💾 Server Build

Notes

I am in possession of an increasingly large heap of data and I need a place to put it. I need a server that will run services that help serve and organize the files. Cloud storage/server solutions are too expensive for my purposes.

Additional considerations in ascending order of plausibility / no real order.

• You use a USB stick to move files around and this process rapidly accelerates the rate at which your body experiences senescence.
• Your favorite cloud storage service kicked you off for abusing their unlimited plan.
• You cannot look yourself in the mirror lest you see a man in it you do not recognize, one that contrasts to the otherwise cool, confident and competent human being of 20 minutes ago, after you find yourself in a pinch forced to send files over Bluetooth in a last ditch effort to move one tiny, absolutely infuriatingly tiny but necessary configuration file to a device just inches away – a task so conceptually simple and obvious even your technologically mystified ancestors still laugh raucously at your impotence from the great beyond. You agonize over the tedium – again and again casting all the right spells, clicking all the right buttons, trying to stay calm to lower your dangerously spiking blood pressure. You avert your eyes in furious rebellion from the digital clock in the corner of the screen that seems to mock your focused efforts – you begin to regret the decision to allow the Windows task bar clock to display the seconds digits now – the ticking away a ceaseless reminder of your mortality and of your hopeless battle against God’s will – to squeeze one moment of triumph – one small victory from your precious time on this Earth. You are Sisyphus, the file transfer your impossible burden. But what of your crime? What did you do to deserve this? No one and no thing will tell you and no error message reveals the nature of your failure. Not Sisyphus or Josef of The Trial, but some secret third, more hated thing. Your vision closes in around you try and you try and you will this cursed thing to be done! But the incantation is not quite right. You inflected where you should have introflected. Permissions issue. Firewalled. Timeout. DNS error. The transfer fails to your stuttering bewilderment and dismay in dozens of ways in the span of 12 minutes. In your fits of now blinding rage you are given no clues as to why – or rather – you cannot see the error messages, only that you have failed. You are resigned to accept your destiny, to forever struggle to move the file you have come to resent until the miser within you capitulates, finally releasing the funds necessary to buy your very own

Network Attached Storage

The solution to my data storage and retrieval woes is a NAS, which is a file storage server attached to my local network. As long as a device has access to the network, so too shall I have access to the data.