Well said. I run a mikrotik router for my main network and use unifi APs throughout my house. Took a lot of tinkering to set up and I learned a lot. Very flexible but more expensive and much harder to learn than a simple all in one setup.

Yup. I had 2 medical procedures that would’ve set me back over $100,000 in the US. In Canada I was miffed that I had to pay for parking during the surgery.

People gotta go watch that scene from The Newsroom.

I’ll link it. It’s true.

https://youtu.be/wTjMqda19wk?si=p-IgIHmjlNOGr8ut

There are lots of places in the world where people have far better quality of life and don’t need to cower in fear of who’s going to try and kill them and their families next.

Any Will Smith movie.

Unraid checking in. 150TB ish. Dual parity for media files on XFS drives. Can lose 2 drives before array data is at risk, and even then if a drive fails, I’d only lose the data on that drive not the entire array.

Important data is on ab encrypted ZFS array which is snapshotted and replicated hourly to a separate backup server and replicated one more time weekly to 3.5” archive drives which are swapped out to a safe deposit box every few months.

I used to use rsync to do it but snapshot replication with sanoid/syncoid does the same thing in a tiny fraction of the time by just sending snapshot deltas rather than having to compare each file.

I agree to a point. I’ve been buying used SAS drives for cheap on eBay. Not a single failure in the dozen or so that I’m running right now in my server. I have a few spares sitting on the shelf just in case but I’m not expecting to use them for some time.

You must be American.

They cost more than a quarter here. Nobody ever leaves money in them. They’re always locked up to get people to pay to unlock them.

Everyone also uses automatic wheel locks on them (a separate device) to disable them from rolling if taken off the lot. I’ve never seen a thief with one.

Where did you get the idea it’s to prevent cart theft? It’s to get people to bring the carts back so they don’t need to pay staff to do it.

Carts that lock their wheels if brought offsite are to prevent theft. No “homeless” (criminal cart stealer) is going to want a cart that doesn’t roll.

Yes they’re all encrypted with LUKS. Using unRAID as my base OS which handles most aspects of the process.

I use an alpakagear hub pouch. Works great for some odds and ends, a knife, flashlight, ballpoint pen, mini sharpie, AirTag, credit cards, and more. Perfect pocket fit for me so far. I always have it on me.

With the amount of stuff you have, a clutch or sling might be a better fit but I find it a bit big.

Snapshots on the file system are instant and can be rolled back or opened in read only mode if you need an older version of the file.

Sending a snapshot through replication is also much faster as the system just sends the snapshot itself which updates the files system in one pass by sending all of the changes made rather than having to compare file by file.

For comparison, using rsync to update my backup with 250,000 files might take 20-30 minutes because it has to check every file on the source and destination to see if it has been modified. Sending a zfs snapshot is 15 seconds because it just sends the differences in one pass.

School days. Kids won’t wake up until the last second.

Weekends they eject from bed at 7am. Same sleep schedule. What gives.

I have a couple of 8TB Seagate SMR drives. They’re slow as sin but perfect for cold storage backups.

One sits in a safe deposit box and the other is in my backup server and gets zfs snapshots replicated to it automatically with sanoid. I swap them out about every six months. My data is very safe.

Main server zfs array with snapshots replicated hourly to backup zfs server, replicated weekly to HD swapped in SD box every 6 months.

It was brutal last year in July and August. Even though I love Japan there’s no chance of me going back in the summer again.

I picked up an Alpaka Hub pouch to carry all my stuff. Absolutely perfect size for me. I’ve got 3 of their products in different sizes and this is my current favourite.

https://alpakagear.com/products/hub-pouch?variant=42192830824610

I carry a 3D printed universal shopping cart unlocker that doesn’t stay in the cart after it’s released. I never carry coins and I still need to shop.

I always bring my carts back though.

Weekdays we allow screen time for about an hour after bath time. Only curated educational and play apps. Absolutely no video, browser, messaging or video chat (kids are both under 6).

They get YouTube kids and Netflix kids enabled accounts on Friday and Saturday evening. Both only allow videos or creators we approve. Search is off.

Everything shuts off at least an hour before bedtime. Any serious arguing or fighting is tech timeout for the whole day or more.

It’s not perfect but it works for the time being. We use an app called Kidslox to manage their devices.

All bets are off for sick days.

Bluey, inspector gadget (my contribution), blaze and the monster machines, true and the rainbow kingdom, ada twist scientist.

I love spending time with my kids. Gonna get all the cuddles I can in before they grow out of that stage.

My daughter says she wants to marry me. 🥰

I told her it’s not possible and she was pretty sad, so I told her she needs to find someone who loves her and treasures her as much as dad does (a very tall order). If the person she likes doesn’t live up to those standards then they’re not the right person for her and move on.

I did have to lay down the law pretty firmly to my no wife no kids coworkers who love to live at the office. Family always takes priority over work crap.

I’ve been using renewed (refurbished) 8TB drives off of Ebay - SAS 8TB for $50-60 each. Not a single failure in over a year on the dozen or so drives I’m running right now. I’m running unRAID with a combination of unRAID’s native array drives (for media and “disposable” stuff) in a dual parity config, and ZFS (with snapshots replicated to a live backup on a secondary server) for important personal stuff (and backed-up off-site a few times a year).

Even if something were to perish, I have enough spares to just chuck one in and let it resilver without worrying at all. I’m content with this as a homelabber and when I’m not supplying critical service for a business, etc.

Just wish they were more affordable. The only reason for the crazy pricing is that it’s what big companies can afford to pay rather than home labbers. They’re not all that complex compared to other mass market tech.