Dom Corriveau

October 2023 Retrospective

Posted on Nov 1, 2023

This month has been.. a lot. Our contracting business was busy, which was good because October is our last opportunity to earn money before winter and work comes to a standstill. I have been stressed about October for the last few months, worried we will come up short of our goals because our work depends so much on weather and housing economy. But, all went really, really well.

In addition to being extremely busy, I haven’t been in a good mental state. I’m not going to share any details and just say I’m looking forward to an extended period of rest. In fact I’ve been thinking about signing off from everything for at least a month, including chat, social, and more.

This is also why I haven’t blogged much this month. I think I need to step away for a while and rest.

Jupiter Broadcasting event

I attened the Jupiter Broadcasting/LinuxFest Northwest “mini-fest” and even spent the night at the Jupiter Broadcasting studio. I’m glad I went and had some good conversations in my limited time at the event.

I’ve been listening to Jupiter Broadcasting shows for nearly 15 years and I’m so happy I get to attend some of these events in person.

However, I had to admit to myself that larger events aren’t right for me. I don’t get energy from being around other people, especially large groups. In fact, it is quite taxing. I prefer to spend time with small groups and really connect with others I call friends. These types of bigger events are overwhelming. Plus, when I was in a corporate role, I hated festivals and conferences.

There’s nothing wrong with the people who like these events, they just aren’t for me. I ended up leaving early so I could be home with my wife and kids instead of sitting in a room with strangers.

Now, this doesn’t mean I will stop attending events. I enjoy being around the Jupiter Broadcasting folks! I will just be more selective.

Tech projects

I spent most of the month reconfiguring my homelab. My goal was to separate a single box that has multiple VMs, Docker containers, and 16 TB of storage into 3 separate servers. I didn’t want to have a monolithic setup where everything was running from a single point of failure. I also wanted to do this so I can selective turn off devices and services to reduce power usage, while not nuking critical infrastructure.

I was able to pull this off! The layout is like this:

  1. NAS. This is all my storage and it only does that. Its a Dell Lattitude E5270 with a Core i5-6200U CPU and 8 GB of RAM. A DAS connects 4 x 4TB disks in a mergerfs fused file system and other devices are connected via nfs.
  2. Server. The machine is an iKoolCore R1 with an Intel N5105 CPU and 8 GB of RAM. Runs Ubuntu Server 22.04 and barely breaks a sweat. I have 18 containers running, with multiple people who stream Plex and my kids Minecraft server.
  3. Networking. This are the things that need to run 24/7, including PiHole, my reverse proxy, and this blog. Its running on a Dell SFF 3040 with a Core i5-6400 and 8 GB of RAM.

This setup uses 75-80w when running during the day. Overnight I have the server and NAS turn off and come back on when I’m normally getting out of bed in the morning. That drops the power usage to about 20w (includes an 8-port networking switch).

All in all this was a ton of work. I migrated 3 QEMU virtual machines to a new box, setup a completely new NAS, and migrated all my Docker containers to a new system. All three were built from scratch and after I configured all the existing tools, I had to refactor all the IP addresses, connect Tailscale and other VPN tools, ssh keys, etc.

Books

  • Ninjak
    • A great comic given to me as a gift from my wife.
    • This is a classic superhero (antihero?) comic series with good writing and truly amazing artwork. Really enjoyed this one.
  • Children of Time
    • Recommended to me by my sister and brother-in-law. Its really good!
    • I want to emphasize I liked this book before the next section. This type of scifi reads like a history book turned into a story. It introduces a truly novel concept and does what good scifi does, makes you contemplate potential futures. However, I never got attached to the characters. The story never allows you to form a bond with anyone, which may have been the point, but made for big sections that were like reading a text book.
    • Enjoyed my time with this book, probably won’t read any of the others in the series.
  • Firewall: Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell
    • I adore the Splinter Cell games and Sam Fisher is my favorite CIA/Black Ops character in any medium.
    • I happened on this book browsing audiobooks from my local library.
    • Fun! The story felt like the other CIA ops books I read (like Pike Logan or Mitch Rapp) with the characters from video games I love. I also enjoyed the person who read the book and their performance will make me listen to this whole series.

Movies

  • The Lost Boys
    • I had never seen this before (and neither had my son), but my wife loves this movie.
    • It couldn’t be more 80’s! Plus, it is set in Santa Cruz so I recognize all the places.
  • Fallen
    • This is the opposite of Lost Boys, I’ve seen it and my wife and son have never.
    • I love this one, middling reaction from the others.
  • The Burning
    • A classic 80’s slasher that is B-movie through and through.
  • The People Under the Stairs
    • Not scary, but fun? Its just weird enough to give you the creeps, but campy enough to be fun.
  • The Equalizer 3
    • This might be my favorite of the series.
    • Its just… perfect. So much better than the Wick movies.
  • The GingerDead Man
    • It is absolute pure garbage. Loved it!
    • I’m totally gonna watch some Evil Bong movies now since they have crossover with this movie.
  • End of Days
    • Arnold in a religious “action” movie.
    • Bleh.
  • The Addams Family
    • Raul Julia was a gift to humanity and we didn’t appreciate it when we had the chance.
  • Seedpeople
    • This was a complete shitshow. Loved It!
    • The seedpeople look like turds with two legs.
  • Chopping Mall & Frankenhooker
    • Two absolute trash films that are an annual watch for us.
    • Definitely in the “so bad its good” camp.
    • Shoutout to Patty Mullen who plays Frankehooker, she makes this whole movie.
  • Wishmaster
    • This has been on our list for a long time. Finally watched it and it was on Halloween.
    • I’m torn. Its super campy and the lines for the Wishmaster character are so wild there are some serious laugh out loud moments. Just wasn’t as fun as I hoped.
  • Suitable Flesh
    • Essentially a new entry to the Re-Animator with Heather Graham.
    • Not scary and not fun. But, super duper horny.
    • Meh.

TV

Have I mentioned in any of these I generally don’t watch TV shows?

Well, now you know.

Games

Since I read a Splinter Cell book, I’ve been replaying Splinter Cell Blacklist on PC.

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