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I finally managed to post another chapter of VotV. Looking at "My Stories", I see that it has been two months since the previous chapter, and that is really too long.
What happened? Mostly the mundane things that happen to everybody: Life.
I am not going to detail everything that has happened, only to say that none of it was bad. Mostly it was just niggling things like, for instance, the front garden (yard, to those on the left side of the pond).
Our front consisted of mostly lawn, with two strips of concrete leading up to the integrated garage of our house. There was a small strip of lawn next to the neighbour's property as well. Both lawn parts look as if they were the original as laid down by the builders in 1971 when the house was built ie rough, with very little topsoil underneath. The narrow strip was a pain since I had to make sure the neighbour hadn't left his car there before I mowed that bit.
So, with the delightful grandchildren coming to visit every now and then, we needed more parking space and decided to have part of the front bricked. This would also get rid of the awkward strip. The remaining lawn would be dug up and re-turfed. Oh, did I mention that we live on a hill such that the front slopes in both directions? Fun. We'd need a retaining wall between ourselves and that neighbour.
I used a contractor we had used before, and he also replaced some rear fencing at the same time. Dug out the ground, built the low wall and put a soakaway under the bricked area (new legal requirement). But... tamping the ground was a problem, since I could feel the computer desk, upstairs at the back of the house, shaking. So I had to hurriedly shut everything down to avoid disk head crashes. For three separate days.
The new drive looks good, but is about a yard wider than planned, owing to a manhole cover being in an inconvenient location. (All it needs now is a large circle and an 'H' in the middle!) Still, it looks good, although the relaid lawn doesn't, because that was done over an extremely hot weekend and half the turf died. Replacements expected daily.
As for the rest? I am slowly tapering off the steroids, this time seemingly successfully. Some of my computer equipment has died or become inadequate, leading me to investigate alternatives... which may require me learning new configuration methods. Mikrotik is supposed to be good hardware, but the interface is... eccentric. We've had to clear out my parent's house, so ours is now stuffed with all kinds of things we have yet to sort out. We had to buy a new mattress, since the old one died. Why are new mattresses so thick? It has meant time out to go and buy all new bedlinen.
Time, a word no author likes to hear. I still fully intend to complete the stories I have already begun, and even to produce some more that are sitting on my systems. Who knows? That may even happen.
Penny
Dogs have owners; cats have staff; grand-daughters have minions.
Comments
You could look into Ubiquiti.
You could look into Ubiquiti. They're still a bit idiosyncratic, but the control interface can be installed on any OS. Good for when you have multiple different network devices that you want to centrally control. I'm starting to move that way for most of my customers. I'm using Mikrotik as well, but you're right, the interface is very strange. It's like they looked at Cisco and went "We can do better than that" without actually going _fully_ Linux or BSD iptables 'standard'.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
Network equipment
Actually, I've been using a pfSense firewall now for years and years, and I suppose that I have got used to that interface. It is easy to use and the web interface relates to how you want to use it, not to the underlying OS.
The problem with the pfSense firewall that did everything is that it has a few weaknesses. I have three Lan-side connections, two of which feed Gigabit switches and the third supplies everything else, via another Gbit switch and a lot of VLANs. The problem is that every connection from one VLAN to another is routed up to the firewall and back down again to the switch - through the same bit of cable. This causes a choke point and things fall over. Changing that switch to a half-intelligent Mikrotik switch seemed a more sensible idea.
For now I'll persevere with what I've got but I may look elsewhere, so your suggestion is interesting. Thanks.
Of course, all this fiddling with network equipment is time I could be spending writing, but that's how it is.
Penny
That’s good to hear
It’s good to hear you are doing well. Did your computer equipment fail from the construction? I would be willing to try to help you with your computer configurations. I hope you finish your somewhere else entirely universe it’s one of my all time favorites stories, I really hope you revisit the main story and write that additional year or so with Garia being back that you talked about with me.
hugs :)
Michelle SidheElf Amaianna
I love your stories.
It should be obvious that I am of no use whatsoever in fixing computer software, and not much better with hardware.
Your stories are however quite charming.
Gwen
It just takes a bit of
It just takes a bit of percussive maintenance.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.