My wife and I are heading up for a stay-cation in the Sonoma Mountains this weekend. I'm really looking forward to it!
The plan is to do basically nothing but sit by a pool and read. I'm about halfway through the second book in The Expanse series and hope to pretty much finish it over the weekend.
I also get next Friday off for Juneteenth! Two three day weekends with a three day week in between. Just lovely.
I have a home server as one of my hobbies. It's what got me started in hosting all of this fediverse and SDS stuff. It has lots of storage for media, and for the past 8.7 years I've had the same bunch of hard drives in there spinning non-stop.
Drives that age are naturally more prone to failure, so I've been scheming for a couple of years on how I wanted to go about replacing them. I wanted to reduce the number of drives from 8 down to 2. I was ok with losing some storage capacity, as I've learned how much I really need over the years.
I finally got my hands on 2 WD Red drives which I've set up in a ZFS mirror. I can lose one drive without losing any data. If I lose both drives, I have good off-site backups for the important stuff, and can slowly rebuild my media collection if it comes down to it.
I'm happy to have new drives which are hopefully less prone to failing, but I'm also happy with the power reduction. The server is using about 40-50 watts less than before, which adds up. Electricity is about $.33/kWh where I live, so I expect HUGE SAVINGS of about $10 a month.
I've had a two drive Synology NAS running non-stop for over 15 years. It does a differential backup offsite automatically every evening. I've been thinking the same thing as you, but because I have the offsite backup, I'm probably going lean in to SSDs and bumping my LAN speed (currently 1G). I keep most of my photo library on the NAS. Searching and in-place editing slow enough to be noticeable.
Which software and destination do you use for backup? I use restic and it has been very solid. A little tedious to set up, though. It backs up to Backblaze.
I have some 2.5G ports here and there, but overall my whole network is 1G. 10 gig would be fun, and I've heard you can do it over regular ethernet cable over shorter distances -- I think that level equipment uses more power though. You also have to start diving into SFP+ modules at that point and I'm not sure I'm ready for that!
For backup, I just use a cloud service that is associated with Synology. For my next NAS, I will probably go the UGREEN route, and I'll change the offsite backup option.
As for 10G, I want to look into it. My plan is to have the NAS, router, and desktop machine in the same work area.
On Wednesday I tried my first ATG pass in months. It mostly went better than previous attempts in that I felt able to finish the pass - I have learned how to cut hairs with a lighter touch now :)
That being said it was far from a perfect shave, with many more weepers than usual and resulting in some additional irritation later the following day. I have more improving to do, but I'm hopeful that some day I can do an ATG pass without significantly reducing comfort.
I feel that I am still searching for the right shave soap for me. The A&E lavender noir I have is great for slickness and protection, but I think the fragrance irritates my face a little bit... I'm considering haslinger sensitive and zingari unscented, interested to hear if other folks think one of these might be a good option for me or maybe something else?
I have or had three Haslinger soaps, and I had no problems with them - but for the Calendula sensitive skin one, which burned me. (It's not the calendula, though...) I'm not allergic to lanolin though, so this is sth you probably want to check before you go for sheep bases.
I have generally very dry and sensitive skin - not only on the face. A&E burned me and has a reputation for frag burns, so I stay away from them. Same for goodfellas smile products. I also had bad experiences with Bay Rum soaps, and menthol burns my skin. I have 3 ZM scented soaps, and never had any issues.
Most soaps work, but I would simply avoid brands with a reputation for frag burns and ingredients you suspect or know your skin doesn't like.
Also, horse and donkey milk based soaps seem to do well for my skin.
That's a bummer about the irritation. You're likely correct that it's caused by the fragrance. A&E has a reputation for using lots of frag in their soap which can trigger sensitivities.
I have some Haslinger that @[email protected] got me and I think it's very good soap. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend trying it.
For me, there are other soaps out there that give me better shaves than Zingari. Not a knock on the brand since it works for lots of people and a lot of the scents are great, but in your particular case I'd focus on finding something a little different.
I've been a huge fan of Catie's Bubbles recently. Is that available where you live? Chris is a phenomenal soaper. The Premium base is nothing short of magical. The Luxury base (don't be fooled by the names, Luxury is the cheaper base) is also really great. Chris is amongst the list of soapers who put a lot of thought and care into reducing the chance of burning their customers with fragrance.
I haven't tried Haslinger, but have heard decent reviews. I also haven't used the unscented ZM soap, but am pretty familiar with the scented Sego offerings. It's great soap, but some people find it a little finicky to get the lather right. I don't have problems with it but YMMV.
I would definitely recommend the sheep tallow soaps from Stirling, though. Crazy good performance for the price. They have an unscented one called "Sheep." My current favorite is "Scots Pine Sheep."
I've also heard good things about their "Unscented with Beeswax" soap.
