Blogs

These were very nearly emails. You're welcome.

Sat 7/18:
I think I am making a huge mistake using enterprise switches. The heat coming off that thing has been a real problem! I was just sitting there dripping with that office over 90F. I could swap it for a 24-port Netgear but I don't wnat to lose the serial and logs and stuff I use. It's just like web gui only which isn't great for me.

I'm pretty sure that switch is "THE" source of excess heat in this room.

It just occurred to me that I never finished the video and walk through of the cable management project I did a couple months ago. It came out great and hasn't been a problem since I did it. Honestly I've been on other projects, but I know that the next thing I do with that retro-gear is going to be a breeze.

As you can see, the Checkmate spins right around and it's super easy to get at everything without putting any strain on any of the ports or stretching any cables. It's never going to win the tidiness olympics, but it's all safe and convenient and well managed. I do like some organization porn though, and this is definitely that.

Big thanks again to Checkmate for making exactly the right product for my extremely specific use case and tying this whole collection of stuff together in one easy to navigate package.

Natalie and I got this Sanyo M9935K boombox at the Brimfield North market on Memorial Day Sunday this past weekend for $20. It was raining steadily the whole day and there were very few patrons which is perfect for me. Evidently people saw this coming and Saturday was /huge/ for the vendors, so we were glad it was worth their while.

But on Sunday? They just didn't want to pack stuff back up. We saw tons of awesome retro computing and gaming hardware for very good prices even on day two.

Anyway, we asked if the radio worked and the guy literally said: "You'd proooobably be better off making something out of it". And: "The radio works, and the tape works with the right tape..." And: "The power cord is cut, and there's another cord, you'll see".

And I'm like "I got a whole drawer full of cords it's fine". And we just walked out with it.

Other boomboxes for scale. It's not that huge, like 20" x 13" but definitely bigger than I thought:

It wasn't until we were home that I spotted some key flaws. The handle was only doing Handle Things on one end. The other end was floating freely. It functions as a handle but it's just because it's slamming into the top of the slot. Noted. This thing was someone contractor's "truck radio" for quite some time if I had to guess.

The power cord is permanently attached from the factory, so that's super cool thanks Sanyo. It's cut in the middle and spliced together with wire nuts to a 2 prong plug that was like 20 years old when this boombox was made. It's also got several areas of exposed copper.

I decided I didn't have time for this thing to be in my office this week, so I had my super secret Ace Hardware mole get a NEMA 1-15 plug kit. I cut the main cord above the damage, screwed into the terminals, attached a standard extension cord and mounted in its ultimate resting place. 10 minutes, fits like a glove in its spot.

The real shame of it is is that this radio sounds GREAT. Maybe I should rescue it before any lasting humidity/mold damage happens to those speakers and clean it up it for the actual barn where it stays nice and dry.

Actually. Yeah, fuck it. This is now the Patio Radio. Sold. I'm just gonna drag an extension cable out there anyway so the short cord is perfect.

The search continues for a radio crappy enough that I don't care if it's in the basement forever but sounds decent enough and won't burn down my house.

I think my newly-weighted '90s playlist builder did a pretty decent job spitting out a super typical day in the '90s on the Good Radio Stations.

I've got some tweaks to do, but so far so good.

I put together the 9u rack rails today and they look great. I just used a 2x3 that we had laying around chopped it roughly to size and used BriWax to finish it which was super fast vs all the waiting around for stain and varnish.

Unfortunately it's not quite going to all fit inside the 31" wide hole I have for it. So that whole cabinet needs to come off the wall like 1/2". Which means anything we care about hitting the floor needs to go. The server racks will be just fine where they are.

One thing I am going to do is flip the bolts around on the outside two now that they're not going to be visible. Anyone sticking their hand back there deserves their tetanus. I'll put some caps on them. Maybe. I'll also carve out the middle section of each 2x3 for cable pass through.

It will also be nice to have this henge/cabinet at least loosely attached to the wall since I'll just jam some corner brackets to it. It's not unstable, but now it'll never go anywhere.

Addendum:

As I was going through my go-to box of rack stuff for cage nuts I found this one bolt that I've had forever and really want to find another one of so I can do a thing or something. It's too nice to just toss and I do try to at least match so it's not like I'm gonna ever use it.

So anyway, I went hunting for captive cup washers and there are guys like turning them or water jetting them for like 35 cents a washer, which seems a bit. Extravagant. For me.

So it took me like 45 minutes to find that what I'm looking at is effectively this product:

So...Sell me them. How much man, gimme a checkout page. "Send Inquiry"? I don't want 40,000 of these things. Am I supposed to chat with the sales engineer? Miss Ting? Is this page a Ru Paul movie from the '90s?

Searching for the product only ever brings you to this page, so that's cool.

So oh hey 30 minutes later and I found the US supplier is...uh oh this isn't gonna be cheap.

Over $1 per screw, $4 per "thing I'm screwing in" We're veering into Fancy Lad territory again.

Tomorrow I gotta figure out if Graybar or someone has these.

Cool Walmart has the knock-offs for 12 bucks. Sold.