In the garden, and RAIN!!! (2) by SIGNYM

Out in a bit on a confused weather day. Sun is out but around clouds. Will take umbrella in case and wear my jacket. Stupid weather.

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Tuesday, May 12, 2026 3:49 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Still going as full-on as I can manage.

SIX, your decluttering is a thing of awesomeness!

I hope to follow your example.

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

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Tuesday, May 12, 2026 4:32 PM

Hehe...

It doesn't feel awesome while I'm doing it. To pack up all the trash and get it outside would have only taken me 20 minutes, but the whole round took two very long days.

It's really nice having all that crap up off the floor and most of it outside staged for trash pickup now.

Maybe I'll get a little painting done today. I dunno though. Been running around here like a chicken with its head cut off for a few days and it's dark and gloomy outside.

I might just mess around on the computer today. Initial backup tests were a failure. After spending a few days moving things and trying to set up a 2nd computer with everything backed up brick-by-brick isn't going to work because of 2 external forces I wasn't aware of until I tried doing it that way.

I've managed to clear off a 500GB hard drive for a cloning procedure which is about 90% done with the 2nd verification step.

Assuming that works as planned, I need to then make some adjustments that I was afraid of messing with when I only had one working system. Once that's done, I'm going to be creating a disk image to clone other drives with, and I should get the result I'm looking for. I'm also in the process of cleaning a 2nd 500GB hard drive for a 3rd test when all of that is done.

ETA: The good news is that even done the wrong way, a majority of my stuff works. I'm also able to make great use of a computer my dad gave me to throw away a few years ago. I'd never seen such a bargain-bin DELL computer before. I knew it was a low-end mini-tower and I wasn't expecting much inside, but I was shocked when I saw the laptop-style plug to it with just a little nobby that goes into the back. This thing is so low power it doesn't even need a power supply.

That thing turned out to be a great way to test this stuff out. It was damn near worthless if you were trying to run Windows on it even back in 2024 or whenever I got it, but it flies with Linux installed. It's still too low-powered to really do much with my stuff, but it will give me valuable data for testing and should aid in the cloning process until I have the final image.

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Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Tuesday, May 12, 2026 5:29 PM

Heh....

This is where the limitations of my outdated tech really begin to show themselves.

There are more than a few.

I forgot I had a lot of things pointing to my stupid-huge hard drive when it got to be too much data for these little 500GB drives I've been working with, so I kind of spooked myself with the initial results after the clone until I remembered that.

If I had a few spare 1TB drives and everything here was USB3.0, I'd be getting all of this done so much quicker. Now I get to see over the network what went wrong this time. At least network navigation shouldn't be slower than usual while I'm doing it.

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Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Tuesday, May 12, 2026 5:58 PM

All outside stuff done for today and I really didn't need my jacket and I sure didn't need my umbrella.

Got some papers put away that weren't order. Straightened them out but still more to deal with.

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Tuesday, May 12, 2026 6:35 PM

Man... Symlinks are tricky. (Linux's "System Links", the otherwise vastly superior alternative to Windows shortcuts).

I actually had quite a few more in there by the time I was finished than I thought I'd added. They have become a problem during the clone process, but I just finally figured out not nearly as big of an issue as I feared until only about 5 minutes ago.

The thing is, they're COMPLETELY invisible to end users in Windows. Even when using WinSCP or another FTP program. It's as if they simply don't exist at all.

So what's the problem?

Well... I need those folder locations. A ton of data is built around specific media and data being in very specific folders. So when I try to copy over either legit files, or 0kb dummy files with the full name and extention as placeholders for the huge files on small drives, I don't like seeing Windows give some generic error about the files that I'm trying to copy no longer existing on the drive that I'm trying to copy them from.

Now that I know what's actually going on, I don't believe that is what it was saying, but you can tell that I'm way far enough down the rabbit hole that the people at Windows didn't bother putting the Dummy Gloss over the weeds that nobody but me is likely to get themselves tangled up in.

I finally broke down and had a look at it from the Linux side and yep... There they are. In every place where I'm missing data, it's because I was using Symlinks to the stupid-huge drive for big stuff.

And even though Symlinks are completely invisible in Windows, they're still very much there. Broken Symlinks that point to a huge hard drive that doesn't even exist on this new computer, sharing the exact same name as the folders I need to make.

So I just have to find all of them now and delete them before putting the actual bits I need there for the "Torso".

As frustrating as all this is, I'm really glad I'm doing all of it.

Because of my old tech, my cheap data plan and no ability to maintain a server on my end, things are going to have to go out peacemeal. I already knew that and I've planned ahead for it. The idea is to have everything modular and extremely easy to fit together on the other end.

Like Voltron.

But when all you've left yourself is male ends on everything, nothing joins up.

Oopsie.

At least I figured it out. After the first method of trying to do this failed, I kind of put all my eggs in this cloning basket because I don't have a 3rd idea.

Everything else appears to be fine so far, if not a little slow on this ancient piece of tech (from 2014, I just discovered). Hopefully I'll get to the point where I'm making the final clone image before crashing out.

