I have configured the system such that when my phone number is dialed, a voice describes a telephone menu where the caller can dial a selection:

As a child I was occasionally served a certain type of frozen pizza (Totino’s Party Pizza, perhaps?) as a special treat, which to me tasted faintly of soap. I would tell my mother this each time, she would taste it for herself insisting that she rinsed her hands of all traces of soap this time, then report tasting nothing unusual. We all shrug and move on, repeat.

In the beginning, my workflow was pretty sloppy since much of the deployment/management depended on me remembering to restart a container or update a version, manually copy a secret here and there. Things like this. Totally maintainable, sustainable with some effort, but it is not the way. And to some degree these manual interventions will always be necessary, but it will serve me well to reduce them and automate them away as much as reasonable to help these apps live far into the future with little fuss. Many of these apps have proven their usefulness to me over many years, so I have begun to take their management more seriously, slowly taking steps toward git-ops patterns and best practices. Before: scattered .env files. Flat directory of compose files. No documentation. Manually copying secrets by hand. Manually rebuilding host dependencies by hand. Now: a single command issued by a single click of a button (maybe I am overstating the simplicity here…nevertheless) will handle mostly everything I care about. Host setup, Compose projects, rendered secrets, state directories, validation, and deployment are all described in one place. Easy!

The part functioned for a few years, and here we are again. Luckily it is stupid easy to replace, and apparently dirt cheap on Amazon. I paid something like 50 USD for this part only for it to fail after a couple of years. I shudder to think how long a $15 part will last…

Ficus Audrey

For two years this tree did nothing. No growth, no changes, nothing at all. So we attempted to induce some kind of growth by snipping off a small length of growth at the top: the apical meristem. This shortly prompted the smallest of growths to develop on the node just beneath the cut, barely detectable, a small green nub.

The stain looked great, then I completely ruined the look by encasing it in a thick layer of polyurethane plastic. Now it has a wet-looking orange glow to it, and probably sheds a trillion microplastic particles into the air each day. I am a little ashamed of the decision, but life goes on and the finish is totally inconsequential to the tabletop’s stated purpose.

🛠️ Parts and equipment

I need a few tools and the replacement part:

• Extend the rack to ≈30 in, up from ≈24 in. This wil give me more space at the rear to route cables.
• Move server chassis down for 0U gap. This will give me more space at the top.
• Put wheels back on the rack. This will allow me to roll out the entire rack from the wall for better access.

I purchased these server rack tie bars to give me something to fasten the cables to. I use hook-and-loop straps for this.