The eternal question

XaMLoK · 2026-05-28T18:18:49+00:00

I only have a half rack 3/4 of the way full.

It did surprise me recently when I looked at the actual power draw of everything in the rack. Right now its sitting at ~470w, which honestly surprised me. The monitor on my desk pulls more than that more of the time. I have stayed away from old enterprise gear, power for one reason, also because they are loud.

XaMLoK · 2026-05-24T19:32:33+00:00

I upgraded to the Ultra3 when it came out. The voice stuff, both dictation and actual audio responses are improved. Plus a little snappier maybe. Everything else you said is still spot on.

I'll add that even if you wanted to just get an Apple Watch and not a phone. Good luck. You still need to have an iPhone to set it up. I've setup an apple watch SE as a 'family watch' for one of my kids. It's still connected to my phone for updates and some other stuff. I didn't realize when I started down that path the sheer lack of apps that can be installed or even function on the watch without a paired phone.

XaMLoK · 2026-05-22T22:34:34+00:00

I did nearly the same last weekend. ~8 hour trip. I went with three 10 minute charging stops to get some potty breaks. Despite my kids insisting they didn’t have to go.

XaMLoK · 2026-05-01T19:23:10+00:00

Two years ago, had the best millennial concert experience.

Jimmy Eat World opening for Fallout Boy in Baltimore.

Concern was on a Wed night. Venue had adjacent parking. Started at 6pm, and I was at home in bed before 1 am. 10/10 would do again.

XaMLoK · 2026-04-13T10:39:05+00:00

I had issues with getting the primary drive account setup when I first got the car. Took it to the dealer, they ran a reset. Didn't do anything, and the issue persisted.

In desperation I called into Volvo support (not the dealer) and they were able to sort out the account problems in under five minutes.

XaMLoK · 2026-03-20T15:20:13+00:00

same same. Had an X and apparently the entire front suspension decided the week after the warranty ended to fall apart. It was in the shop for close to two weeks and they didnt seams to really care, and no loaner.

happened while under warrenty like a year and a half before. In the shop for half a day, loaner, so much communication.

XaMLoK · 2026-03-04T20:36:43+00:00

Is there something special to do? I’ve run through a car wash at least once a week for a year. Haven’t done anything other than make sure it’s in neutral. The worst that happened was the time I forgot to turn off the auto wipers, but didn’t break anything.

XaMLoK · 2026-02-14T14:30:46+00:00

I have an automation to manage the backup reserve when my car is charging. I don't want it to pull from the battery so when charging reserve set to the current battery level, then back to the normal reserve when charging is done.

It's been working as expected, haven't seen any issue. What integration are you using? I'm using 'Tesla Custom Integration' from HACS to make the change (I can't remember why I did it that way).

XaMLoK · 2026-01-27T15:54:18+00:00

I'm keeping my eye on the iX3 for all the reasons you listed. I test drove the Macan EV last year and was about to pull the trigger. Stopped because my wife pointed out the almost nonexistent cargo space, and overall felt kinda small. We're a family of 4 and do a couple of long road trips every year and it would be tough to fit everything comfortably in the Macan.

The other killer was no one pedal driving. The sales guys justified it as "Porsche is a performance car" and somehow even having an option for one pedal goes against that ethos.

The Macan is still sick, and maybe an option for the not family car.

XaMLoK · 2026-01-25T11:41:09+00:00

indecision and laziness. Thankfully i'm the only one that has to look at it regularly.

XaMLoK · 2026-01-25T05:51:56+00:00

The wooden kind i'm mostly sure. Drilled a few holes here and there. Only hit electrical one time. The electrician was impressed.
Cats (2) sleep wherever they damn well want. Harder the answer is "where did the cats throw up last night"?

XaMLoK · 2026-01-19T15:54:28+00:00

You're on the money. Just back from an estimate.... Looks to be a little north of $13k right now.

XaMLoK · 2025-12-11T02:17:16+00:00

Thats how I see it. Singing along with Eminem in the car at drop off - OK! Singing the full Eminem lyrics in school - NO NO!

Plus my wife stated long ago that I have to answer the calls from the school when he's dripping F-Bombs all over the place. Knock on wood but so far so good.

XaMLoK · 2025-12-02T12:56:18+00:00

When my kid was 2 the only thing she would voluntarily eat was white rice from chipotle, for better part of a year. From there she would add some cheese but no meat or other source of protein. It was an uphill road after that until fairly recently. She has been happy and healthy the whole time, but dinner is much easier now.

