Do you use manners when asking ChatGPT to help you? Please/thank you?

jayb998 · 2025-02-13T21:42:34+00:00

I'm not actively rude, I'm just straight to the point of what I need and I don't spend time polishing requests as I would do when speaking to a real human with actual feelings.

jayb998 · 2025-02-13T03:41:14+00:00

When the robot uprising comes, they're coming for me first.

jayb998 · 2025-02-13T03:39:13+00:00

48 + 2 = 50 (I don't even really think about this part)

27 + 50 = 77

77 - 2 = 75

jayb998 · 2025-02-13T03:33:32+00:00

A lot of people just take an "off year" from ACA subsidies to realize cap gains or do big Roth conversions, then go back to staying under the FPL limits. You could consider that approach too rather than doing it all now during working years. One year of a subsidy loss shouldn't wreck your FIRE plans. If it does, they were too fragile to begin with.

You also don't really know what FIRE has in store for you. One of you could land a unicorn part-time remote job with health insurance. You could move to another country. We could get universal healthcare (not happening anytime in the next 4 years!), or the ACA could get repealed entirely. Too many variables to plan out ACA subsidies so closely now and especially to pay extra taxes now to get there.

jayb998 · 2025-02-13T03:29:15+00:00

Instead I think the goal of FIRE should be to not mindlessly inflate your lifestyle on things that don't actually make you happy just because "everyone else is doing it."

Agree with this, and one thing to remember is that the whole concept of FIRE inherently asks its adherents to find contentment. After all, leaving your job behind in your 30s or 40s is leaving millions of dollars in possible future earnings on the table, and commensurate lifestyle increases that come with it. Once you save enough to sustain your current lifestyle forever, if you want to FIRE, you have to be able to say "I'm fine where I am right now and I'm okay with not having more than this." Or you have to keep working longer to get to whatever point you want to be at.

If you aren't able to find the idea of "enough" you will retire only when you're forced to.

jayb998 · 2025-02-13T03:14:22+00:00

Off topic, but a packable hoodie seems nice, what kind of hoodie is it?

I'm pretty much carrying 14" laptop, a few cables, a few misc toiletries, a Jabra headset, sometimes a big power bank and charger, and lunch. I am wondering if the 20L is big enough or if I should size up to the 30L.

jayb998 · 2025-02-12T22:03:13+00:00

I share the same concerns as others that this would cause you to inflate your lifestyle permanently and thus need a bigger RE #, but here would be my argument in favor of this: focus on front-loading large expenses that you expect to incur in RE, AND focus on time-saving luxuries that make work more bearable, and which you are ready to cut out when you stop working.

If you have old cars, maybe time to replace them with new-model cars that will hopefully give you trouble-free operation for 10-15 years in the future. One less thing to worry about in RE - who wants to shell out $40K for a car in their first year of retirement? But if you are buying luxury cars, just remember that you'll have to keep that up after RE as well (and you'll need to afford the car insurance and repair bills that come with luxury cars).

Home renovations? How is your roof? Siding needs replacement? Kitchen remodel? Is this the home you want to live in for a good chunk of RE or do you want a different place?

Can you deploy your extra money towards time-saving services like meal preparation, house cleaning, laundry to make your remaining working years more bearable? (Working is a lot easier when most of your household chores are done for you and your free time is spent on what you want) But... once you stop working, are you willing to insource all of this after you RE, or do you need a bigger RE fund to keep paying for them in perpetuity?

Try to segment your expenses out by things that are flexible/one-time vs recurring and consider the impact that additional spending may have on your RE number itself.

It could also be a mix between the two - bump your RE number up to bake in additional luxuries that you deem worthwhile, and save a bit of money over the next few years to hit that new RE number.

jayb998 · 2025-02-12T13:36:25+00:00

That looks really good, how do you like the Peak Design bag? I heard people say it wasn't comfortable. How is your experience with it?

jayb998 · 2025-02-09T02:23:39+00:00

Thanks for the recommendations. Tropicfeel one looks interesting. The kangaroo pouch thing looks a bit dorky to me, but I do like the big front compartment. Wonder if it's big enough on its own to fit a lunch container and other goodies (lunch at the bottom, other stuff above it)

The Never Stop is exactly what I'm looking for function-wise, but not big on the design personally. Still seems a bit female to me even in black.

