This Space for Rent

Friday Dust Mite Blogging™

The sysadmin

Dust Mite helps me reconfigure my (tiny) network after putting in a gigE switch and a second power strip. We still have to get a fistful of cable ties and tidy the rats nest of wiring that’s lurking (mainly) out of sight, but at least it’s functional as it sits.

There were some annoying parts of the reconfiguration; I bonked my head on the keyboard shelf, which shook the rack and dumped all of the network gear down the back of the rack. This included my dns server (a Nextthing C.H.I.P., which I really need to replace) which promptly bricked itself and needed to be plunked into the refrigerator for half an hour before it would boot again) which took the entire network down for about 3 hours until I figured out the refrigerator trick.

The router I’m using (some goddamn managed centurylink junkware) is going to be replaced with an expressobin box sometime in the next few months (as soon as I build a rackmount case for it that has enough cooling so it won’t melt when I’m shovelling SCCS directories back and forth across the internet, or when my children are downloading PC games.)