My wife and I are heading up for a stay-cation in the Sonoma Mountains this weekend. I'm really looking forward to it!
The plan is to do basically nothing but sit by a pool and read. I'm about halfway through the second book in The Expanse series and hope to pretty much finish it over the weekend.
I also get next Friday off for Juneteenth! Two three day weekends with a three day week in between. Just lovely.
Heck yeah
I have a home server as one of my hobbies. It's what got me started in hosting all of this fediverse and SDS stuff. It has lots of storage for media, and for the past 8.7 years I've had the same bunch of hard drives in there spinning non-stop.
Drives that age are naturally more prone to failure, so I've been scheming for a couple of years on how I wanted to go about replacing them. I wanted to reduce the number of drives from 8 down to 2. I was ok with losing some storage capacity, as I've learned how much I really need over the years.
I finally got my hands on 2 WD Red drives which I've set up in a ZFS mirror. I can lose one drive without losing any data. If I lose both drives, I have good off-site backups for the important stuff, and can slowly rebuild my media collection if it comes down to it.
I'm happy to have new drives which are hopefully less prone to failing, but I'm also happy with the power reduction. The server is using about 40-50 watts less than before, which adds up. Electricity is about $.33/kWh where I live, so I expect HUGE SAVINGS of about $10 a month.
I've had a two drive Synology NAS running non-stop for over 15 years. It does a differential backup offsite automatically every evening. I've been thinking the same thing as you, but because I have the offsite backup, I'm probably going lean in to SSDs and bumping my LAN speed (currently 1G). I keep most of my photo library on the NAS. Searching and in-place editing slow enough to be noticeable.
Impressive!
Which software and destination do you use for backup? I use restic and it has been very solid. A little tedious to set up, though. It backs up to Backblaze.
I have some 2.5G ports here and there, but overall my whole network is 1G. 10 gig would be fun, and I've heard you can do it over regular ethernet cable over shorter distances -- I think that level equipment uses more power though. You also have to start diving into SFP+ modules at that point and I'm not sure I'm ready for that!
For backup, I just use a cloud service that is associated with Synology. For my next NAS, I will probably go the UGREEN route, and I'll change the offsite backup option.
As for 10G, I want to look into it. My plan is to have the NAS, router, and desktop machine in the same work area.
HUGE!!
That is meaningful though, and more environmentally friendly to boot!
On Wednesday I tried my first ATG pass in months. It mostly went better than previous attempts in that I felt able to finish the pass - I have learned how to cut hairs with a lighter touch now :)
That being said it was far from a perfect shave, with many more weepers than usual and resulting in some additional irritation later the following day. I have more improving to do, but I'm hopeful that some day I can do an ATG pass without significantly reducing comfort.
I feel that I am still searching for the right shave soap for me. The A&E lavender noir I have is great for slickness and protection, but I think the fragrance irritates my face a little bit... I'm considering haslinger sensitive and zingari unscented, interested to hear if other folks think one of these might be a good option for me or maybe something else?
I have or had three Haslinger soaps, and I had no problems with them - but for the Calendula sensitive skin one, which burned me. (It's not the calendula, though...) I'm not allergic to lanolin though, so this is sth you probably want to check before you go for sheep bases.
I have generally very dry and sensitive skin - not only on the face. A&E burned me and has a reputation for frag burns, so I stay away from them. Same for goodfellas smile products. I also had bad experiences with Bay Rum soaps, and menthol burns my skin. I have 3 ZM scented soaps, and never had any issues.
Most soaps work, but I would simply avoid brands with a reputation for frag burns and ingredients you suspect or know your skin doesn't like.
Also, horse and donkey milk based soaps seem to do well for my skin.
That's a bummer about the irritation. You're likely correct that it's caused by the fragrance. A&E has a reputation for using lots of frag in their soap which can trigger sensitivities.
I have some Haslinger that @[email protected] got me and I think it's very good soap. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend trying it.
For me, there are other soaps out there that give me better shaves than Zingari. Not a knock on the brand since it works for lots of people and a lot of the scents are great, but in your particular case I'd focus on finding something a little different.
I've been a huge fan of Catie's Bubbles recently. Is that available where you live? Chris is a phenomenal soaper. The Premium base is nothing short of magical. The Luxury base (don't be fooled by the names, Luxury is the cheaper base) is also really great. Chris is amongst the list of soapers who put a lot of thought and care into reducing the chance of burning their customers with fragrance.
I haven't tried Haslinger, but have heard decent reviews. I also haven't used the unscented ZM soap, but am pretty familiar with the scented Sego offerings. It's great soap, but some people find it a little finicky to get the lather right. I don't have problems with it but YMMV.
I would definitely recommend the sheep tallow soaps from Stirling, though. Crazy good performance for the price. They have an unscented one called "Sheep." My current favorite is "Scots Pine Sheep."
I've also heard good things about their "Unscented with Beeswax" soap.