February Update
To think, 20 years ago today I was sneaking into the Ontario Power Company’s generating station under Niagara Falls, finding an unlocked door on its roof and exploring a vast generating station, control room, and valve chamber, complete with John Candy’s signature. What a wild time of my life that was.
Twenty years later I am still thinking about power stations. More specifically, about how they are being shut down by the government for environmental reasons and also purchased by private ventures to power data centers. We have one such power plant local to our town, which was purchased by a data company. In the past this power plant was used to provide peak power relief to the town. Now that power isn't available anymore; it is all going toward the data center. So of course our energy bills are skyrocketing.
Being able to afford daily life is difficult. After over a decade of not having to rely on fast food, it has sadly become a regular staple again. It is crazy to think that I now make over $100,000 a year but still have to eat like I am in my twenties making minimum wage. It doesn’t help that utility bills have been roughly equivalent to my mortgage payment these days. Part of it is that I have a little family now too. I have a new addition that joined the pack back in December, a little girl. It is wonderful being a father, and it is totally something I wish I had considered earlier in life. But I am thankful for having the opportunity now.
Due to the family growing, I have had to make some changes around the house too. I used to have a little apartment I could rent out to supplement my income and help pay the mortgage. But I haven't rented it out since COVID. Screw that. I learned that landlords have no real control over bad tenants anymore. Mine killed his dog up there. Horrible. In any case, I was able to figure out how the house was originally set up and knocked down the non-supporting walls, opened up the old passageway, built a new bedroom, and roughed in a new bathroom. An additional bedroom is there as well. It was a lot of work, and of course with old homes you never know what you are going to find. But alas I am happy with it so far. I just wish I had more time and energy to finish the job.
As part of an energy-saving plan, and also just to keep sane doing things I enjoy, I rebuilt my whole home network. I sadly made the tough choice to ditch my Adtran main switch. It was a nice switch, and I don't believe I ever had to power cycle it during its six-year runtime. But I moved my entire network onto HP gigabit PoE switches. I am using a 5910 as a main core, and then a 5630 as an access switch in the garage. Everything is interconnected with multimode fiber. Everything is also now VLANed, and I have had to build a DNS table, as now that my network isn't flat anymore I have to be able to route things within it to still maintain services between my CCTV, servers, lab, and main LAN.
I also moved my servers from the garage back into the house. I figure the electricity is cheaper in the house, so they are better off there, at least for now. I am also working on decommissioning my PowerEdge 2950s and moving toward R330s, which are more energy efficient. My main R330 is now a Linux build and operates my main LAMP stack, a VoIP PBX, and a TrinityCore WoW server. I really can't afford a newer generation server these days!
Work has been busy, and I have been working on completely redesigning an emergency communications system. That is fun, I guess. In any case, it keeps me busy.
It is sad to see how a whole generation, or maybe just a whole population of people, has been radicalized to be socially awkward, but yet also socially woke. People who don't have the social skills to date and actually form meaningful bonds, yet they seem to feel that they know better about migration and immigration issues than what centuries of immigration history have taught countries. I blame the media and social media for steering that belief and driving that passion, of course. But it is obviously an agenda also. Meh, I don't bother with that stuff too much anyhow.