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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • For a while, the windows machine I was using kept randomly becoming unresponsive (both via network, as well as the keyboard+mouse) and I just could not figure out why. Everytime it did, I’d have to force a shutdown by holding the power button until it shutoff, then press it again to start back up. Sometimes this happened while I wasn’t home, so it had to just stay offline until I was.

    I got sick of having to do this; so I replaced the power button with a transistor and a RPI. The PI would ping the server every 5min; if it failed to get a response 3 times in a row, it would trigger the transistor for 10sec, release for 3sec, then press and release again; forcing a poweroff then starting the machine again. It’d also write these events to a log file. I think it was around twice a week ish.

    Never did figure out what the cause of the lockup was; but it stopped when I replaced windows with Debian.












  • Started a new job as a tool tech in a rental center; maintaining, repairing, and simply showing people how to operate, a ton of different tools, some of which I’ve never even seen before.

    First thing I did is setup a file share on my server that I’ve populated with 70+ manuals and growing by the day…

    Read through them all myself to understand the nuances of each machine and be able to explain the details to customers; plus I can print them a fresh copy on demand just for good measure.