Through the looking glass

I’ve recently come back up for air (so to speak).

I’ve spent the last year in pandemic world trying to enable one of the world’s largest used car sales companies to have better experiences and more efficient ways to buy and sell cars online – without leaving the comfort of your “home”.

In some ways, I might be tempted to think that I am doing something really cutting edge.. which is why I feel like I have just come up for air.

I just finished a pretty amazing book called Sapiens – https://amzn.to/3jGq2bV.

Here are my thoughts:

This book is meta!  It is a story of myths and imagined realities used to frame up the story of myths and imagined realities all centered around this thing we called human experience. 

There are places in the book that you will find the author speaking authoritatively on ideas that he feels are universal, yet they fall short of accuracy and authenticity – but that’s the brilliance of the book – like a dream within a dream,  the book did such an amazing job at stretching the imagination both into the past and towards the future to frame a shared vision on the relevance of culture and society.

I could not put it down.

Jediah Logiodice

I followed up by reading A Crack In Creation – https://amzn.to/3ArJz6b.

Here are my thoughts:

Amazing story of how humans discovered how to reprogram the code that makes up their physical bodies – and the possibilities of amazing wonders or emerging horrors are limitless. 

I can almost imagine, that some years from now, the first sentient androids are going to be referencing this book as the dawn of the intelligence explosion Bostrom refers to as “Superintelligence”.

There is no going back now – as Collins would say,, let the hunger games begin.

Jediah Logiodice

But, that’s not all… we now have flying cars: https://youtu.be/a2tDOYkFCYo, and autonomous physical in-store shopping experiences: https://youtu.be/FynpkeS7RUM, and containerized housing: https://youtu.be/qVV6CyGJgZo, and artificial intelligence running buildings as a super organism: https://youtu.be/ssZ_8cqfBlE.

I just picked up Homo Deus: https://amzn.to/2UToQaT.

It is incredible to think about how far we have come, as a species, in such a short period of time; I am really excited, but slightly reticent to see how deep this rabbit hole goes.

All grown up!

It’s hard to describe the pride as a parent when I look forward, (or behind) and see my first born on his first ride. After 8 hours of his second day of the course, he spent an hour and a half with me training in the neighborhood.

I still have two more riders to go in the house… someday we will have our own MC.

Summer rain and a motorcycle!

Raining so hard, I couldn’t see or breathe.

When those first big raindrops hit your face, and you know it’s all over! Trying to see the lights of the car in front of you, so you can stay on the road, barely able to breath because it was raining so hard and it felt like a swimming pool.

What a great summer ride! 😀

Passing through the weekend

One of the things I do on the weekend, is run my small data center….

Step 1 – better air flow in the media closet
Step 2 – Create longer patch cables

Step(s) 3:

  • On new server
    • turn off hardware raid
    • install 6 new hot swap 2.5 to 3.5 to 5.25 enclosures
    • install 6 new ssds
    • boot and install xcp-ng on a raid0 array x2 ssds for boot partition
    • Build new software raid10 array for storage
    • build new storage resources, network resources and configure xcp backups
    • build guest for XenOrchestrator opensource & compile from source
  • On existing esxi server; for each vm:
    • remove open-vm-tools and disable service
    • shutdown vm
    • Use vmfkstools to convert thick provisioned disks to thin
    • Use ovftool to download and convert vmdk to ova
    • import ova into xcp, reconfigure mac address and dynamic memory settings
    • boot up vm, reconfigure primary network adapter, install xen tools
Step 4 – boot up the new server and enjoy.

Tomorrow, I’m going to tear down the old esxi and rebuild new arrays for boot and storage and try and merge it into the xen pool and try to live transfer some guests between hosts in the pool. Wish me luck..

Then, if that all works, I’ll need to install another patch panel in the network rack, setup a new ups, and reconfigure the switch for new VLAN and trunk ports.

I will say that the pfsense on a protectli box with 6 ports, and a Unifi SDN costroller, managed switches and WAPs throughout the house had made the networking side extremely easy!

Maybe tonight I’ll find time to finish up the Azure DevOps course and get back to learning React.

Oh, and I mowed the lawn and took Bob for a ride too.

p.s. if anyone knows why mdadm isn’t activating my raid10 on reboot, please drop me a DM.. its a huge PITA.

p.p.s. Second xcp-ng server is up with 2x ssd raid1 arrays, 48GB of ram and the migrations between the two hosts completed; also created and deployed my first Azure ASE tonight. Tomorrow I relocate it to the secondary media closet.

Update a week later: media closet was still too hot so I attached a nice fan to it; dropped the CPU temp by 10 degrees!

God and the origins of life

It’s been quite a few years since I have had the opportunity to be intellectually stimulated in the areas of religion, philosophy and science – I very much miss the days of tutelage under my friend and mentor, Bill Johnson.

One of the topics that I really took an interest in, was the intersect of religion and science. I recently added a new author to my “to read” list. His book(s) appear to settle comfortably in the company of Collins, Jastrow, Tipler, Davies, and the likes: Stephen Meyer.

Although I haven’t read his books yet (just found him this morning), I enjoyed his cursory overview of his latest book Return of the God Hypothesis from Uncommon Knowledge.

Especially appreciated his reference to Jastrow, when he wrote:

For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountain of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.

Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers.

Chopped Liver!

Like mother, like daughter. Frequently I answer tech questions for @amandarachael, and once she follows my instructions, she usually replies: never mind, I figured it out myself.

Apparently, like mother like daughter.

Treasures!!

We went down to the dock today after work, and @amandarachael found both a lollipop and a can of sprite just sitting there, alone.  She was so pleased at the treasure she found.

Meanwhile, back at the farm, Braeden was pretty upset, because he put down a lollipop and a can of sprite and they were mysteriously consumed by some unknown thief.