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Tuesday, May 12, 2026 9:15 PM

Yuck....

Just finished getting some 20 year old soda sugar off my fingers and then I get a good dose of battery acid on them.

I found 4 wireless game joystics in my attic I only vaguely remember buying back when I was at my last good job. Probably stopped using them only because they take AA batteries and aren't rechargable. I was amazed after all these years how well the first one I tried worked, and how easily the system recognized it. I didn't have to dig online for drivers or anything, which was pretty surprising to me considering it's wireless.

Then I tried the 2nd one and the buttons felt like they were glued together with honey. I managed to take it apart and clean it up and put it all back together without breaking anything and now I've got two that work like new without any failed buttons. Sticky all over on the inside. I don't think the fact that the area around the 4 buttons was concave and was basically just a bowl to hold liquid spilled on it until it had time to get inside the controller helped here.

I was drinking pretty heavy back then so I don't want to blame it on my brother, but that doesn't seem like something I would have done.

Leaving batteries in them is though. I opened up the 3rd controller and the Rayovacs insdie exploded all over the place to the point that it was just falling out and onto the floor. Lucky for me, the Duracells I had in the one in the first pair that didn't need cleaning were still intact. You get what you pay for.

I have to test out the other of the two seemingly identical USB recievers and see if it works with this pair. The two sets of controllers are very different, but both of the recievers appear to be exactly the same. I thought maybe they both worked on all 4 controllers, but maybe I just won the initial coin toss and I was using the right reciever for the right pair the first time around.

If I can't get the one that doesn't have battery acid all over it to work, I'm just going to throw both of them out and that will be an easy decision. But if it works, I'm probably going to spend some time tomorrow in the daylight trying to revive the other one.

These things are actually really high quality besides the fact you need batteries for them. I wasn't such a cheapskate back then, so that makes sense. If I can get all these working I'll have 2 backups, but in the meantime it's 2 less cords to trip over in the living room. I've got a nice set of rechargable duracells with 8 AA batteries too, so if I actually wanted to use these things it shouldn't be a big deal.

Nice.

Maybe I'll go through those Kindles tonight too and see which ones I'm going to keep and which I'm going to give away. I don't think I feel like messing with the Fire Sticks right now though. I have a feeling that just testing those out is going to be a PITA.

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Tuesday, May 12, 2026 10:47 PM

Cool. I won't feel guilty about not cleaning out all that battery acid.

I vaguely remembered having wireless Playstation 2 controllers around that point, and these are those (they??? them???)...

That being said, I don't even know where my old PS2 is packed up right now and the receiver dongles might be packed in with that since I double checked and they were not with these controllers. That means that even though these controllers are capable of working on any PC, you can't actually connect them to a PC without an adapter that may or may not exist or some heavy physical modifications I'm not going to be doing.

And I haven't played the PS2 in so long I don't even remember having it unpacked since I've lived here, so it's not like I'm in desperate need of a controller for it where I'd spend hours trying to clean the acid off of it without even being able to test that I fixed it. No thanks. Just more trash is all...

Oh, and I found a DVD player in that crappy old computer that I could remove without leaving a gaping hole in the face plate since the computer had a door for it that stays closed unless the drive pushes it open, so now that thing is super lightweight.

Technically not really junk out of my house though since I plan on giving this thing away anyhow. It will never have need of that drive again, so I just removed it and tossed it out.

Maybe I'll try to get to bed at a reasonable hour tonight. I don't know. I've got a few more hours of actual hand-on work prepping that drive for what will hopefully be my final image, but after that it's just waiting around and I'm running out of other things I'd want to be doing when it's dark outside. I think all I really have is sorting through those kindles and fire sticks on the side at the moment, unless I want to go down in the cold basement and do some more painting.

I dunno... See where the night takes me I guess.

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Tuesday, May 12, 2026 10:55 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Hehe...

It doesn't feel awesome while I'm doing it. To pack up all the trash and get it outside would have only taken me 20 minutes, but the whole round took two very long days.

Is that all???

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

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Tuesday, May 12, 2026 11:00 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by Brenda:
All outside stuff done for today and I really didn't need my jacket and I sure didn't need my umbrella.

Got some papers put away that weren't order. Straightened them out but still more to deal with.

Oh. Paperwork. I hate it. (And yet, curiously, that's what my last job was. I have much rather been wrenching on an instrument.)

I'm planning on doing that when the weather gets too hot for yardwork.
Or, whenever.

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

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Tuesday, May 12, 2026 11:39 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Not a Linux whiz like hubby. My workplace was a Microsoftshop, so a lot of what you posted went by me. But I felt your pain about broken linkies!

My group had a portion of a server, and that's where we stored our data and did our calculations and checked each other's work (we also kept final signed hard copies for the legal beagles). Some of our final reports required input from six or seven different chemists/ instruments, and we had to be able to backtrack from final report all the way thru each analysis to original sample and calibration data. We NEVER EVER used links, bc they were so easily broken! It took a very disciplined system of directories, subdirectories, and filenames to unambiguously and uniquely name each file in a backtrackable fashion. I think it would have been easier in Linux.

