23 April, 2022
Song of the Day: It Gets Better - Fun.
Wow.
Another wild week.
I cannot remember a time when I have been more mentally drained. Just absolutely burnt out.
I still have to put Spring semester of 2020 in first place as the roughest semester I’ve had, between the courseload and the start of the pandemic (I’m still amazed I managed Data Structures, Fluid Mechanics, Thermodynamics, Strength of Materials, and PDIII at the same time). This one has to be real close though. Mostly because this time around, I really don’t care. The classes I’m taking this semester really don’t do it for me, between Java, Control Systems Lab (which I’m not great at), Fluid Dynamics Lab (which my group has made excruciating), and Algo (whose grading policy has had me on edge all semester). The only thing I’m really getting any joy out of is the independent study with the star tracker, and I only get to do that around everything else.
Anyways, I’ve been running on empty for the past few days, with barely enough time to eat and sleep around all the due dates, let alone work on anything I actually care about.
I did however, manage one large accomplishment in that time.
For a while now, I have wanted to find myself an old server to mess around with. I have spent a lot of time lurking on r/homelab, and have wanted to have something of my own do try out some virtualization stuff on. On Thursday, during a quick break to recollect myself, I checked Facebook Marketplace on a whim, and saw a Dell Poweredge R620 listed for pretty cheap. I made an offer and managed to take it home with me.
It is absolutely gorgeous. Dual CPUs with 10 cores/20 threads a piece. 160 GB of ram. I recognize that in terms of servers, it’s not crazy, but to me, its an absolute monster.
I haven’t been able to run much yet, as it didn’t come with any drives (I have 2 HDDs coming in from Ebay this week), and I have learned that Proxmox refuses to run on a usb for testing purposes, but I have powered it on, checked the bios, and everything is appearing as it should.
I’m chomping at the bit to get it running now. Hopefully I can get drives in the bays this week, as my last assignments should be taken care of for this Thursday. Then I can mess around with it a bit as I prep for finals.