Going Well

Things are going at Tesla. Working on a lot of things that can't be mentioned, though I will say that I'm learning a lot about certain tools.

In my freetime and at work I'm learning a lot about how Ansible and Jenkins can work together to automate tons of stuff. Also learning on my own how I can use Ansible in Vultr's cloud to configure and rollout factorio instances that are pre-setup. I've heard of a tool called Terraform while I'm in Silicon Valley so I'll definitely look into that quite a bit as well.

As things stand, the homelab has been left back in the midwest. Unplugged and only half-configured, I think it will have to wait until I return home from this co-op. Once I'm back I will definitely begin using GitLab or BitBucket and throw a ton of repos on there that I can tinker with and host on my own systems.

Hope all is going well out there in the rest of the world!

A New Chapter

While still working- rushing- to get my homelab remotely accessible in time before I fly out to San Francisco to intern at Tesla Motors, I'm struggling with balancing hanging out with friends, playing Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and working on this homelab. So many friends and family want to say hello before I leave for five months.

Sorry for the few updates, I just haven't found time to update this site in a while. The holidays are quite busy. Looking forward to seeing what this new job, albeit temporary, on the West Coast brings. I've needed a break like this for a while. The slow, bureaucracy-filled norm that I'm used to with companies I've worked for in the Midwest will likely have no place out at Tesla if I'm hearing correctly. Here's my chance to work somewhere great and bring back a different mentality to the Midwest.

Happy holidays everyone and I'll see you in the new year! 

Lakka Box Finished!

Finally after long last!

I was with some friends over the weekend at a hackerspace, then we saw a movie. Afterwards I thought it would be smart to begin working on the homelab since I only have a month to get it operational before I move out to California for an internship with a big company. 

 While I finished the Lakka Box, they prepped the wire runs from the new router to the lab. I'll probably have documentation on this sooner or later. The good thing now is that any old-school game from my childhood can be played on this cute little PlayStation-themed Arch box with a controller!

 I will likely talk about projects I'm running through my homelab in the future on here when more work is done on it. For now, I will update the project page.

Updates on Things - Lakka Box Finishing soon

Hello again!

It's looking like the Lakka Box should be done by Wednesday or so. I have to go grab a small SATA cable for it. Working on that guy has basically been rebuilding an Optiplex 780 bit by bit with parts that work best around an emulation station. I've been quite busy recently with lots of coursework in scripting, attempting to further automate my Factorio game and server, look up a test Soundcloud scraper I can modify for testing and I'll be working part-time soon for LexisNexis until my co-op semester begins in the Spring. It's interesting how I assumed I'd have all my projects done by the end of the year, that I started during my summer co-op semester!

My Spring co-op semester- I believe it's January to April or May- will be the last time I'm available for a co-op position and I'm still in talks with prospective companies...no idea who I'll be working for around then, however I'd really like someone I can stick with in the SysAdmin sector as I grow into new roles. Here's hoping I can find someone who wants to teach a student in I.T./Automation more Linux goodness! I much prefer learning open-source vs paid software, as there is a lot in the open-source sector that people don't realize can help them.

My recently-received Google Home DiY box will be done once I get a proper image for the Pi. I recently- as in maybe two or three months ago- received that MagPi edition that came with a kit to turn your Raspberry Pi 3 into a Do-It-Yourself Google Home which is quite interesting. I'll be playing with that more between entertainment, school and projects.

Still need to figure out how to boot windows on an upcoming project computer....this re-built Dell doesn't seem to like booting from CD, DVD nor USB....all I need to do is update the BIOS with Windows and then I'm immediately slapping Linux on there. That'll be all!

Life is moving

Life is moving along! Classes are going. Sometimes it's hard to keep one's head above the water in the cases of professors who don't understand or like you, but I attempt to power through anyway. Also learning in Scripting Languages courses recently that Python might be my new best friend for the Scraper project, once I get my servers mounted.

Recently did some work on rackmounting my servers, but learned that my HP DL380 G7 needs special rails or adapters for its rails to fit in square rack holes. The Dell R710 was succesfully mounted, awaiting a RAID card swap so that the hard drives can be passed directly through to unRAID. Also learned that my idea for using a Raspberry Pi 3 to monitor room ambient temperature, humidity etc has already been done before so that'll be fun and easy to setup for the new "server room" in the basement.

Other than the fact that the Scraper and VPS projects have been put on hold due to the inevitable delays caused by needing rails + parts for the servers, I should be able to complete the Lakka Box once the heatsink for the Dell gets here!

Alex out!