Friday, September 4, 2009

Kelli has SeeDees!

I'm geeking out this week. My Windows Home Server was having issues. Every few hours the security software program would crash causing the computer to reboot. I have since traced this down to the software saving data to the "data" drive of the Home Server which is really a bundle of hard drives. I installed a spare hard drive (my old Macbook Pro 200 GB SATA drive...I love SATA...same connectors for desktop and notebook drives!) and now have all images and videos saved to that drive....no more reboots.

Before that discovery I began to think of ways to better utilize my data. I have several old computers laying around. At first I dove back into Linux. I installed Ubuntu but got annoyed with setting everything up. I had to VNC over into the shell (I refuse to learn Linux/Unix commands!). After drinking a few adult beverages I gave up. Eric then tipped me off to FreeNAS.

FreeNAS is a free operating system for setting up Network Attached Storage. The required hardware is very low. I have a ton of old hard drives laying around (80 to 300 Gigabytes) not being used. Tada.

I am loving FreeNAS. It took me a few hours to "get it"...but now I am slowly getting up to speed. Eventually I am going to have all Music and Videos on one central FreeNAS server. This will allow my Windows Home Server to simply record video/images...total overkill.

Right now I have to NAS servers set up. One using an old Dell Optiplex (chosen for small form factor) and another built in a mid-size tower which will hold all Music/Video.

Kelli is loving her Zune. I told her to try an MP3 player months ago. She resisted. Kelli is very set in her ways on somethings. With my continuing "live with less" attitude we dumped XM radio. We now use Zunes for our Music. Our montly music bill is now 1/2 what is used to be.

I initially loaded up her Zune (an 8GB model) with all kinds of music I hate....which is all music she loves. She was happy. I then told her that she could put all her old CD's on her Zune. Some music (AC/DC most notably) isn't available on the Zune Market Place. She brought all her CD's home yesterday and I am ripping them one by one. Could take a while.

I used to have a huge CD collection. Over the years I've lost, damaged, chunked most of them. Not Kelly. She has one of those huge CD binder so popular in the 90s....which is suiting as she is still stuck in the 90s when it comes to her music.

Photos of the new floor...yeah....going to wait until we are truly done with the trim and stuff. Should be done this weekend.

Japan is still a go.

Still loving my Netbook. Sure wish I could run Mac OS X.

I gave up salt infused foods on September 1. Yeah just a few days ago. I haven't taken in more than 50 % of the RDA of sodium this month. It's going to be a challenge when I am on the road. I don't miss it.

Next month will be excess sugar. Notice I said excess.

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