Migration is done

Spent the weekend working the migration. Not as bad as I thought it was going to be, but not as good as it could have been. Anxiety levels were stupid high the entire time. Worked with audiobooks, mostly HPL and MR James stories, with a few podcasts on the side. Clocked 26 hours over the last two days, on top of the work week. Technically I'm still on the clock, but when it clocks after 2000 I'm heading to bed and meds. Maybe a little book time. Very little.

So what's next? Monday and possibly Tuesday will be kind of crazy with support requests and reminding people to read their darn email. I'm hoping to take a day or two off as comp time. I put off a bunch of stuff because I knew the weekend was going to be hard. Computer stuff, work around the apartment. Convincing the neighborhood crows that I'm their friend. Maybe even making myself disconnect for a few hours and read.

So the stressor is done, for now. (Beyond the rest of the stressors). Dear Cthulhu and Tsathoggua, please grant me some restful sleep.

Say Hello to Byatis

I replaced my media player system with a new computer. Shoggoth has worked pretty well over the last few years, but it's been struggling more and more with larger files/bluray encoded files. Since it's a Intel Celeron 1.5 ghz CPU, it's not surprising. So a couple of weeks ago, Woot.com had a deal on a Lenovo M93P Tiny Desktop. Dual core Intel i5, 8 gigs of RAM, and a 128g SSD. So faster drive and a lot more CPU. (same RAM, but I can add another 8 gig stick if needed). So I finally felt up to moving hardware around today. Got everything wired up, well other than using a wireless keyboard and mouse to talk to Byatis. Installed Ubuntu MATE 18.10 (yes the same version I had headaches with upgrading Dagon. But a media system has a lot less moving parts, and other than a couple of goofs requiring a reinstall, the install went smooth. Setup the usual things, big thing was to get VLC installed and tested. There's a few quirks with controlling VLC, but nothing I can't adapt to. Or I can find something to tweak to make it simpler. We'll see.

So here you go, the building of my new media server, Byatis. Oh, if you don't recognize the name, Wikipedia has you covered.

63 Hours of Hermitage

Well, this weekend has been near maximum hermitage. Came home Friday evening, and I've only opened the door for food delivery. I reorganized the Starry Wisdom library, I've watched a lot of horror movies, read. Caught up (kind of) on sleep. Yesterday was little to no anxiety, today isn't quite as nice. Tomorrow is back to the job, with patching and probably a number of meetings about the migration. I really don't have updates from my last post on the subject. I've got a plan, and a schedule as a framework. So we'll see how it goes.

Non-work related stuff, less than 2 months til HPLFF in Portland. Looking forward to visiting Innsmouth West. This week I need to drop my car off at the dealer for general maintenance, plus the usual allergy shots. Next weekend 'Meg' gets released, giant sharks and giant squid. I'm so there. Not much of anything else in the works. Or really to talk about. So I'll call this a post.

First Post of the Year

Well it's the new year. First week of the new year has been kind of nuts. New Years Day was friend time and book hunting. Have had a lot of trouble getting up in the mornings to go to work. But each day was a little easier. Work itself has been a kind of mixed bag, spent most of Friday troubleshooting a Linux issue with one of the other groups at Carcosa Corp. Lots of 'why do you do $x, and $y and...huh that's odd'. Think I figured out the issue for the client, but waiting on their testing which isn't quick.

WEekend has pretty much just been movies, books and sleep. Got the chores done too, well most of them. Need to put together stuff for the work week, have to deal with my car's registration, and I should probably pack up the work laptop...because given how fuzzy I am on Monday mornings, I probably would show up sans laptop. Work week will be busy, first patches of the new year...and boy do I have some big things to deal with. (see computer news in the last week for details). No plans for next weekend as of yet, probably will need some more hermit time post patching/general work week. But I also want to see people, possibly people with cats. I miss cats.

