Wow…summer is almost over. Three more weeks until school starts again.
Need to spend more time putting pictures up from some of the trips we have done. I think there is time to squeeze another visit to the beach before school starts up, but we will see.
One of the projects I have been working on is taking over web hosting for an organization I volunteer with. The old hosting was with a former member at his hosting company, but he is retiring as of the end of July, so I stepped up to host it. Some of the code used has not been updated in a while, and one of my first projects on it will be to wrap it into a more modern frame-work so other people can help maintain the site.
In other random news (hence the title), FreeBSD has released on schedule FreeBSD 11.0B3. I heard in passing on BSDNow that this release might work on the Thinkpad x260. If you remember from my last post, that I was in the market for a repalcement machine. Well, I found a really good deal on an new-in-the-box x260, and picked it up for around 1/4 the retail. The only thing it is currently missing is a back-light on the keyboard, but I am okay with it for now. Battery life under Linux has been awesome without any tuning. I can easly get 10+ hours in my testing, and I have not run the batteries dead yet. The only two issues with FreeBSD on the x260 that I know about is the lack of suspend/resume (general issue with Skylake), and the fact the Intel 8260 wireless card is not yet supported, but it seems like someone is working on that!
At some point in the near future, I will have to rethink the mail situation. Do I really need to roll my own, or can I use a third party?
So, in the last couple of weeks, I have had the following issues:
The CMOS battery dies on my file-server (a FreeNAS box), taking it, and the zpools down with it. I fought over a long weekend to recover the data, and in the end, got it mounted read-only, and copied it off. New hardware, and new zpools, and we seem to be going again. Recovering services is taking a bit of time.
There is a bug with the ZFS on Root for Antergos Linux. Seems that it does not put all the kernel drivers in the init image when you upgrade. Last time, I booted off the instal media to fix it. I lost that USB stick, so I downloaded a new one. Guess what? They have turned that feature off ZFS, so there is no way to recover. Since FreeBSD still does not support suspend/resume on the Acer C720 that is my small travel laptop, I have to reinstall Antergos and reload my data. Which I had to do because
My main laptop, the HP R810G1 seems to be having major battery issues. I bought a new battery in Novembers, and it died. I bought a new one a couple of weeks ago, and it at first did not seem to be holding a charge. Now, the OS does not see the battery. I think I might need a ’new’ laptop.
I am torn between getting something one or two reves old with a solid record in the size I want (sub 13", under 1" thin, and good 6+ hours of battery) or the latest shiny.
Other news, I have the ownCloud server upgraded to nesxtcloud, and everything I have tried works out of the box, which is a lot more than I can say for ownCloud. Last major thing I need to recover it the Plex Server!
Many, many, many years ago, I went to a comic/game convention in Austin. This was pre-internet, and really pre-console gaming, so the games were all table top type. Steve Jackson Games was prototyping something called ‘Car Wars’. Pretty cool stuff.
But, I never really had a chance to go back to one. Until this year. This past weekend, we went to SpaceCity Comic Con 2016. It was a hoot. Learned a few things (pay for the tickets at the door, as the line was way shorter; don’t leave the food area with food and expect them to let you back in; silly things like that).
I also took my camera with me to get pics of the kids, and I tried to do some shots of cosplayers. Not bad for my first attempt. The results are here.
EDIT : Sadly, this Con has closed and is now gone.