Dom Corriveau

Daily - 2025-11-25

Posted on Nov 25, 2025

Previously…

Yesterday recap

I didn’t start my workday until late, so I got busy with my house chores. The connection for our hose bibs and the sprinkler system is under the house and that’s where the shutoff is located. Luckily the crawlspace is large enough for me to be able to get around easily. I popped in, turned it off and insulated, then finished up the winterization outside. Good timing, too. We are supposed to be “15-25 degrees below normal” this weekend.

Then I hit the road. I had 3 winterization stops. The first I met up with my partner so we could tag team a commercial strip mall. That only took about 45 minutes, but it is so much easier with two people. Otherwise it is a ridiculous amount of walking. Plus, there’s people coming and going and we don’t want anyone to get blasted with water, or worse, mud. If there are any broken pipes in the system, the pressurized air will mostly go there and then shoot mud all over the place.

In this strip mall is a liquor store. I have been around severe alcoholism my entire life and boy is it sad to see the folks hitting the liquor store for little bottles at 11AM. It catches all kinds. I saw business lady in her crossover get a bottle of something brown and take a swig before hitting the road. Next, an old man stumbled out of his car he looks like he’s living in got something and then parked around the corner to consume it all.

Alcoholism is something some folks will deal with their whole life. I don’t know their life situation, but I’m pulling for them. If you struggle with alcohol, I’m pulling for you, too. The holidays is a hard time for both people who are struggling and the folks who are trying to stay sober. I believe in you. Keep the memories of this holiday season. Its okay to use your crutches.

I had 2 more stops before calling it a week. These are the last stops for our new commercial contract and they are last because the residents have been a real pain in the ass to book and that continued. Neither of them were home. I was able to get one done and the other I had to report to the property management company as being unavailable.

When I got home I had yard work to do myself. My partner loaned me his stick trimmer so I could knock down all my strawberry plants and some overgrowth along the fenceline. I wanted to get it done right away because I was already dressed for work and it is supposed to rain for the next few days. Got it done right as it was getting too dark to work.

Last, I emptied all my tools from the truck so it is ready to handoff on Friday. I left my BOB and VEDC kits just in case I go out over the next few days. Otherwise it is empty.

Dinner and family time. As the gorls were getting ready for bed I started working on the Chromebook. Originally I wanted to get some notes down about multi-seat on Linux. I have some ideas on how I might be able to use it and maybe some projects to work on during my vacation. But, instead I got distracted with distrobox. I spent a couple hours working on creating some test containers with distrobox, including setting custom $HOME for each and mounting volumes. It is a nice way to have most of what I would need from a VM by just using Podman and distrobox. Works a treat on ChromeOS and the Linux environment, too.

Once the gorls were in bed wife and I basically just hung out looking at our phones, me working on ChromeOS, and just doing our own thing while sitting under a blanket on the couch.

I am still struggling with my portable homelab project and keeping a specific set of files synced to a laptop that I know can go up to a week without being used. I really wanted to be able to plug my phone into a laptop, either the Chromebook or a Linux laptop, and then edit the files as if I had an external drive connected. But, both systems will mount the phone as read-only. The only way is to copy files over, edit them, then copy back. The problem I’m trying to solve is I leave the house and then I get somewhere with zero connectivity, but I need to edit some files. I do that on the laptop and then when I get home leave the laptop in my bag. These files will never get synced. The other problem is needing a file and the one on the laptop is out of date. Since my phone will always sync when it gets a connection, I thought I might be able to have that as my on-the-road source of truth. No such luck.

What I really need is a way for the laptop to automatically wake up, sync files, and then go back to sleep, while the lid is closed.

There are lots of solutions to this if I only want it to be semi-automated. Yes, I could get home and open the laptop for a few minutes and the put away. I could also use an external drive and then connect that drive to a PC in the house when I get home. I guess that one isn’t too bad. Have a portable drive that I plug into a PC and that is the location the Nextcloud sync client uses. So, when I use my desktop I have to plug in this drive first and then boot. Same for laptops. Might be something here.

Gratitude

  • I did not become an alcoholic, even though everyone around me as a child and a young man conspired to make me into one. It worked on my brother, but I escaped it.
  • I have the rest of the week off and we can still pay our bills.

How are you feeling today?

A little better, with sudden very, very low dips.

Todo

Chores

  • Escort wife to WinCo to get the last of the stuff we need for Thanksgiving. It is about a half hour away and I don’t want her to take the van. Plus, that store is always overwhelmingly busy. It is always a two person trip.
  • Troubleshoot the wired networking issue in my sons room. I’ve been waiting for a time to slip in and check it. But, I’m just gonna bust in this afternoon.
  • Process payroll for the biz. I have been waiting for some payments to come it and was hoping they would land before payday. I finally got them yesterday.

Fun

  • Practice my magic for the talent show. Its in only two days!

Projects

  • Test using a portable drive with various computers and the Nextcloud client.
  • Carry over from yesterday: Write up some notes on these small projects for multi-seat testing.

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