Forgot I'd planned on work foo tonight. Got reminded a while ago when one of the tester's pinged me about it. The brain needs an upgrade, or I need a keeper. I'm going to go ahead and finish this post, since I've been working on it since Saturday.

Weekend of Electronic Entropy

This has been the weekend of electronics being a pain in the ass. Come home Thursday night, and my media PC is acting wonky. Can't reach the media drive via NFS. Verified the drive is readable, and NFS is running on Dagon. So I assume something got stuck, NFS is annoying that way, and reboot. Come up with a failed OS drive. Well, damn. Ok, I'd planned to swap it out with Shoggoth, my local network server that doesn't do much. Ok, so I spend my Friday off getting things moved around and hooked up. To find out sound doesn't work. Googling got me either 'use a USB sound card' or 'Sound works fine'. So I go and order a USB sound card that supports Linux with 1 day delivery. Which gets delayed Saturday, so...no media PC. I've watched a bunch of movies on my multi-region bluray player (which I had a frustrating time getting to change region til I remembered the remote control pattern).

I also planned to listen to audiobooks. My normal way to listen is on The Shining Trapezohedron (my phone), using a bluetooth speaker. So of course, what starts having issues ? Yep, the speaker is in flake mode. I verified it wasn't the phone using my bluetooth headset. *grumbles* Again, I have a work around (Audible's website), but it's bloody annoying. I like the bluetooth speaker, because I can wander around the apartment with it while doing chores. Feh.

Also, besides Amazon shipping fail, the post office has delayed two other packages due in Saturday. *sigh* But at least they managed to deliver a book of books from a Kickstarter I funded. Yay new book smell.

Otherwise, it's been a pretty lousy weekend. Not dreaming well, stressed and anxious. The holiday foo is getting to me pretty darn hard. Just have to get through the next 4 weeks. Hoping to have a better 2018. I can dream, after all.

As it was written in the Scrolls of Sutekh…

Well it's the weekend again, so it means I should throw some words on virtual paper. Get the brainmeats out of the way quick, being back on seroquel means I'm sleeping more/better, but my anxiety is still way out there. (not expecting immediate fix, I know better). Depression lurks in a ninja kind of way, I see good things, I feel good things, but it leaps out every now and again in a nihilistic kind of way that reminds me that I'm still rather broken. But I've been broken before, and I've put myself together, repeatedly. I am a New Yorker after all, we're survivors.

So enough strum und drang. What is best in life Vulpine? Well, I'm not Conan, so lets start with books. Been reading a bunch of old school Mythos still. Got a pile of other stuff to read, but other than a little history it's all tentaclular horrors. Listened/ing to a few books by Charlie Stross to get in the mood for his latest Laundry File book next month. Not the whole series, just enough to get back in the series. So many books, so little time.

Went to see 'The Mummy' today. A solid bit of cheese, with a side of ham from Russell Crowe. Yes it could have been much better, but it still was fun and Sofia Boutella was a nice mix of creepy, evil, and lovely. Plus, she was literally covered in hieratic script, so a walking book. Sign me up for the cult please. *grin* Also, for any Lovecraftians who've seen it, did anyone look at the red jewel McGuffin and think 'Shining Trapezohedron' ? Or was that just me trying to make everything into a Mythos reference

What will I do tomorrow? Probably just chores and stuff. Been meaning to clean up the bedroom for months now, may just pop an audiobook or podcast in and spend a while in there trying to get things organized. This is alongside a store run, laundry and similar stuff, so I may set reasonable goals instead. Assuming I don't just hide in bed with a book, or within a movie marathon of cheese and gore. We'll see. For now though, going to call this a post before it's technically Sunday. Laters cultists.

The Devil Made Me Film It

Well, after a crazy week of working at Carcosa, I've gladly lazed most of last night and today. The Thursday night maintenance went much better than Tuesday. Less servers, more help, more planning. Still didn't get enough sleep, so come Friday night after work I pretty much ate dinner, and went to bed with a book. Was asleep before 10am, and I pretty much slept til 10am. Had some unpleasant dreams about a former friend, and some weird ones about blood relatives and submarine bases (reading wiki articles on subs probably contributed to the later. Also, somewhere there was sabre fencing. *shakes head* My subconsciousness needs a deep cleaning.

