Home server rant continues

Alfred is dead. I killed him. I enjoyed it - the SOB just would not behave. Old motherboards sometimes make life hard, and this one just wouldn't continue beyond ten minutes after bootup.

I reused the case, so Arnold looks like Alfred, but isn't - there's an AMD dual processor motherboard in there, and Home Server is rebuilding as I write. After that, it looks like I scrambled the SATA connectors to my RAID cage, so I can look forward to around 30 hours of RAID array formatting during which time nothing will get done. After that it should be clear sailing and I can start rebuilding my music and video databases for the home network.

If, on the other hand it is still unstable I shall call RAID a bad job and go to conventional storage. I don't want to do that because it is so hard to recover a loss in a terabyte or so of music and such. Some days you eat the bear, other days you're his lunch.

So now it is waiting time. I guess I'll know more in the morning before I head for church.

But I did take a break this afternoon and call an old friend on the phone - one I've not seen since around 1972, but whom I have known since the late 50's. He's a bit older than I am at 75, but our lives have touched several times over the years, both here in the US and during the time I was in Germany, as he was a teacher in a military dependant's school while I was serving in the Air Force and we spent many pleasant weekends wandering around Germany, sampling wines, and generally being single and carefree. I don't recall if we returned at the same time, but he went home to Minnesota and I ended up here in Maryland. We got together in 1972 when I drew a trip of a couple of months to Minneapolis for schooling, but after a few weeks I decided I should bring my wife out, so visiting got somewhat curtailed.

But we've stayed in touch all these years, sharing memories and other friends, and it is a little hard to think of him as being 75 yet I know that he is every bit of that age, just as I am every bit of almost 67 - but those numbers seem unreal to me. I promised myself never to grow up or to get stodgy and set in my ways and I think I've been moderately successful at that - but my knees hurt, my shoulders creak like an old maple tree, and I can sleep wherever I happen to be. But I still love to motorcycle (although I no longer love it enough to go out when it is below about 50 degrees - and I used to ride all year round regardless of temperature) and to go and see things I haven't seen yet.

I just looked at the bottom of my screen and it is now February. It just kinda sneaked up on me. I hate it when that happens! But after February comes March, and by mid-March the weather is getting good for riding once again, and I can count on more and more motorcycle days.

Tomorrow I have to get going on our taxes - it is my least favorite yearly task, and when I can retire I get to do less. Near as I can tell, retirement will come sometime around the age of 74 for me - but maybe not then. I have the rare good fortune to like what I do, and as long as someone will pay me to do it, I might just as well. We still have one of our kids with us, and a grandchild, so the responsibilities will not decrease until she marries and leaves, or maybe just leaves.

Somehow life did not go the way I thought it would when I was young and still knew everything. The path is still changing, and it is anyone's guess where I will end up (although some of the more fundy-oriented folks I know are sure that they know) or when.

It's funny where life goes. I was born here in Baltimore, then moved to Hatboro. From Hatboro I went into the service and went to Texas, Syracuse, Texas and Germany. I stayed an extra year in Germany; I don't recall just why although I have been told a German girl might have had some influence, and when I returned my family was back in Baltimore, so I came here and despite grand ideas of taking a company move or something like that I have been at this address for 36 years. I do a number of things that were too far-out for even science fiction when I was in high school, trying to imagine what I would be when I grew up.

So, what have all these years given to me as revelations?

1. Hatboro was a pretty good place.
2. Going to college to please someone else is a waste of time.
3. Military service, properly managed can be educational and even fun.
4. No matter how hard I tried, Germany made beer faster than I could drink it.
5. Speed limits are a revenue-producing tool, not a safety enhancement.
6. Getting married is easy; staying married is hard.
7. Riding a motorcycle will teach you lots about paying attention and being gentle.
8. An hour at the pistol range will clear your head better than a week at the ocean.
9. My children will do what they deem fit. They do not have to make my failures good.
   
10. When your state is altered, your competence to determine your competence Goes Away.
11. Music is wonderful, and cannot be explained - you get it, or you don't.
12. Living in a foreign land, learning the language, is more valuable than books
13. Foreign languages are different - and you must never translate an idiom.
14. I think I'm rambling. Again.

Now I have to go downstairs and look in on Arnold, then get some sleep. Tomorrow is already here, and I must be musical in just a few hours.