[ale] Anyone out there?

[Jim Kinney]

On Sun, Apr 23, 2023, 10:52 AM Solomon Peachy via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:

> On Sun, Apr 23, 2023 at 10:01:49AM -0400, Jim Kinney via Ale wrote:
> > Since my daily driver became twin super computers I can't even look at
> the
> > off-lease/warranty gear from eBay any more without wasting too much time
> > figuring out what else it would need to be a baby testing environment for
> > work stuff.  "So 3-5 of those, more ram for each, a triplet of 2U drive
> > boxes for lustre and new switch...." And suddenly that $250 used server
> > morphs into a $15k 10 node cluster with a $400/month power bill to do....
> > nothing.
>
> Hah, that's what I think when I see the various "home lab porn" photos
> on the /r/homelab subreddit -- it seems most of the folks there have an
> equipment/complexity fetish, and only try to come up with uses for all
> that gear well after they see their first power bill.  (/r/selfhosted
> falls under this same complexity acquisition syndrome too, and I say
> that as someone who's been selfhosting for.. geez, 25 years now..)
>
> Not that I'm entirely immune from that problem -- But now that all of my
> equipment is back under one roof/site with <2Mbps Up DSL, a lot of the
> stuff I had running is now pointless/impractical, and there's no point in
> continuing to pay the power bill to keep it all online.
>
> So I'm going to consolidate, but I genuinely need the raw compute a
> beefy box (ie >=16c/32t) or four brings and I can't justify the expense
> of a more modern/efficient system in the same general performance class.
> > I'm beginning to think that HPC may be an addiction best treated with
> > low-tech hobbies like gardening and metalsmith work. Just need to build
> out
> > that CNC plasma cutter with a small cluster for a blender render farm to
> > drive it....
>
> I now live in the middle of 30 densely-wooded acres. There's no shortage
> of meatspace activities... and I've found I much prefer those to staring
> into screens.
>


The highlight of my week is the 3 hours I spend in the jewelry studio class
making stuff that can actually be seen with human eyes and appreciated by
people without 20 years of experience. I'm still years from retirement but
I am practicing on my next skill set. If it makes enough cash to cover the
costs of materials and travel to various fairs, I'm all good. Just set up
my booth between the beer truck and the music tents...

>
>  - Solomon
> --
> Solomon Peachy                        pizza at shaftnet dot org
> (email&xmpp)
>                                       @pizza:shaftnet dot org   (matrix)
> Dowling Park, FL                      speachy (libra.chat)
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