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

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Wednesday, May 13, 2026 12:01 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Originally posted by Brenda:
All outside stuff done for today and I really didn't need my jacket and I sure didn't need my umbrella.

Got some papers put away that weren't order. Straightened them out but still more to deal with.

Oh. Paperwork. I hate it. (And yet, curiously, that's what my last job was. I have much rather been wrenching on an instrument.)

I'm planning on doing that when the weather gets too hot for yardwork.
Or, whenever.

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

Yeah, stuff that got mashed together and I have just now been able to straighten out. Which is good.

May get to more tomorrow. Shall see what I feel like doing.

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Wednesday, May 13, 2026 12:04 AM

Had a bit of thunder and lighting storm around me at supper. No rain but I did see between 3 or 4 flashes of lighting but not much thunder.

Really have to replace the batteries in my bedside radio. Was going to last night and forgot.

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Wednesday, May 13, 2026 12:15 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

The weather was PERFECT for yardwork!

So after I got done with family tasks, I headed out with my reciprocating saw, loppers, and pruners.

I know I really should have finished cutting down the rest of the palms, but I wanted to do a little bit more rosebush cleanup, and I just couldn't stop.
I'm sure you know how that goes, SIX!

Well. I ALMOST got thru clipping and yanking a lot of dead crap out, but then I had to take dog for her walk. Just a little more to go! And then I have to decide: do I rake, chop and bin up? Or continue with the palms?

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

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Wednesday, May 13, 2026 12:43 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Hehe...

It doesn't feel awesome while I'm doing it. To pack up all the trash and get it outside would have only taken me 20 minutes, but the whole round took two very long days.
Is that all???

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

Oh... we could stretch it through the whole summer if we wanted to, I'm sure. Especially if we get the garage back in the mix.

I'm trying to behave myself though. I already avoided working on the house for about 2 years with one project. Don't need to totally derail it with another one now.

There was just a lot of things that I was finally able to get rid of that made this worthwhile. I haven't built a PC in over 10 years, and chances are a lot of the stuff I had which was already aging back then wouldn't even be used in building a PC today if I did, so why am I holding on to all of it?

Just keep one or two decent cables of each type and a huge box becomes an afterthought.

And it's nice finally getting down to business with all of this tech that I've accepted when other people were getting rid of stuff. Your best intentions are nothing but a big mess until you do something with them.

SPeaking of which... I have a very big stash of what is now ancient tech but wasn't when I first moved here that I intended on making things to gift to other people. I probably could have gotten away with that 7 years ago when I dehoarded and kept them, but they stayed up there another 7 years and meanwhile tech has really moved on and it would be much easier to make similar things that just worked better, took up less shelf space, and used a lot less power, without spending all that much money.

That's probably another 5 or 6 huge boxes I can get rid of once I go through it all. I'm going to keep a couple of those for myself when I figure out what still even works and what doesn't, and get rid of all the rest of it.

I think between that, what I've already done, and getting the 3 or so boxes of speakers out the the garage with the Denon reciever for my jams, I will have already gotten rid of or made use of half of the things I was still holding onto up here.

The only reason I don't feel guilty about doing this dehoarding while I'm working on the computer right now is because of how unseasonably cold it still is around here. But I've got more pressing issues to work on than this. I can go through a bag of clothes every day or two while working on other stuff, but I can't keep making every day a dehoard focus.

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Wednesday, May 13, 2026 12:59 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Not a Linux whiz like hubby. My workplace was a Microsoftshop, so a lot of what you posted went by me. But I felt your pain about broken linkies!

I'm sure you've run into a broken shortcut for one reason or another before. It's either annoying because your program is borked or because when you removed a program it didn't clean up after itself.

We tend to take for granted how great shortcuts are, but in Linux those Symbolic Links are just Next Level.

Let's say I have a folder on a large remote drive that has over 1 Terrabyte of data that is too huge to be on the main system drive but you want to use it as if it were all on a single drive. All you have to do is create a Symbolic Link where you want the folder to be found and point it to where the folder actually is. Once you've done this, for all intents and purposes it behaves exactly as if that 1TB folder and all of its sub-folders are right there on the Main Drive. This holds true even if you're using an FTP program to get into it from a computer running Windows. As far as Windows and the FTP program are concerned, that is all one big drive and that 1TB folder is just a part of it.

But then you clone a drive which is located on a different computer without that massive hard drive where all the Symbolic Links were pointing and you've got a problem. If you FTP into it from the Windows computer, none of it is there anymore at all. And you don't see the Symlink either. But if you try to create a new folder with the name of the folder that the Symlink is pointing to, Windows throws some weird errors (either about the file already being there, or the file no longer existing from the place you're trying to copy from). You can't delete the Symlink from Windows/FTP because Windows doesn't even acknowledge that it exists.

When I saw the pattern where it was happening, it dawned on me what the problem was and sure enough in every spot where this problem was happening it's because I had a symbolic link pointing to that big drive.

