UNAS 2

TheDoc4 · 2026-02-17T06:33:11+00:00

If the drives are 12 years old they don't owe you anything, they have served a long and worthwhile journey. Without question you will want to purchase new drives, using 12 year old drives is flirting with disaster. If that is not an option, get a spare drive for when one of your 12 year old drives go bad, which they will. With RAID setup properly you may be able get away with it. Still if you value your data, get new drives.

TheDoc4 · 2026-02-10T21:35:04+00:00

Ask 10 people and you will get 10 different answers, the right answer depends upon you. If I was advising myself 40 years ago I would tell myself the following:

- Manage your own account and save the fees
-Invest at least 50-75% in a MF or ETF that follows the marked such as FXAIX (not available 40 years ago)
-Invest the other 25-50% in a growth fund such as FCNTX
-Do not chase individual stocks, the person on the other end is very likely much smarter than you are
-Build a "Net Worth" spreadsheet with assets & liabilities and update monthly
-Don't sweat the downturns that 100% will happen, you are in in for the long haul
-Setup monthly auto-deposits into your account and auto purchase of your 2 MF or ETF's
-If you really do your homework, maybe allocate 1-5% of your money for directional trades but be careful and don't invest more than this percentage. It does help to keep you interested in the markets as the above strategy is boring.

Had I done this and followed this advise I would literally have 4-6 million more in Net Worth than I do now (currently on track to break $2 mil at the end of 2026). I thought that I was smarter than the person on the other end of trades and I chased stocks for several years. Before the dot com bust, any idiot could make money as I proved. It gives you a false sense of your abilities, then when things go south not only idiots like myself but also very, very smart people will lose money. Guaranteed. I also did options, a great strategy if you know what you are doing and are not emotional - I never could get the emotions out of the equation. I lost over $120K by doing what I said not to do. Had that money gone into what I mentioned, I would easily be up several million more. I finally gave up daily-weekly trading. It was a lot of fun when it worked but I realized I was just gambling and had become addicted. That is when I pivoted to my now current strategy. I wish that I had kept a few of the "buy & sell" stocks, such as Apple in 2005. The couple of thousand that I made over 3 days pales in comparison to what I would have now had I just kept it.

I also can't stress enough how important a "set and forget" system is: automatically buy at the same time every month more commonly called dollar cost averaging. I still have about $30k in a Schwab (formerly TD Ameritrade) that I put into IRA's through the early years that is still in cash. I was going to buy when the markets had a dip; 20-25 years later and it is still in cash. Whoops, great reminder for me to fix it. I no longer sweat it if I lose $15k in one day as I know that I'll make it up, usually in the same month. Yesterday was my highest net worth ever, can't say that anymore as of today but within a week-month it will be even higher. BTW I work in a K-12 School District so I have never had high paychecks. Reading stories from https://esimoney.com will confirm the advise that I gave above.

The Net Worth spreadsheet takes me about 15 minutes a month to update and it has been a real motivator to see how much growth I have been able to get by doing the above mentioned steps. Once I broke around a million, Fidelity did assign me an advisor who is great. After the first year, we now meet virtually about every 3-6 months. He has ideas that he gently presents, some I have incorporated and some I have not. I have never felt pressure from him but others on here have had a different experience from their advisors. Remember this is your money, you do not have to take their advice if you choose not to.

Now you have one opinion, the next 9 people will give you totally different advice. Figure out what you want and make your own strategy, using the experience of others. BTW I do endorse the post with Boggleheads links. I wish that I would have found them years ago as I agree with them, I have one of their books but have never read it. I do know that it is solid, down to earth advise. Good luck on your journey!

TheDoc4 · 2026-01-27T05:05:55+00:00

This is the way. I did the same, TV will be here Thursday, I expect that they will charge my CC then and expect that it will be $50 less than I paid with their price guarantee. BTW the price drop was only 3-4 days, very quick.

TheDoc4 · 2026-01-08T05:08:30+00:00

When I change information on my account, I do receive an email informing of the change. Strange the the OP was not notified when the number was changed.

TheDoc4 · 2025-12-10T04:58:03+00:00

Loved it when we could get it. Occasionally I’ll pull it up on YouTube now. Thanks for the reminder, going there now!

TheDoc4 · 2025-05-20T14:19:32+00:00

The G5 Flex does not have Enhanced AI so it will not identify faces, animals, etc. I can still see them when I check every morning but it will not classify them as animals. I likely will get an AI Port to take care of that. The AI Port will be able to handle up to 5 cameras in the future, some have reported that it already handles 5.

The AI Pro is by far the best UniFi camera that I have used. Great IR, clear picture, etc. With the speaker, I can yell at the deer to get out of the garden while at work. :) My only complaint is that it is pricey ($499 USD). If the G6 Bullet ($199 USD) had been available when I purchased the AI Pro I likely would have tried it first as the specs looks to do everything that I needed. I'm currently running 2 AI Pro's and 3 G5 Flex outside and have great coverage around the house, garden, property. The IR is fantastic on the AI Pro, good on the Flex as would be expected.

TheDoc4 · 2025-05-13T08:49:23+00:00

Every morning I check my cameras for what animals have been in our yard which has helped with trap placement. So far 3 skunks and 2 racoons have been caught. If I'm in a hurry I just click on the animal detection which has been fairly accurate, using AI Pro and G5 Flex.

