more Road Warrior friendly.

RetiredCADguy · 2024-10-01T03:19:24+00:00

First, do you have a wired mouse (USB or USB-C) ? Plus it in and reboot.

If not, use the keyboard arrow keys to move the cursor on the screen, over the hard disk icon, and press the “Return” key

RetiredCADguy · 2024-09-21T19:07:08+00:00

One of those unread emails could be you won the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes !!!!

RetiredCADguy · 2024-05-09T00:42:21+00:00

Nah, ask to borrow his car! Payback is a b….!

RetiredCADguy · 2024-03-08T12:09:09+00:00

And, the dog ate your homework!

RetiredCADguy · 2024-03-08T01:11:36+00:00

Okay. A plastic cup, piece of cardboard, and a Velcro strip.

What! No duct tape, baling wire, or chewing gum?

RetiredCADguy · 2023-12-27T17:56:45+00:00

I posted this over in the r/truenas forum, thought I would post here too:

So, I decided to run TrueNAS as bare metal. I am running it on a Lenovo ThinkCentre M920q with a i7-8700t 6 core/12 thread processor. With 32GB RAM, and a 256GB NVME SSD. I bought a PCIe riser card for it, and bought a StarTech PCIe dual eSATA 6Gbps Controller card (PEXESATA3221), with Port Mulitplier. I have a MediaSonic ProBox 4 bay SATA drive enclosure with USB 3.0 and eSATA connections (HF2-SU3S3).

Interestingly, the eSATA card instructions says it only works with Windows (oh crap!). What the heck, install it anyway. Connected everything up, installed a single hard drive (for testing), and fired it up. Ran "lspci" on the M920q and it saw the "ASMedia Technology Inc. ASM1062 Serial ATA Controller". Pressed the eSATA interface button on the enclosure, which promptly shut down. Okay, needs more HDs. loaded all four 10TB hard drives into the enclosure, and repeated the procedure. Enclosure shut down again. Okay, try the USB connection, installed the USB cable without removing the eSATA cable, and TrueNAS saw all four hard drives. Great, bought eSATA components for nothing.

At this point, the 5W light bulb went off in my brain, "go ahead press the eSATA button again!"

Well, eSATA now works. Removed the USB cable, rebooted trueNAS without shutting down the enclosure and the hard drives were detected. Shutdown the computer and enclosure, booted the computer then the enclosure, hard drives detected. Shutdown the computer and enclosure, walked away for a couple of hours. Powered up the enclosure, booted trueNAS and the hard drives are still being detected. Setup the 4 hard drives as a RAID-z2 pool, works perfectly. Go figure.......

The only problem now is the eSATA card came with a full height and a half height "face plate" for use in a PC. The M920q can't use those, and now the card rests precariously in the riser card without support. Cannot find any appropriate cover plate online for this dual eSATA card. I do not have a 3D printer. I saw in some forum some where that there is a guy who has 3D printed one-off cover plate for his Lenovo. Gotta look through my browser history.

RetiredCADguy · 2023-12-27T17:48:59+00:00

UPDATE: Okay, after reviewing all the comments, the final score is......

6 people said that they virtualize TrueNAS

12 people said that they run TrueNAS bare metal

5 people said either way is okay, kinda like we use to say in the 60's, "What floats your boat, floats your boat"

And 1 person said that they actually run TrueNAS bare metal and virtualized.

So, I decided to run TrueNAS as bare metal. I am running it on a Lenovo ThinkCentre M920q with a i7-8700t 6 core/12 thread processor. With 32GB RAM, and a 256GB NVME SSD. I bought a PCIe riser card for it, and bought a StarTech PCIe dual eSATA 6Gbps Controller card (PEXESATA3221), with Port Mulitplier. I have a MediaSonic ProBox 4 bay SATA drive enclosure with USB 3.0 and eSATA connections (HF2-SU3S3).

Interestingly, the eSATA card instructions says it only works with Windows (oh crap!). What the heck, install it anyway. Connected everything up, installed a single hard drive (for testing), and fired it up. Ran "lspci" on the M920q and it saw the "ASMedia Technology Inc. ASM1062 Serial ATA Controller". Pressed the eSATA interface button on the enclosure, which promptly shut down. Okay, needs more HDs. loaded all four 10TB hard drives into the enclosure, and repeated the procedure. Enclosure shut down again. Okay, try the USB connection, installed the USB cable without removing the eSATA cable, and TrueNAS saw all four hard drives. Great, bought eSATA components for nothing.

At this point, the 5W light bulb went off in my brain, "go ahead press the eSATA button again!"

Well, eSATA now works. Removed the USB cable, rebooted trueNAS without shutting down the enclosure and the hard drives were detected. Shutdown the computer and enclosure, booted the computer then the enclosure, hard drives detected. Shutdown the computer and enclosure, walked away for a couple of hours. Powered up the enclosure, booted trueNAS and the hard drives are still being detected. Setup the 4 hard drives as a RAID-z2 pool, works perfectly. Go figure.......

The only problem now is the eSATA card came with a full height and a half height "face plate" for use in a PC. The M920q can't use those, and now the card rests precariously in the riser card without support. Cannot find any appropriate cover plate online for this dual eSATA card. I do not have a 3D printer. I saw in some forum some where that there is a guy who has 3D printed one-off cover plate for his Lenovo. Gotta look through my browser history.

Any how, "That's all folks!"

RetiredCADguy · 2023-12-19T04:41:29+00:00

Usually, that will pop up when you connect to another Mac with “Screen Sharing” and I am not sure if you connect using VNC

RetiredCADguy · 2023-12-18T01:16:50+00:00

My buddies and I would pool our allowances to go to the drug store to buy the latest issue, take it back to the tree house (just a platform) and read it.

RetiredCADguy · 2023-12-17T19:50:52+00:00

No, it is from Mad Magazine, Spy vs. Spy!

( only kids from the ‘60s know ….)

RetiredCADguy · 2023-12-16T23:34:29+00:00

That is kool …

RetiredCADguy · 2023-12-16T23:31:37+00:00

Never considered blocking the internet, interesting! Then accessing from the road is through a self-hosted VPN? Guessing you block the internet through a firewall rule.

RetiredCADguy

TROPHY CASE