Doing housework, tying up loose ends, and prepping for a massive server upgrade & connectivity trouble-shooting this Saturday.

I mowed the lawn yesterday, next time I have to do that should be Friday night. My reel-style mower is working out quite nicely! Granted, I’m not bagging the clippings (that’s too much of a pain) but they’re getting chopped up enough that they don’t just lay on top. This mower was cheaper than a powered mower, has fewer parts that can fail, has greatly reduced maintnance demands, and doesn’t require any fuel to operate. Not to mention, I get a nice workout (it’s not much worse than just walking, really) everytime I mow. I did have to mow twice last night, as the grass was nearly 7 inches tall in places. That required setting the mower as high as it would go, cutting it, then readjusting it to the normal setting and mowing all the clippings laying on top + the height difference. I’m getting pretty good at doing this quickly though — I found out the key secret to using this kind of mower: You don’t have to keep the blades going fast, you just have to keep them going.

So tonight it’ll be dinner with the gf, then probably off to Lowes to get the rest of the stuff to finish up the electrical outlet work in the small bedroom I just redid. I plan on doing that tonight or tomorrow.

As for the server upgrades I mentioned…

I’ve got an AMI megaRAID controller I’ll be dropping into the server, and setting up to use RAID 5 across three new 36GB 10k discs I picked up. Oh, and we’ll be trying out 800mhz P3′s instead of the existing 733′s.
I’ll also be poking around my NID outside with my DSL modem and cell phone handy with customer support. I need to figure out if my line noise issues are internal to my house or external. If they’re internal, I’ll be dropping a CAT5 line direct from the NID to the wiring closet. If this works, it’ll eliminate the line nose, and I’ll be able to bump my modem out of safe mode… I hope it works.

Before this all happens though, I’ve got to finish up the trim work around the server rack and paint the closet. I’ll also be spending a few hours this week setting nails and puttying up the wood work in both bedrooms that I’ve redone. I may start attacking the wood in the master bathroom and bedroom next week. That room is next on my list. I can do those rooms cheaply, as I don’t think there’s anything major that needs replaced. Maybe a light fixture or two, or a little trim here and there.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 18th, 2006 at 12:49 pm and is filed under Core Dump. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.