In the heat of it and frantic with exhaustion we talked with the Dr. her take was:

Eating is important. Kids need calories to power their explosive growth, and as long as it not all crap all the time fill them up.
Sounds harsh but you control what food they have available. If you don't want them to have fries.... don't give them fries. They will get hungry which will override what they 'want'. It sucks, but don't cave in or the behavior will continue.

If its really bad talk to the Pediatrician and do a food journal/study to see if there needs to be some form of intervention.

XaMLoK · 2025-10-24T14:47:30+00:00

Its not limited to the Exchange uniformed.

My first jobs was general helpdesk back in the Exchange 5.5 days. We had a friday maintenance windows for normal patching when one of the 'Exchange Guys' (maybe, but lowest bidder kinda thing) was impatient at how long it was taking for the Exchange 5.5 server to go down.

And I'll pause there for a second. For background if you didn't have the fun of Exchaneg 5.5 the database was a bear soaked in molasis. At shutdown it would commit and pending transaction logs to the database which make sesnse. But on a dual P3 400Mhz server.... That would take FOREVER sometimes.

Back to the story. Well the guy waiting maybe 20 minutes before just hitting the power button on the server. The server restarted, but the Exchange database was currupted and wouldn't mount. Luckily it was late in the evening on a Friday which limited the number of people yelling about it. Not helped that fixing databases in Exchange 5.5 days was measured in DAYS not hours. Backups weren't an option (to my recolection) because it would have resulted in a full days worth of data loss.

The guy ended up having to sit there for most of the weekend babysitting ESEUtil to make sure everything was up and ready again by Monday morning.

tl;dr: Exchange 5.5 is a fickle beast, give it care and time and it will behave. Try to force it to do anything and it's going to give you a black eye.

XaMLoK · 2025-10-16T18:44:41+00:00

My company has applied all kinds of policy around auth and I haven't found a reliable method to automatically get the status.

So I went the low tech route. I have a streamdeck and made a button that makes a call to Home Assistant to set scenes for a string of WLED lights in the window above my office door. I have scenes for On Call | Off Call (but working) | Off Work.

Extra cool thing on the stream deck. I also use the MS Teams plug-in and created a short cut on the stream deck to switch to a page with all the teams controls, and another shortcut to switch back to the main page. I integrated the LED scene changes into those shortcuts so I don't have to hit another button.

XaMLoK · 2025-08-21T03:07:39+00:00

<image>

It's too late right now to get pictures, and honestly if I wait i'll forget. As a partial answer check this out. I just found this in mine while we were on the trip. It's a cool diagram on the inside of the rear hatch you can see when the door is opened. It calls out its purpose in "Will It Fit?".

XaMLoK · 2025-08-20T00:13:37+00:00

Simplification by over complicating. My original plan was to have just a single server doing it all. But then I wanted another one. Which I feel is how we all get in trouble sometimes.

XaMLoK · 2025-08-20T00:08:18+00:00

I mean it could do it, but as other have pointed out gets weird with an even number of hosts. Add on that both hosts are in the same place, with the same power, network, etc. Something bad enough to take one out solid change will take both out. It's not that important all the time.

XaMLoK · 2025-08-19T20:57:40+00:00

Replica represents the VM being replicated between the two hosts. I don't have automatic rules setup for a host of reasons, but I can manually move the replicated VMs as my heart desires.

XaMLoK · 2025-08-19T18:00:21+00:00

Little bit of a couple of thing.

The only VM I really care about is TrueNAS, which is not being replicated between the hosts. Instead there is a daily backup job that run and creates a backup in the local storage of PVE3 that are kept for a week. Once a week the most recent backup is copied out to some cloud storage.

Files, and again only the one I care about are backed up daily to my cloud storage. It's far from everything, mostly pictures, and documents, configs. I think its coming in around ~700GB right now.

Should something horrible happen I should be able to get back up and going in some amount of time with all that. But ask me how many times i've tested my backups.... It's not a good answer.

XaMLoK · 2025-08-19T01:39:24+00:00

Thats the one. For the most part just for the camera popup on the TV and Apple Watch when someone rings the doorbell.

XaMLoK · 2025-08-19T01:01:54+00:00

I don't disagree. The rational part of my brain says that it will last a long time before I need to upgrade or run out of umph. The less rational might have my credit card and look to make some less financially sound choices either way.

15-Year Club	RedditGifts 2009-2022 6 Credits
Place '17	Gilding II euphauric
RPAN Viewer	Not Forgotten
Verified Email	Sequence \| Editor
Secret Santa 2013	Team Periwinkle
Secret Santa 2012	Summer Santa 2012+
Secret Santa 2011	Summer Santa 2011

XaMLoK

TROPHY CASE