I'm actually really glad that this annoying thing happened. I didn't exactly plan on getting a crash course from myself about how to set up my thing from scratch. I didn't exactly assume it was going to just work without any problems either. Just doing things the way I was doing them to get it ready to work on other machines necessitated it and here we are. And if I hadn't started the dehoarding both online and off, I wouldn't have remembered I had this ancient computer to kick all the code around with as if I were somebody else setting it all up with what they were given. I wouldn't have finally rotated drives around to the point where I've got two 500GB and two 256GB external drives I didn't have a few weeks ago around to help me move all sorts of stuff around physically when I'm already maxing out the wifi. (I literally just finished pulling out an additional 500GB SSD that I was wasting away inside of a computer backing up something that doesn't even need to be backed up that can now be a high speed external boot operating system or whatever I want to make with it after I'm done with the digital dehoarding).

Now what I have to do with the project is fix all of the bad Symlinks and make sure that all the modular parts will fit together when they're acquired on the other end. People can either make up their mind to use one very large drive, or they can create their own symbolic links if they don't. That's out of my hands. But I want everything to be plug 'n play before people start forking off and doing their own thing.

Quote:
My group had a portion of a server, and that's where we stored our data and did our calculations and checked each other's work (we also kept final signed hard copies for the legal beagles). Some of our final reports required input from six or seven different chemists/ instruments, and we had to be able to backtrack from final report all the way thru each analysis to original sample and calibration data. We NEVER EVER used links, bc they were so easily broken! It took a very disciplined system of directories, subdirectories, and filenames to unambiguously and uniquely name each file in a backtrackable fashion. I think it would have been easier in Linux.

It was probably a chore for all of you, but that type of work sounds right up my alley.

I hear ya on the links. I'm living it right now.

I simply had to use them because of my situation, but they waited until the very end to rear their ugly little heads on me.

They almost got away with it too...

Almost.

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Wednesday, May 13, 2026 1:59 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Brenda:
Had a bit of thunder and lighting storm around me at supper. No rain but I did see between 3 or 4 flashes of lighting but not much thunder.

Really have to replace the batteries in my bedside radio. Was going to last night and forgot.

Are the batteries in there to make sure the alarm still works in a power outage, or do you listen to the radio while using batteries, Brenda?

That sounds quite expensive.

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Wednesday, May 13, 2026 4:07 AM

I always underestimate how long things are going to take. Just finally got to backing up that (hopefully) final image now.

I've got some other images I will be making later, but those are just for me and my preferences, now that I'll finally be able to use it at my leisure and break off from the neutral state.

Didn't even look at those Kindles yet... Probably not a bad idea to have two days go by after charging to see if any of them lost the charge real quick anyhow.

I think I've got to get back to doing at least a little painting tomorrow. Except for disposal, the curio cabinet and the part of the dehoard I was doing is all cleaned up and finished. I'm pretty sure anything I'll be doing on the computer in the next few days now will mostly be setting things to run that don't need babysitting, and just being aware of the passage of time so I don't lose hours that could have been spent moving things along.

I'm sure I can at least prime the back side of all the pieces I did the other day. Maybe paint that cabinet trim to match the vanity and get it ready for measurements and cuts. That's got to be the first thing done so I can put a final coat of paint on the inside and get the drawer slides back up and ready for when the drawers are finished. I probably won't put a final coat on the outside of the vanity until I'm done painting the ceiling and the walls.

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Wednesday, May 13, 2026 5:34 AM

I got one process running on one rig that will probably take 12 hours and another on a 2nd rig that will be busy for days. It's unfortunate that I can't start 2 others that I still have the resources available for, but both of those things can't be done until the first one is done, and that first one has a 2nd part that will take at least a few more hours once the 12 hour part is done. I think I know a way to move some things around where I can at least get started on the first of the two other processes when part 1 is done.

Most things I do don't require any hardware all that powerful, but it's times like these where I really feel how old my tech is. Not that any of this would be lightning fast if I had top shelf new stuff, but instead of talking hours and days we'd only be talking minutes and hours. Oh well... Everything's Eventual. What's a few days when I've already spent all this time on it?

Yup...

Going to have to find something else to do with all that downtime. I don't imagine I'll have to look very far.

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Wednesday, May 13, 2026 1:24 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by Brenda:
Had a bit of thunder and lighting storm around me at supper. No rain but I did see between 3 or 4 flashes of lighting but not much thunder.

Really have to replace the batteries in my bedside radio. Was going to last night and forgot.

Are the batteries in there to make sure the alarm still works in a power outage, or do you listen to the radio while using batteries, Brenda?

That sounds quite expensive.

--------------------------------------------------

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

Batteries are in but I just use the radio to listen to music. I have no alarm clocks around me anymore. I usually wake up early and look at the clock to see if I can catch a little more sleep. Also I have to other clocks that are battery powered in case of an outage. Also this building has a generator that kicks in case of outages.

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Wednesday, May 13, 2026 1:24 PM

Out in a bit bottle recycling to do. Need umbrella for sure looking at the sky and jacket.

