Still locked down

Our fearless leader Queen Whit-less has decreed that we shall self-quarantine until May 15.  But she did "allow" us to do the things she stupidly said that we couldn't do 2 weeks ago (and caused a large protest that made national news and several petitions to recall her to hit over 200,000 signatures).**

So I am officially banished to the Man Cave until May 18.  Not happy.

The good news is that the Man Cave is getting several upgrades.  One of which is a new desk - actually an extra desk.  This will allow me to set up some of my larger projects (like the RC2014 and the C-64*) more or less permanently.  It should also allow me to have more other systems set up to play with.

The bad news is that my main work area will be taken up by real work until at least May 16.  So I can't play with my desoldering tool that I got for my birthday.  Also, my clock batteries arrived for my Tandy 1400LT and I need that area to install them.

* The C-64 requires a power supply for the C-64, plus another power supply to hook it to a modern monitor, and if I run the 1541 floppy drive, yet another outlet.  So it does require quite a bit of desk space to hook it up.

** Ignore this if you don't care about Michigan politics.
The emergency order that gives Whit-less the power to make these edicts ends on May 1 and to extend it, she needs to get permission from the legislature.
So I'm uncertain if her latest edict will have any authority past May 1.  It's possible that the legislature will just override it and let people make their own decisions.

I do know that the legislature wants to limit Herr Whit-ler's emergency power, but it's mostly symbolic since it won't pass.  But it does mean that the legislature won't give her permission to extend her authority beyond what's currently in the Michigan Constitition.

Time for the lockdown to end

So, the last room was cleaned out this weekend.  We have officially gone through the entire condo and cleared out things.  We have a large pile of stuff that will go to eBay/Goodwill as soon as the lockdown ends.

Some interesting things that were heard:

Me: "Why on Earth do I have a Fart Gun?"
Wife: "But we should keep it!"

"Where did all these rare earth magnets come from?  I have not pulled that many old hard drives apart."

"Do routers reproduce when put in a dark place for a long time?"

"So that's where we hid all the chocolate?"


Next weekend, we have nothing to do now.  It's time for the lockdown to end.

New Server - active

So, the old server is now turned off and the new server is now active.

The new server hardware is:

• Raspberry Pi Rack
• Raspberry Pi 4B 2M
• 4 2.5" hard drives (2 500GB and 2 1TB)
• Power USB hub - to supply power to the 4 drives

I put the Pi 3 back into the NAS kit setup that I purchased a while ago and have set that one up in a different spot instead of putting it into the rack.

I have an extra Pi 4.  I'll be cloning the SD card for the server this weekend and making that extra Pi 4 a "cold" standby should the active Pi 4 fail.

Office Exile Extended

So, I'm banished to the Man Cave for the next month.  Not happy.

I'm hoping that some companies start bucking this unconstitutional "stay at home" order by governor Whit-less.

I keep hearing that, at this point, the "stay at home" order will create another crisis because we aren't acquiring herd immunity - which is the only way we will defeat COVID-19.

Let the people who are not high risk go back to work.  Let us get sick and get over it (many of us think that we already had it back in Dec. when we got sick but just thought it was the "creeping crud" that comes out every year).

Let the high risk people "stay at home".  Let the people who get sick stay at home until they are better.  Get the country moving again.

I like my Man Cave, but it's wearing hard on me to be there 8+ hours per day.

But there is a light at the end of this tunnel: we got toilet paper last Friday when we went grocery shopping.