TRIUMPHAL RETURN
RECIPE: "FAILURE SOUP"
1: NOW, WHERE WAS I?
Man, what do I say??
Last time I was here, I made what always winds up being a fatal mistake...I overcommitted. ...let's examine the ingredients that came together to culminate in this spectacular failure.
First it was daily whippies. Anyone who's known me for any length of time already knows anything "daily" is guaranteed to fail, it's just a question of how many days - and it seems to be elastic, so the longer I keep something like that rolling, the more catastrophically I will quit when the time comes.
Then I stepped up my game and tried doing an actual avatar redraw - and man, that was fvckin' exciting! I had a lot of fun doing that, but began to run myself down as I tried to finish my first quality avatar while keeping daily whippies treading water.
Finally, I had the whole "I might be dying" moment, and decided to put the final nail in the coffin by reviving an old project under a new name - I committed to creating a book by making a post for each chapter. It was a book to be filled with wisdom I have accumulated over the years, written mostly for my children's benefit. ...try writing a book about all your wisdom sometime - It doesn't take long before you realize you're a fraudulent jackass without a single ounce of real wisdom to share...or at least, that seems to be what happens to me every time.
For the final ingredient in this failure soup, I committed myself to these things in a way that basically precluded me from posting other stuff, like random freewrites and shit. - it became: "Well, if you don't have any wisdom or avatar drawings, you really shouldn't post right now cuz you'll just interrupt the flow of things." ...which ultimately stopped everything dead.
...so now, I'm trying to dip my toes back in the Hive-waters. For my first act, I am alleviating myself of any sense of obligation to finish the things I started. I have many drafts started for the Big Dipper Little Dipper North Star book - I'm not saying I won't finish them, I'm just deciding that I don't have to. Next, I will rubber stamp this by publishing this random update post...hopefully this will give me some momentum and help me get back to writing and drawing...lately I just haven't wanted to do any of it.
Side note - I never had confirmation that I was dying, and I don't have confirmation now that I am not. I don't personally want input from doctors unless whatever I'm going through is legitimately no longer bearable...so whether it's now or some other time, I don't plan on asking doctors to attempt to predict or extend my lifespan. I don't judge others who do, it's just not for me so far.
2: BUT, WHERE WAS I?
Seems fair enough that my return post could easily stop there. I was gone, here is why, now I'm back. But what to talk about? What better to get into, than whatever it is that was great enough to keep me away Hive all this time? For one thing, I will start by saying I took a break initially to travel across the country for a wedding, then came home to begin the massive undertaking of clearing out and finishing our attic to make room for the new baby, due in March. Some of this stuff could have been post-worthy, but because it didn't match the previously committed topics, I elected not to bother documenting any of the work. One thing I might talk more about, if it seems like anyone is interested, is what comes next...
I don't often talk about it here because I don't intend to sway opinions and I don't want to lose friends, but I tend to have a pretty suspicious outlook on a lot of things that seem commonplace and simple to many. Like, if the Federal Reserve is a part of the US government, why does the US government pay interest to it? Why does the government take out loans from the Federal Reserve and use tax money to pay the interest on the loans, instead of just skipping the middle part where the interest accumulates, and use the tax money to do the stuff and the shit and the things like that? ...just sayin', there isn't much I trust blindly in this world.
So when I find documents, videos or photos that shine new light on something, I download and save them. You'd be amazed how many times I've gone back to see something again or share it, only to find that it has been removed...of course I have my own tinfoil hat conspiracy theories about that too, boiling down to a systematic style of revisionism best described on more than one occasion by a well-known author whose name rhymes with Schmeorge Schmorwell...but I digress. Albus Zarathustra Lucimus is not here to show you what's going on, nor to convince you of anything - my intent with this platform is only to share time and ideas and art with friends, regardless of individual beliefs, and that is not changing today.
...but the thing is I have massive collections of videos and photos that I don't think will stay online for long. They're scattered across many thumb drives and external hard drives. I've tried to funnel them into category-specific folders, but have probably only been through and organized something like an eighth of what I've got...it's a huge job, and it gets bigger by the day because it seems I would rather scour the web for new content than sit around and organize the dragon-hoards of shit I've already got tucked away.
But on the second day of my Hive-hiatus, I met a network specialist who talked me into setting up my own Network Attached Storage (NAS) device. Essentially, you can take an old PC or raspberry pi, connect some external storage, and create your own "cloud" server.