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Wednesday, May 13, 2026 3:13 PM

Damn man... Let that process run overnight, saw it was finished when I woke up, and now I can't do anything with it. It's just a 512GB block of unusable crap. It was from a bootable drive, but the programs I'm looking to write it back to a new disk warn me there is no boot sector in the image.

Part of me thinks the file is actually good, but Windows is getting all screwed up since there are Linux partitions on it too. I think it might be possible to convert this image to a another format and I might have more luck, but the amount of time it would take to learn how to do that and then test it only to see it fail isn't worth trying. I've got to just try a different ripping program. I don't even want to take the time to try and write this image to another disk since I can't find anybody online telling me what's going on in my particular situation.

I vaguely remember having this issue a long while back, but I was only messing with 32GB thumb sticks at the time. If something failed, I knew about in 30 minutes, not 12 hours. It's kind of hard to do my preferred method of trial and error with that much downtime between attempts.

I had no problem creating a complete clone of a hard drive the other night. That worked perfectly. If I had just one more 500GB drive I could be working on other things while I was doing this, but I can't do anything until this image is made and tested out.

Says it's going to be about another 12 hours now, so I guess I should find something else to do.

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Wednesday, May 13, 2026 5:13 PM

Back and done. Got spat on a little bit and the sun is out now.

I hate blip seizures. Those are the ones when I am only gone for a second or so but it is enough time to screw things up in a post. Happened this morning on Face Book.

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Wednesday, May 13, 2026 5:57 PM

Man... I'm glad I decided to do something else or I would have really been burned now. After my 12 hour failure of a backup attempt last night, Windows decided it wanted in on the action. I hate, hate, hate, hate, modern Windows. I barely ever use Windows on that computer but I've been using it for these backups, so yesterday it told me it had a 6 minute update that took about an hour long and FIVE FREAKIN' RESTARTS. So you think it would be done updating, but over 3 hours into this backup process I decided to check on it and I walked right in to the boot screen with Windows starting up again.

No explanation. No nothing. So I have no idea what actually happened. I can only assume that it was another forced Windows update that pays absolutely ZERO attention to what you were doing on your computer.

At least this time it appears to be backing it up faster. I couldn't understand why it was taking 12 hours to back it up the first two times when that's probably how long it took to clone the first drive and verify the clone before I started making images.

Now the total time is around 5.5 hours remaining on this attempt. If I can at least verify it's a good image and does what I want to after I write it, I can finally move on. Unless I'm up all night again tonight, I won't know the answer to that until tomorrow probably.

I cut all the trim for the vanity to size and dry fit it. It was all primed already so I threw a coat of dark gray on it. I'm going to paint the first coat on the above-toilet cabinet right now, then I'll probably clean up that paint and get back to priming the back sides of everything I did the other day that wasn't cabinet trim. I'll probably have the first coat of paint on half of the stuff before I'm done today.

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Wednesday, May 13, 2026 8:23 PM

Two coats of paint on all the cabinet trim so that's ready to install so I can put the final coat inside the vanity and get those drawer slides back on. I went ahead and painted the toilet cabinet too, since I already had that color paint out.

Before going back to primer the backs of all of those pieces, I thought to also cut the piece of trim going back up under the windowsill to size so I'm not wasting time and paint on stuff that's getting cut off and trashed. I also wanted to be able to prime both sides right now and I couldn't do that if it wasn't cut first.

I would have probably been close to done priming everything else, but remembered I had a few scrips to pick up and I could use a little more variety in my food so I just got back from some errands.

Still not even 60% on that backup image, but at least Windows hasn't reset on me in the middle of it this time so far. It's already well over 200GB now, so yeah... that old image was cancelled by Windows after only 113GB and was just bad. I know I can make a good backup image with Aeomi, but that's paid software and I don't want anybody to have to buy or pirate it just to get this working, so I'm limited to free tools. From what I've read, this Win 32 program should be what I'm looking for. Still won't know for probably at least a few hours though.

I don't have any more big pieces ready for primer or paint yet since I still have another half day or more of sanding outside ahead of me, so all I'll be doing with the primer this time is hitting the backs of the drawer faces and doors. If I remember I'll hit the windowsill with another coat since I appear to have a little bit of bleed-through action going on there when there wasn't anywhere else. To be fair, I probably could have done a better job sanding that down before primer, but I was really trying not to make too big of a mess on the 2nd floor with the dust.

And my old man surprised me and called me on day 3 of his trip, so we got to talk a while about what he's done so far and what he's going to be doing. That was nice.

Well... back to work. These pieces won't paint themselves.

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Wednesday, May 13, 2026 9:56 PM

Noooooooooooooooooo...

I was making a backup of the wrong 500GB drive all this time. Just caught it now at 83% complete. Ugh.... That's what happens when you spin a bunch of plates at once.

Oh well... better than WRITING to the wrong 500GB drive.