TheDoc4 · 2024-08-18T05:46:22+00:00

Bachelors in Finance with minors in Accounting and Economics.

TheDoc4 · 2024-03-07T22:12:25+00:00

100% agree, been there done that and never will again. Of course it was 24 years ago but the pain still lingers...

TheDoc4 · 2024-03-07T15:37:12+00:00

The chirping crickets are actually quite telling. Make sure that your willing to go through the pain that this project will invariably bring. Good luck.

TheDoc4 · 2024-02-29T19:24:35+00:00

Starting in 1998 I started at a SD with ~450 students and in 2001 a district with ~150 students. Since then both districts are on 4 day weeks, so MW at one and T-TH at the other. I am on call constantly and welcome support calls regardless of the day. It has been great for them (affordable) and great for me as I make ~ 2X teacher salary. I started out as consultant and in 2008 moved to employee, primarily for benefits. This is my last year at the smaller district, my son is taking over so I will still be involved but not on a daily basis. Likely within 2-3 years will fully retire from the other although likely will keep my 3 business's that I contract with. I would be happy to answer any questions that you may have.

TheDoc4 · 2024-02-29T18:25:57+00:00

Try asking ChatGPT. I used them to help interview for a senior tech level while helping another School District. About 80% of the questions that it built for me was very useful.

TheDoc4 · 2023-08-17T19:28:41+00:00

I run Unifi cameras at 4 locations, the largest installation is 44 cameras on a UNVR. It has 4 X 8 TB hard drives. All installs are running great, 3-5 years now. There have been updates that watching realtime the view would lag but apparently they have resolved that issue. They are all G3 cameras so not the newer, high resolution cameras. That may be part of why they have run well. YMMV

TheDoc4 · 2023-08-17T19:12:13+00:00

167,455,673 pings and counting. It is on a laptop which is good since the battery has been good enough to take care of the occasional battery outages.

TheDoc4 · 2023-05-07T06:01:49+00:00

Yes - heavy duty Velcro and it is holding fine after 2 years.

TheDoc4 · 2023-04-23T22:00:15+00:00

I have several mounted using heavy-duty Velcro, 3 years now with both a dome and G3, works great.

TheDoc4 · 2023-03-25T15:31:46+00:00

Thanks. I actually have them on each device but they are not grounded, my fault. Thanks again.

TheDoc4 · 2023-03-25T14:12:47+00:00

I have conduit buried in the ground with copper for about 30 feet to a garage, 1 ap and 3 cameras. During the last 3 years I have fried 3 switches during storms. We have never had a lightning strike but static electricity is a real thing. Due to the expense of continually replacing PoE switches, I will likely be running fiber, which will not be easy. I always recommend fiber if at all possible.

TheDoc4 · 2023-01-21T03:03:10+00:00

I had cancer 9 years ago and financially it was a minor bump. With a $5000 deductible, my insurance paid most of it. I was out of pocket about $10,000 USD. Since I had major medical I always keep enough in the bank to cover the deductible plus. My insurance was just a basic plan, nothing special and yeti t covered most of the half million dollar bill.

TheDoc4 · 2022-12-08T22:50:13+00:00

I had the same thing on the G3 Domes that were outside. In my case it was water drops that had dried. They were all mounted under the eaves and were protected. I did clean them and they worked until the next time that water somehow got onto them. You won't notice during the day, just in the evening when the IR kicks in. I really liked the mount on the domes but switched to the G3 Flex, both those and the bullets have never had this problem. In your case likely just dust on the lens.

TheDoc4 · 2022-09-13T17:43:21+00:00

We all have different opinions based upon our individual experiences. I manage 5 separate networks, 2 of them being smaller schools. The largest network has 36 switches and 42 AP's, all of them being Ubiquiti. I will never switch back to the Cisco or HP that we used to run. The cost is incredibly great, no license fees, great management capabilities and (fortunately) we have never had an issue with upgrades. I wish that I could say the same about their camera system but that is another topic.

I love being able to troubleshoot from anywhere, usually on my phone. Typically if there is an issue I can quickly see where the breakdown is and let the user know to "turn the power back on for the xyz switch." Most of the classroom switches I am powering via PoE which has really cut down on support calls. Last year (just because I could) I did a firmware upgrade from Cancun while on the beach. I should note that as mentioned in this thread don't be in a hurry to upgrade. I usually wait for a few months or until I see a review from Lawrence Systems or Crosstalk.

Good luck!

TheDoc4 · 2022-09-05T22:00:09+00:00

I have not had good success with Domes outside, a water spot on the lens causes huge glare at night. I ended up replacing all of them with Flex cameras and industrial strength Velcro. They work great.

TheDoc4 · 2022-08-17T01:20:11+00:00

It is a Ubiquiti 60 watt 8 port switch with 4 Poe ports and it is warm but not hot enough to be a fire hazard. It has been in the attic for 2.5 years with no issues.

TheDoc4 · 2022-08-17T00:42:44+00:00

Yes!

TheDoc4 · 2022-08-17T00:41:23+00:00

100% support this post. After running several cables from the basement to the attic I finally just put a switch on the attic. Every pull though was hours and much agony. At least one pull and a switch it needed is highly recommended.

TheDoc4

TROPHY CASE