Renae’s Day Out

And now for something completely different, I took the girls to the park. Renae thought it was really cool to watch her big sister!

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You would think just watching would get old, but I guess Hannah provided plenty of variety!

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All in all, it was a great day at the park! Everyone had fun, and we got out of the hose for a while 🙂

-Jordan

Car First Aid Kits — Assessment

I am no doubt jumping the gun a little posting this, but I have at least started the process of rebuilding the first aid kids in our cars.

It’s been one of those things I have meant to do for over a year now, after having attempted to use a bandage out of the car last spring only to discover that it was incredibly cheap and deteriorated from years in a hot car that it would not stick to anything.

So, a year later… I unpacked the kit to look at what all would need replaced:

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Nothing in that picture looks too amazing. The “instant cold pack” seems to have failed sometime in the past, and much like the bandage I tried before… every single adhesive item in the kit seems questionable.

With some careful reading, I eventually found a label with an expiration date… January 2001. Suddenly it seems perhaps the blame for poor performance falls more on me for using a kit that is 16 years expired rather than deficiencies in the initial quality of the kit!

I have ordered an assortment of items to restock with… the final value of the refill is going to exceed what just replacing the whole thing would cost, but if we end up needing even so much as a band-aid, having the nice stuff will start to seem worth it.

Does this feel at all like a repeat? Turns out I did a good sized post about our in-home kit before

-Jordan

Home Server

So years ago, I had a Windows Home Server setup. (its in the archives here, but I haven’t dug up the link)

I was reasonably happy with it, except that:

  1. Microsoft Discontinued it, and thus almost no updates
  2. It would sometimes crash and need a reboot
  3. The client machines (aka the ones I really wanted back up, and the whole point of having the sever) never actually popped alerts to let me know “hey I haven’t been able to reach the server for three weeks now…”

 

After about my third multi-month backup blackout. I realized I needed to bite the bullet and tackle something different. I really wanted something that would be a drop-in replacement for WHS, with semi-automated backups and some sort of NAS shared drive options.

The best match I could find was Amahi a Fedora biased Linux solution. I figured the fact that they were selling subscriptions meant there was some incentive for them to stick around and continue to provide updates. It is billed as a really simple solution, and probably is… if you can resist the temptation to tinker with things.

So to save the time it would take to recount the saga of hammering out the wrinkles I created for myself getting things exactly how I wanted it, let’s just say I probably would have been better off doing this thing from scratch. I am by no means a professional Linux admin, but my current job has me logged into several headless boxes each day putting me somewhere near the classic “I know enough to be dangerous” territory.

That being said, I build this thing using Amahi, and it’s a good starting point. I just put the final piece in place today, giving me what for our family in 2017 is a perfect solution to our server needs (because every family has server needs right?)

  • Both PCs automatically sync pictures with the server in near real-time (using a three peer Syncthing  setup)
  • Both PCs do nightly snapshot backups to the server ( If I were doing posts more often there would be several documenting the trials necessary to get that going)
  • Both our phones dump new pictures into the PC photo pool nightly ( Thanks to the Plex mobile client )
  • Our collection of child oriented video can be selectively steamed or loaded onto a phone or tablet on demand

The only real gaps are cloud backup, but I have that configured from one of the PCs and hope that the mirroring of photos between each system ensured that we have everything that’s important in on several local boxes, plus the cloud.

I could go on about the setup… there are endless details to brag about or bemoan, but this will have to suffice as a point-in-time of the state of servers and photo backup at the Nelson household.

-Jordan

Purchases

Background on this quote: Hannah has started doing chores, and earning money from doing them. She can then spend some of that money on toys, but it requires quite a bit of savings. She has started to bemoan the time required to save for another Paw Patrol.

(While helping put some very frilly socks on Renae)

Hannah: Dad, baby socks are really fancy!

Jordan: yes, sometimes they are.

H: Not like my socks… Well, maybe I could get some fancy socks!

J: That might be good.

H: But you should pay for them, because I am saving for a toy.

Drive Time

For some context, we drive 25 minutes or so to church. Doesn’t seem like much given my drive to work these days, but for Hannah it seems like a long time in the car.

(In the car, driving home from an AWANA night)

Hannah: Daddy, when I grow up and have a baby, I am going to live in a house closer to church.

Me: Yeah, that sounds like a good idea.

H: Yep, but I will still be close to your house so we can come visit you… maybe we can live in the middle!

In A Restaurant Booth

Hannah: (sitting by the window) Hey dad! My tongue just popped out of my mouth because it wanted to lick the window!

Me: OK… Did you stop it?

H: yep! (while moving enough to show a large smear on the glass)

M: good

H: Yeah dad, sometimes our bodies do things they are not supposed to do.

Headaches

I keep meaning to write down all the quotes I hear from Hannah, and figured this might be a good place to put them.

So, we are driving and hit an uneven spot that kind of rocks the car.

Hannah: “Daddy, the wobbly spots make my head hurt”

Me: “I see. You know what else can make your head hurt?”

H: what?

M: whinging

H: no dad, that only makes your head hurt.

 

 

The New Digs

We made it!

It looks like the embedded images aren’t quite how I would like them… but they came over.

I would love to say that being over on the new blog-only hosting means I would be back to regular posting, but… I shouldn’t make promises I can’t keep.

-Jordan