Got up today, got moving. Cleaned out the car finally, went and did critter care, got meds, got packages, and ended up coming home due to a lack of tentacles. Been watching a collection of 'Devil Worship Horror Movies' mostly from the 70's. Epicly cheesy and fun, definitely got my money's worth. Done some chores, done some VM updates, mostly just have been vegging.

My Nexus 5 decided to flake out, so I migrated back to my old 4, and put in a RMA request from the company I bought the 5 from. Very annoying. Glad I hung on the 4 for experimental purposes. Did manage to pull a backup, and reset it to factory default before sending it off. Still a pain in the tentacle.

Ok, going to call this a post, and keep on watching the wild fun of bad movies. Catch you all later.

The Three-Lobed Burning Weekend

Three day weekend. So much yay. Though next week will be kind of crazy making up for extra day off (down side of a contract position). Weekend plans are going to see the new X-Men movie tomorrow, and helping with a certain Amythest organizing a home office. (No, I'm not setting up a minifridge full of Code Red and a Cthulhu statue...not my idea of a home office). Sunday and Monday I'm planning on hermiting mostly, and doing some chores. Mostly down time though. I'm feeling a little kerfrazzled and I think I need me, my bad movies, my computer horde and my books to relax. A little stressed about next week's weird hours and pshrink visit. Given the rough time I've had, I have a feeling we need to tweak my meds. And that's something I dislike, side effect adjustment sucks. But, I could be better. And hopefully I will be quickly.

Otherwise things are decent. Been reading a lot which is kind of a given. History and Cthulhu, it's been a bit of a bonanza the last few weeks with Mythos stuff. Work stuff is good, will be working my first maintenances at Carcosa, the above mentioned weird hours to make up for the day off. Which honestly, I'm looking forward to. I do not like making other people do work that I can do. Silly contract limitations. Not really much else for the week. So I guess I'll call this post done. Probably ramble more tomorrow. Catch you all later.

Thank Cthulhu It’s Friday

Thank Cthulhu it's Friday. The annual Deathcold/Allergy fest kicked in last weekend, but I managed to avoid calling in. The allergies have mostly passed, but I'm now in the middle of the coughing fest that comes along. Not fun. But I've felt much worse in years past.

Carcosa is pretty decent. Was given root access to all the linux instances yesterday, which makes my life easier. Mostly have been dealing with Windows foo still. Somewhere the linux gods are laughing. Did try to get some Nagios foo done today and made a series of oopses that were bloody annoying. I am rather out of practice with Nagios, something I should correct in short order. Also had multiple meetings that were...multiple. Oh well, that's the life of Corporate Cultists.

Came home after work, was originally going to get take out. But after today I really just wanted to come home, and I had plenty of food here. So home I came, got into comfy clothes and cooked up a pot of mac and cheese. Queued up the 'Re-animator' trilogy and I'm vegging here at Château Innsmouth. I was going to do a set of assorted chores, including catching up on the laundry...but I think I'll just be here at the Desk of Doom (tm), and watching movies. Oh yeah, and catching up with the internets that I've missed while working.

I'm doing ok, a little blue, seems I'm losing touch with an old friend, and it makes me sad. Oh well. At least I get to see my besties tomorrow, and watch 'Sharkando 3' and 'Deadpool'. And I have a metric shoggoth load of books, and cheesy horror movies...and oh crap, I never turned on the external disk array on Dagon. Bugger. *scrambles to fix and start the rsync process*. I really, REALLY need to make these things fail with a notification *facetentacle* Oh well, better to catch it now, before horrible things happened. Guess I'll call this a post, and get back to watching backups run, and Dr West reanimate things randomly. Ciao.