Crap. Now it's showing 8.5 hours. Probably because there's a ton of data and it's not cloning a blank drive. I have no idea why it was taking over 5 hours to clone an empty drive, but that's what it was doing. This is why it was so frustrating when I realized that the data I had was just 30GB or so too much to fit on a 256GB hard drive. Unless I used premium software to create an image which would require anybody using it on the other end to also have that expensive, premium software, it's going to clone the entire drive including blank space and just treat it as if it weren't. I can put that in a 7zip archive and shrink it down considerably on my end for storage when I know it's a good image, but that doesn't help me shave down the time it takes to make these images.

Nice surprise to come back up to after finishing primer when I thought I only had 45 minutes left to wait.

At least I'm kind of feeling the paint again now. I wasn't feeling it the last couple of days while I was de-hoarding, and I wasn't feeling it when I woke up today either. But now that the primer is finished, I'm thinking I may be painting the first sides of all of the stuff down there, and I'll probably put the 2nd coat on the toilet cabinet while I've already got a brush to clean up. I've got a few days to make up for.

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Wednesday, May 13, 2026 11:12 PM

Doctor's appointment for me tomorrow and probably mah jong after. Then a couple of other things after.

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Wednesday, May 13, 2026 11:37 PM

Good luck with both, Brenda.

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Wednesday, May 13, 2026 11:44 PM

Installed the trim for inside the vanity. I love it that the junk tube of caulk my friend got rid of is still working for me now. I got all that trim around the stairs a few months ago with it and now these 5 pieces too. Will have enough to get the outside stuff up when I'm ready for it. I'm going to wait on putting that stuff up though until I give the walls at least one coat of paint and get in the corner there real good. No reason to put trim up on the cab to the wall if I still have to paint there. That's just making a few new extra hard to reach corners that I don't have to deal with now.

So I got that opening in the wall framed out nicely so you don't see rough cut drywall anymore, and I put one piece on the bottom at the back where the shelf didn't reach all the way to the wall. It should keep anything small from falling back there. I decided against bothering with the sides on the inside since they don't look bad and once I've capped off the outside there won't be any daylight getting in there anymore.

Now I can paint 1 face of everything loose in the basement, give the toilet cab a 2nd coat of paint and do the 3rd and final inside coat in the vanity so I can put the drawer slides back in and be ready for those drawers.

I'm really trying to get all that done and the thing closed up again before I give myself another haircut. I'm not ready yet, but I'm almost due.

EDIT: Loose pieces and second coat on the toilet cabinet done. Just gotta do the interior of the vanity.

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Thursday, May 14, 2026 3:21 AM

Finished painting the 3rd coat inside and on the front of the vanity. Not going to do the side until I get the trim up there tomorrow. I went ahead and took out the lighter color after wiping down the walls all around the sink basin and vanity so I could cut in the lighter grey color all around it and I can install the outer trim.

The basin wasn't exactly put on the straightest. I've never actually noticed that before even the few times I gave it a really good clean down over the years. It's funny what you do notice when you get this intimate with it. I have to keep all that in mind when I think of other people noticing things too. They won't notice that. No reason to lose sleep over it.

But I will be hiding the worst of that tomorrow with the trim. Originally I was just going to put one piece in the back to the wall to hide the roughly 1/4" to 3/8" gap between the back of the vanity and the wall, but when I noticed the gap toward the back of the basin and the vanity I decided to frame it out on top and the bottom too. I don't need to frame in the front because the face of the vanity extends past the wall. It's all painted and ready to put up whenever I feel like it now. I was going to cut away the tile flooring before putting that frame in, but decided against it. I'm going to cut all that out when I'm ready for ceramic tile, and any minor damage at the bottom of the trim when I cut out the vinyl is going to be covered by mortar since the ceramic tiles are so much thicker anyhow.

I suppose if I'm feeling it tomorrow I'll wash down the walls with TSP, take out my shelf for my razor, cut out the wall anchors where my old towel rack used to be and I can patch all of those holes too. I'm excited about getting primer up now because I'm finally seeing what this is going to look like when it's done.

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Thursday, May 14, 2026 1:09 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Dbl

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Thursday, May 14, 2026 1:12 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Man... I'm glad I decided to do something else or I would have really been burned now. After my 12 hour failure of a backup attempt last night, Windows decided it wanted in on the action. I hate, hate, hate, hate, modern Windows. I barely ever use Windows on that computer but I've been using it for these backups, so yesterday it told me it had a 6 minute update that took about an hour long and FIVE FREAKIN' RESTARTS. So you think it would be done updating, but over 3 hours into this backup process I decided to check on it and I walked right in to the boot screen with Windows starting up again.

No explanation. No nothing. So I have no idea what actually happened. I can only assume that it was another forced Windows update that pays absolutely ZERO attention to what you were doing on your computer.

At least this time it appears to be backing it up faster. I couldn't understand why it was taking 12 hours to back it up the first two times when that's probably how long it took to clone the first drive and verify the clone before I started making images.

Now the total time is around 5.5 hours remaining on this attempt. If I can at least verify it's a good image and does what I want to after I write it, I can finally move on. Unless I'm up all night again tonight, I won't know the answer to that until tomorrow probably.