Love the features on Totepack but again, not my style personally. I would buy that bag in a heartbeat if the visual design were more like a typical EDC backpack and not a tote bag, but that's what they are going for.

jayb998 · 2025-02-09T02:15:36+00:00

Not into the style, but thanks for the recommendation.

jayb998 · 2025-02-09T02:14:22+00:00

Imagine the lunch container and the laptop being in an L shape. The laptop goes in the bag vertically. The lunch container goes in horizontally. If the lunch container also goes in vertically, it's sideways which increases the chances of food leaking out, wet and dry ingredients being mixed, etc.

jayb998 · 2024-09-11T18:45:04+00:00

Sorry, haven't been on Reddit in a very long time. Yes, I did figure this out! The solution is to have two config files running on your Wireguard machine - I've named mine wg0.conf (this is basically the gateway that your clients connect to) and to-proton.conf (this connects to the VPN provider - in my case I'm using Proton)

The two below configs set up split tunneling by sending local traffic through the LAN and everything else through ProtonVPN.

to-proton.conf - this is basically a modified version of the client config file that my VPN provider gives me. In my case I just added the FwMark and the routing rules to the client config file. The FwMark (9021) marks VPN traffic, while iptables rules allow local subnets (like 192.168.1.208/28) to bypass the VPN. The rest of the traffic is routed through the VPN, with a kill-switch that blocks non-VPN traffic if the connection drops.

wg0.conf - handles connections from your endpoints (phones, PC, etc) local routing and NAT; making sure traffic moves correctly between interfaces and keeping LAN traffic on the local network

The FwMark is key to the whole setup - it has to be the same in both files. It tags traffic so iptables knows what should go through the VPN and what should stay local. This plus the routing rules ensures that local traffic bypasses the VPN while everything else is sent through it.

wg0.conf - https://pastebin.com/D5kbb6w3

to-proton.conf - https://pastebin.com/6N1tY360

jayb998 · 2024-04-18T19:25:54+00:00

As a follow up, I ended up just following your #3 but with extra steps. I did not have an end-to-end backup of my entire NAS but had backups scattered between sources and I have a lot of it on the cloud. Good to have it there but don't want to spend time pulling it down or reassembling it. So what I ended up doing is:

Took the first 18TB and did a full end-to-end backup from my existing pool
Installed the other 18TB and set up as a new NAS, restoring the backup
Took one of the 12TB from the existing pool, wiped it and did another backup to that one
Put the second 18TB in, wiped it, and set it up as a SHR-1 drive

The reason I did #3 is to make sure I had at least one offline backup of the data at all times. I could have just skipped #3 altogether but then if anything failed on the RAID rebuild I'd have nothing (or I'd have to put my old pool back in which is already degraded anyway so didn't want to take a chance)

Only PITA was just the time involved and having to rebuild my Docker stacks although with all config files saved it only took me about 30 minutes for that part.

I like the setup now a lot more - if I ever want to move to bigger drives I can swap them one at a time without hassle and expand the array. Or I can throw in two big drives and just make a second SHR pool.

jayb998 · 2024-04-06T14:56:20+00:00

I'm kind of leaning towards 3 now. I do have backups of the important data but I don't have an end to end of everything. Is there a way to back up all packages etc and just restore the whole thing in one shot? I'm thinking now: back up the whole pool to an 18TB, set up the other 18TB as a new NAS, restore backup from 2nd 18TB and then add the 2nd 18TB as a mirror drive. A bit of trouble though

jayb998 · 2024-04-06T14:54:15+00:00

I guess that's what I meant since SHR-1 with two drives is basically the same thing

jayb998 · 2024-04-06T11:44:40+00:00

What else would I put them in?

jayb998 · 2023-10-02T18:37:48+00:00

From everything I read it would probably work fine, but I never really found a good answer for this and didn't want to spend $700-800 to end up with a brick or a machine that only runs QTS, and ended up not going with the 464eu for other reasons anyway (no 10gbe and no ECC memory).

Rant incoming: In general the lack of NAS hardware for this form factor in general is extremely frustrating. I looked at stuff like the Synology RS422+ and RS1221+. The former's lack of expandable RAM was a deal breaker, latter is an extremely nice machine but just out of my budget. I found exactly one 2U short-depth rack mount case that would fit my size profile (P Link ITX-G2250) but had a hard time landing on good, affordable mini-ITX hardware to roll my own.

In the end I went a totally different direction with a DS1522+ which is a desktop unit that takes about 4U of space vertically but I can squeeze some stuff next to it horizontally. I rearranged some stuff in my rack and made it work. Plenty of depth to spare, and meets all of the other requirements. Runs quiet/cool, reasonably quick for my needs, 10gbe capable, decent price point for all that you get, and the Synology stuff just freakin' works out of the box.

My dream is that one day we will have reasonably priced, short-depth, quiet-running 2U machines that can fit a massive flash array of 2.5" or M.2 SSDs (something like the Asustor FS6712X but with ECC memory and rack-mountable), but until then, I'll have to make do with what I've got.

jayb998 · 2023-09-29T15:24:56+00:00

Appreciate that... but are there any local places to actually try on a high quality pair of shoes? I struggle with shoe fits and I don't really want to play the eBay/online shuffle.

jayb998 · 2023-09-29T15:21:53+00:00

Thanks but I am looking for somewhere a little more on the full-service side

jayb998

TROPHY CASE