2013 — 6 June: Thursday

Pausing only long enough to dismiss overnight email invitations to "hook up with City hotties" (different ones for life, no less) and watch some crappy new TV show1 on this nice, sunny morning I can give both my tea and the stewing of my next batch of breakfast plums the attention they deserve before packing a lunch and trotting out on a fresh air ramble ahead of tea & biccies with Roger & Eileen. Tomorrow I'm on call to help get Chris to his repaired car should Gill not feel up to the job (during her final blast of chemo) so I'd better top up with motion lotion, too.

Good job I can welcome today's dollop of pension to the new account (which, bless it, is paying 5% gross for the first 12 months). Every little helps.

I finished...

... and enjoyed the second season of Suits last night, though it's not quite up to the benchmark set by Boston Legal. I also proved the Android Tablet PC, though capable, lacks most of the "oomph" of my quad-core desktop PC. Or certainly when asking it to contend with a fairly large, graphics-heavy, data base of DVD Profiler material. Still, it makes a credible attempt — and will certainly be easier to carry around with me than BlackBeast. Tip of the hat to Brian for his hackery ways.

What's in store?

My next generation of NAS is on order now that the WD "Red" drives have descended from their initial high prices. This will be a 3TB RAID1 pair housed in a Synology box, taking over from the two 1TB RAID1 pairs in the Buffalo Terastation. And I'm sure I can find a good use for the four 1TB SATA drives freed up by this cunning stunt as I've also taken the precaution of getting a seven-port powered USB3 hub and already have my eye on another quartet of hard drive caddies. I (still) like to kid myself that my digital Life is under some semblance2 of control.

My tingling...

... knees and shins are Nature's way of saying "You wore shorts in my nettle fields, didn't you?" Indeed I did. And, I might respond, "So, where were all your bluebells?"

Being but a...

... little busy bee, I've bee(n) improving the evening's shining hour by browsing some Synology information. The data sheet proved most informative, as did the download 'center' from which I snaffled the latest builds of various bits'n'pieces in readiness. And here's the Quick Installation Guide.

Since the model I've ordered is absent from the current product list I assume it's now discontinued; however, Synology is still bug-fixing its utilities, which is generally a Good Thing. As is adding support for Win8. It certainly beats a policy of benign neglect. [Pause] The hard drive caddies are also now on their way to my input hopper.

  

Footnotes

1  Probably best not done at the same time :-)
2  It's a very long-term, but comforting, delusion.