I cut all the trim for the vanity to size and dry fit it. It was all primed already so I threw a coat of dark gray on it. I'm going to paint the first coat on the above-toilet cabinet right now, then I'll probably clean up that paint and get back to priming the back sides of everything I did the other day that wasn't cabinet trim. I'll probably have the first coat of paint on half of the stuff before I'm done today.

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I totally understand!

Imagine taking a day to prep a bunch of samples and standards, loading them up on an autosampler for a 24 hour a day 3- day run, and having your computer updated on day 2.5, and having to start all over again. On top of that, it wasn't even an automatic update, it was pushed by our IT Dept. (The guy running the dept is a real bonehrad)

I feel your pain!

GC MSD with tower autosampler

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

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Thursday, May 14, 2026 3:10 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Oh BTW SIX... it took me maybe 4 hours but my mission was to cut down every single effing palm seedling and sapling. Felt very satisfied with myself when I put away my pruners and pocket reciprocating saw and gloves.

So I went inside to do dishes and fix dinner, and what do you suppose I saw from the kitchen window, peeking out from behind the avocado tree?

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

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Thursday, May 14, 2026 4:52 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I totally understand!

Imagine taking a day to prep a bunch of samples and standards, loading them up on an autosampler for a 24 hour a day 3- day run, and having your computer updated on day 2.5, and having to start all over again. On top of that, it wasn't even an automatic update, it was pushed by our IT Dept. (The guy running the dept is a real bonehrad)

I feel your pain!

GC MSD with tower autosampler

Uggh... I'm assuming at least that the bosses understood?

Windows IS the bonehead from HR now. It just does what it wants to, when it wants to. I find myself disconnecting from the internet whenever I don't need it. Especially on my alt computers like the one I've been doing all the heavy lifting with right now.

The other day when I did that "6 minute" update, it was because I needed to exit Windows and bring up Linux, but it left me with no ability to just restart the computer without updating, so that became a whole process.

Annoying as that is, forcing an update I didn't approve right in the middle of a 9 hour disk backup is completely unacceptable.

Nice system you had there. Dated as it is now, I bet it would be a lot faster than what I've got to work with at the moment.

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Thursday, May 14, 2026 4:53 PM

Doctor's appointment went okay. Got everything straight that I need too but he wasn't too sure about something I asked.

No mah jong for me as I was too late and they had already started playing. Maybe next week.

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Thursday, May 14, 2026 4:55 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Oh BTW SIX... it took me maybe 4 hours but my mission was to cut down every single effing palm seedling and sapling. Felt very satisfied with myself when I put away my pruners and pocket reciprocating saw and gloves.

So I went inside to do dishes and fix dinner, and what do you suppose I saw from the kitchen window, peeking out from behind the avocado tree?

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

Nobody is as sensitive to the presence of an unwanted palm saplings as somebody who just spent 4 hours with a pruner and sawzall getting rid of them.

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Thursday, May 14, 2026 5:03 PM

I think I'm just taking it easy today. Too many long days/nights...

My backup image was finally made and burned to a new HD. I'll probably tick the tires around on that and make sure it's good so I can get to the next phase. This is all hands-on work anyhow, so it give me an excuse not to do any labor today.

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Thursday, May 14, 2026 6:50 PM

FINALLY!

Looks like I got myself a good image. I have yet to really kick the tires around on it, but I've already verified just from certain checks I programmed in there that everything at least APPEARS to be working correctly.

As long as I have no issues or weird Linux permissions popping up and preventing me from doing things I would need to do with the disk in this state to get other modular bits to work with it, it should be exactly what I've been spending the last 2 days trying to accomplish.

May have found my 2nd wind today. If I didn't have so much depending on getting this testing done so more processes can be run, I'd probably go down and paint another coat right now.

But I'm kind of at that "hurry up and wait" stage all around with everything. No matter what I work on, time will have to pass before I can work on it again.

I don't know... I think I'm tired of thinking so much and I should just do something and not worry so much about down time. My lawn could use another mowing in the next few days, and I've still got about half a house to finish remodeling, so it's not like I don't have plenty of things to be working on while time passes, right?

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Thursday, May 14, 2026 7:48 PM

It's.... Perfect.

Archiving it for distribution as we speak.

I shouldn't ever need to use that archive myself since I'll make sure to have at least 2 full drives as backups on my end, and cloning one drive directly to another is basically the same speed as writing an IMG file to a drive. Plus, I'm sure just from regular use I'll be making more tweaks here and there over time and those would only be copied by cloning the current hard drive and would be lost if burning an older image.

And it occurs to me that I don't need to be in such a hurry on this anymore or to be doing whatever I can to ensure minimal downtime between processes. As far as distribution for other people goes, all the work is now done. Just need to send out this archive when it's done and finish backing up the other modular parts where it will primarily be hosted in the future, and I can finally wash my hands of it.

On my end, I now have to re-build some stuff that I "de-built" to make this Distro. It was quite a bit of work doing that, but half of that work was documentation. It should be fairly quick to follow that documentation to put it all back together again.

I can't really do anymore work on it right now until that archive is finished, since the primary work computer is stuck in Windows doing that for the next 20 or so hours.