...did you know, a cloud is just someone else's hard drive? That's it, that's all it is! You think you pay them for the right to store your things there, but in many cases, you actually give them whatever you upload onto their server, then you pay them for the access rights to it. If you delete it from your cloud account, you can bet it's still on their drives, you've just elected to no longer have access to it. Cloud = Hard Drive...let that sink in. For me, that was an unattractive option, unless of course the drive itself belonged to me.
So I bought a refurbished Lenovo Mini PC (cost about $45) and a 4TB external hard drive (that's already filled up at this point) for around $100, and set up my NAS device.
There are some better ways to transfer files between say, your iPhone and your NAS. There are options like NextCloud and others, which will let you build up your own independent cloud connection to your DIY NAS, but I wound up coming to an even simpler solution. I just set up a Dropbox account and linked it to a folder on the 4TB hard drive. Now when I upload files from my phone to Dropbox, they are being copied directly onto my external hard drive. From there, I rename/sort files and spread them out accordingly so that Dropbox never runs out of memory. Using Dropbox this way opened me up to very quickly get started unloading memories of all kinds from my phone.
...Thus began the paradigm shift...
When the plan to make a NAS for conspiracy videos expanded to include family photo albums, it opened the door to turning this device into more than just a host for eccentricities...which wound up being a full-sized rabbit hole all its own.
I thought, storing photos and videos is nice, but how can I easily view them from anywhere?
...so then I found PLEX...which has now completely consumed me for the last couple of weeks.
Plex allows me to dump all my media into a central location and view it from anywhere. I create folders based on type (TV Series, Movies, Photos, Home Videos, etc.), and PLEX automatically organizes these things in a really nice streaming media format. Movies have ratings, cover art, descriptions, previews, actor lists/IMDB links - everything you'd get from any other streaming service, except the commercials - because I'm streaming directly from my NAS device. I have connected PLEX to all smart TVs, phones and computers in the house, so now I can listen to music or watch whatever from any device. If I don't already have the content I want, I just go out and get it by whatever means seem best...and that has been the major hit to my free-time, just finding and gathering media for my home server.
I can easily add bands' full discographies to my music stream, and then create various playlists from songs in the library. Unlike other music or TV/Movie streaming services, this means there will never be anything in the options that I legitimately would never watch. All the options are put there by me, so I am able to control exactly what goes into the kids' entertainment as well as my own. It has taken a lot of work to get this whole system up and running, but I am almost down to where all I will have to do is maintain it and add things as they come up. Currently I have a 1TB external drive for music and photos, and a 4TB external drive for all TV and Movies. Eventually I would like to spread it out so there is a 4TB drive for each category, because moving things is a real pain and I hate the idea of splitting content (half movies on one drive and half on another for example). ...so right now the 4TB has [Movies, Kids Movies, TV Shows, Kids TV Shows], but when it gets full I will buy another 4TB and move [TV Shows, Kids TV Shows] to the new drive. Eventually those would theoretically fill, so I would have to move KIDS items to their own drives to complete the plan. If I ever wound up with more than 4TB of any one category, I would either start tacking on additional drives (i.e. Movies 01, Movies 02, etc.), or just get rid of some things that haven't been getting watched...but it honestly may never even come to that.
3: WHERE'RE WE HEADED?
With all that out of the way, it seems only fair that I should be able to project some kind of plan for you to see. I've told you I will no longer commit to reliably doing the things I previously committed to reliably doing, but what will fill the void in their wake?
...No Idea...
I'd like to keep at it with the avatar art (AvatArt?), but lately I have also got a long way still to go to get the house ready for our new addition. For now, I just want you all to know that I remain dedicated to keepin' it classy. I am still struggling to cut out weed and mostly successful at remaining alcohol-free. Nicotine remains fully cut out. Exercise has been spotty, but I am up to the point where I can do one full mile barefoot on rough blacktop with a 40lb vest and a 10lb dumbbell in each hand. Diet has been a challenge.
Far as I can tell, I'm not dying (yet), so I'll probably be back.
...oh yeah and I had to replace my water heater yesterday.
Thanks for checking out some more of my work! As always, I hope you enjoyed witnessing as much as I enjoyed creating! © Photos and words by @albuslucimus, except where otherwise indicated. If you enjoy my content, check out the Albus Index! Here you’ll find links to various post-groupings, so you can find all posts related to a specific topic quickly. Topics include lists of brewing recipes, flutes, crypto talks, rucking posts and an index of all acoustic covers. The lists are updated as new content is added, so they can always be used to quickly navigate my content.
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