I already know that I have no problems putting this on a low-powered 12 year old PC. (Granted, not everything included will WORK on a low-powered 12 year old PC, and some bits will actually perform better on newer PCs than I have). Now I'm going to find out if it can work on two Apple products. I've got an Apple AIO desktop from my sister-in-law a few years back that hasn't been fired up once since I got it, and an even older mac-mini from my youngest brother. AFAIK, neither of them are new enough to recieve offical updates anymore, and I don't really care to learn anything about MacOS, so it will be cool if Linux can break Apple products too.

Well... I guess I'll get back to working on the bathroom now.

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Thursday, May 14, 2026 9:31 PM

Boy.... With all the paint I have around here, I didn't think that the possibility of running out of paint is something I'd have to consider. I am using the same paint/color that I used to paint the huge shelving units out in the shed a few years back to do the vanity and the two cabinets.

I haven't even started painting the medicine cabinet body or the shelf/towel rack since they require some pretty intricate hand sanding first and I haven't gotten to that yet.

I've done 3 coats inside the vanity. 2 on the outside of the vanity. 2 coats inside and out on the over-the-toilet cabinet. One coat on the front of all the drawers, doors and shelves, and 2 on the back sides. When I looked at what remains in that can though, I'm wondering if I'm going to make it or not. I think I have maybe a quart left. I wish I paid attention to how much I had when I started, but I don't remember.

I should be good, but I think until I know I will probably only do those two coats on the insides, and only do 3 coats on the outside of the rest of the pieces. I still need to do one coat on the outside of the vanity too, and although it's not a ton of surface area, that side is going to take a pretty good chunk out of what is left.

Oh well... It's not the end of the world if I don't make it. I don't like buying paint when it's not on sale, and it kills me to waste money on quart prices, but I'll probably just buy another quart if I need one. Then I'll have a smaller bucket for touch ups down the road than I would now.

A large part of my dehoarding is going to be getting this house finished. So much crap taking up space in the garage and basement that won't be taking up any space at all when they're finally part of the house.

The best part of taking your time working on it the way I have is bumping into all of those sales along the way, getting good stuff that other people are getting rid of, and ultimately doing this stuff for a pittance compared to what you'd pay somebody else to do it between the free labor and the steep discounts. But when you've already got hoarding tenancies you're always fighting against, having all that stuff on hand and just taking up space for years doesn't really help with your mental well-being.

I've got enough paint on hand to do the whole house twice. Time to start getting everything put together so I can throw out what's left that I don't need.

I'll bet if this house was finished, 60% of those modular shelves I built in the garage would be empty and there would be nothing on the floor right now.

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Thursday, May 14, 2026 11:39 PM

Of to hearing test tomorrow. Suppose to get some rain.

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Thursday, May 14, 2026 11:55 PM

I believe my painting skills have leveled up again since the last time I was keeping score. It only occurred to me earlier today that with all of this painting I've been doing, there hasn't been a single stray drip of paint anywhere. Not that it was a chronic problem in the past, but certainly by now I would have noticed one stray drip on or around things like the raised panels, or inside the toilet cabinet around the corners.

Really, this time I think it's just patience. It seems like a pretty big job right now, but compared to when I was doing all those kitchen cabinets, this is nothing. I'm not putting anywhere near the amount of paint on my brush, and learning from prior mistakes I've made, I'm being certain to just take a second or two after each edge is done to feather the brush underneath to smooth out any paint that may have gone further on the other side than I intended. (Basically, all of the edges of doors and drawer faces get painted twice as much, as when I paint either side I also hit the edges).

These things look like I spray painted them.

I have a bit of an update. I really need to get my camera situation fixed again while I'm doing all this other stuff, because the one I'm using now is a piece of crap compared to the old one, and I just noticed how off the colors are from real life.

This is a pic I snapped from the outside under the basin to show all the daylight that you could see through it (I put my bright lights in the cab before taking it).

The other day I took the time to cut the cabinet trim to size and dry fit it before painting it. Incidentally, when I snapped this photo the sun was blaring right in the bathroom and this is probably the most accurate depiction of the finish paint color, although it's a tad too blue here...

A picture from when I wrapped up last night.

And here's a few with the drawer slides and the backs of the drawers back in the unit.

Just waiting on a few more coats of paint for the fronts of the drawers and the door and that will be done.

And the really cool thing is that I've already got more of those oil-rubbed bronze knobs for the 2 of the 3 drawers that need them to replace those old chrome ones, and the even cooler thing is that the mostly-hidden hinges for the door are so so dark that nobody is going to notice that I didn't take the time to spray paint them to match.

What a difference a few days makes, huh?

Yeah.....

One way or another I have to get a better camera for taking pictures. I need to get a few when it's finished that show the wood grain and all the details that are missing from these photos.

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Friday, May 15, 2026 12:11 AM

I know at the end of the day nobody in the world would ever notice this, but I love looking at these two pics side-by-side...

You only see cabinet interiors and closets like mine in mansions or in OCD perfectionist DIY enthusiasts' houses.

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Friday, May 15, 2026 1:11 AM