The single 2TB (1.82TiB) HDD I had for storing mediia/downloads/backups wasn’t cutting it, so I finally decided to go through with turning my old PC into a file server and ordered 2 more of the Samsung SpinPoint F4s (HD204UI). Ever since I came across an article on ZFS, which has been touted as the last word in file systems and has a great built-in software RAID engine, I’d made up my mind that was what I was going with. But unfortunately due to licensing issues, it’s not natively supported in Linux, so I couldn’t use Debian or Ubuntu Server like I would’ve preferred. My choice for OS were OpenSolaris, OpenIndiana, FreeBSD, or a distribution based off those (EON, FreeNAS, etc). OpenIndiana is way too new for me to feel comfortable using, so that was never really an option; OpenSolaris has the most mature ZFS support, but the OS itself is effectively dead as an open source product; FreeBSD doesn’t support the most up to date versions of ZFS, but since I’m not planning on using RAID-Z2 or Z3 (yet), it’s not as big a deal – whereas the OS still being updated and supported is. FreeBSD it is.

The first thing I have to say for FreeBSD is that it really makes me appreciate how good of a job Linux distros have done in making the install and configuration process sensible and painless. Sure, Ubuntu is by far the most consumer (or one might say n00b) friendly of them all, but even the GUI-less install for Ubuntu Server can get you up and running with practically everything you need in less than an hour – just anything that’s not already installed is only a few apt-get commands away. By comparison, from when I put in the FreeBSD CD to install for the first time, to when I finally had a working minimal installation (basically FreeBSD with SSH and Samba) took… about 6 hours. This included at least 3 full reinstalls of the OS and 40+ minutes spent on updating ports list and then installing Samba each time by downloading sources for all dependencies from a bunch of FTP servers and compiling them. Installing vim, my *nix editor of choice, took even longer because I didn’t realize gvim was included in the vim port, and thus had to download a ton of GUI dependencies… some of them off Belgian FTP servers at the blazing speed of 60KB/s. So lesson learned – use the vim-lite port if, god forbid, I have to ever do it again. And I have never appreciated APT (or even YUM, which I don’t like nearly as much as) more.

After that, it was time to set up the ZFS RAIDZ pool. At least this part went pretty swimmingly by following the excellent guide by sub.mesa – his FreeBSD install/setup guide is pretty good too, though the site was down when I was doing my install. The only real issue was when I forgot to create filesystems using the zfs create command and just created directories via mkdir in the zpool. Which worked… but then caused the ~50GB of data I’d copied onto it to disappear on the next restart… oops. Also had to recompile Samba to enable AIO, but that was quite painless.

And so, after hours spread out over 2 days… I’ve got a working file server with 3.62TiB of usable space. Performance is unfortunately not quite great – I seem to be limited to about 65MB/s writing to it over my GbE network, compared to the 80+ I was getting when I just had the one HDD shared under Windows 7. It does not appear to be a disk bottleneck, as I was getting the same speeds on the set of 3 old Seagate 7200.10 160GB drives I tested with too. It’s likely a combination of my computer being underpowered (single-core A64 2.4GHz with only 2GB of RAM is rather less than usually recommended for a ZFS file server) and the normal Samba overheard, so I’ll wait until I (most likely) switch over my current Phenom II X3 system for that use, and investigate further if it’s still slow.

In the meantime, I’ll be watching the progress bar as 1.6TB of data (somewhat slowly) makes its way across my network.

Yep. It snowed a week or so ago. In late-March/early-April. When I’d probably already be outside wearing t-shirts and shorts if I was still in Austin. I don’t recall that happening even when I was in Minnesota, though it’s been a while, and my memory isn’t all that clear.

Still nothing of real major importance happening in my life (working while waiting on, presumably, the summer school term to start), so here’s ever more unimportant things:

As usual, start with games.

Sony PlayStation Portable: Completed my Sony console collection by picking up a used PSP-2001 (slim) and installing CFW (custom firmware) on it. I got it mostly with the intention to play PS1 games on, though I eventually found that the emulation support isn’t quite what I’d hoped for. That said, it’s still the best option available, at least until SCEA stops being completely useless and update the US PSN Store to not be a joke compared to the JP one. On the other hand, there are actually a few nice PSP games, even if they’re mostly ports/remakes (see below).
Verdict: Worth owning.

Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth: Seems like this game has become somewhat rare, but I found it at Wal-Mart for $30, so picked it up to play what is supposed to be one of the best RPGs w/o having to pay exorbitant prices on ebay for one of the PS1 copies or through illegal methods. The English voice acting is atrocious, forcing me to get the undubbed version, but the game definitely is pretty nice so far (about 5 hours into it).
Verdict: TBD, likely good.

Patapon: Interesting, but I’m terrible at these types of games.
Verdict: Pata-Pata-Pata-Pon, Pata-Pata-Pata-Pon, Pon-Pon-Pata-Pon, Pata-Pata-Pata-Pon.

Crisis Core -Final Fantasy VII-: Decent game, though the FFVII world really doesn’t do all that much for me anymore. Supposed to be short, so maybe I’ll get around to finishing it eventually.
Verdict: Who knows.

Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy II: Picked them up for collection purposes as they were cheap, probably won’t ever get around to playing them.
Verdict: Will never find out.

Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions: One of my favorite games on the original PlayStation. The new localization is definitely superior, though I’m so used to the old class/spell/ability names that I’m still often thrown off by the new ones. The FMVs are lovely (they remind me a lot of Valkyria Chronicles), and the English voices are pretty decent. As I’ve already spent hundreds of hours on the PS1 version, and don’t really have the option of playing the multi-player modes that are required to get certain items, I’m basically just cheating my way through this one using LionEditor. ^_^
Verdict: A+++++++++++++++++++ will play again.

Hot Shots Golf: By now, I’m pretty sure the PS3 version, Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds, has surpassed VC as the PS3 game that I’ve spent the most time on. and I’ve spent more money on DLC for it than any other game as well. Not many people seem to appreciate it, but this game is amazingly fun, to the point where everytime I think of playing something on a console, I inevitably end up just playing another round (or 5) of golf in HSG instead. I even ended up getting Hot Shots Golf: Open Tee 2 on the PSP, but stopped playing it half-way through because playing both really messes with my timing due to the difference in play mechanics (OOB introduced the Advanced swing mechanic, which is what I used exclusively, while OT2 uses the Traditional style).
Verdict: While OT2 just merely good, OOB is awesomely fun game full of awesomeness. With an absolutely adorable Jasmine thrown in. ^o^

And anime.

Kara no Kyoukai: Mujun Rasen: Very long (almost 2 hours), and very awesome. Animation is still top-notch like it was in the previous installments. The music is still great, even if sprinter is my least favorite Kalafina ending theme song to date. And there’s an amazing corridor fight scene. Oh, and let’s not forget this:

Verdict: 9 blushing Shiki faces out of 10.

Casshern SINS: Very very slow paced, but I enjoyed it a lot. The main characters are very interesting (and I always seem to have a soft spot for robotic pets). And like most anime, the ending didn’t impress very much – it was depressing, as expected, but also didn’t offer much in action either.
Verdict: 8 decaying robots out of 10.

Gundam 00 Second Season: Great visuals (for the most part), pretty good mecha design (00-Raiser… yay for “wings”!), a few nice songs (Prototype and trust you), and a story that’s meh at best. And let’s not even start on the ending.
Verdict: 7 naked GN particle-induced hallucinations out of 10.

Shakugan no Shana: The series started kind of darkly when I picked it due to expecting a light-hearted show. The cast of characters is fairly interesting, though none of them have a lot of depth. And I didn’t like Shana all that much (I guess I just don’t really care for most Tsundere characters with a few exceptions like Rin). Might eventually watch the sequel series, but that’s dobutful.
Verdict: 7 “urusai!”s out of 10.

Toradora!: Decent enough series. Not a very big fan of any of the characters (see above about Tsundere characters), but entertaining enough, and I did enjoy the ending.
Verdict: 7 Taiga-headbutts out of 10.

Rosario + Vampire: Fan service is the name of the game. Awakened Moka does look pretty good, but the show really offers little else.
Verdict: 6 censor bats out of 10.

Final Approach: I made myself finish watching it because I had started it, and it was short (15 minute episodes). Standard-fare of single-minded-ultra-devoted-girl-trying-to-make-hapless-guy-love-her.
Verdict: 6 lack of witticisms out of 10.

And… that’s about it. Think I’m going to start building a new computer system soon – probably going for a Core i7, even though it’s not all that cost effective yet. That or go all the way to the other end and get a Phenom II X3 – even with a motherboard and RAM, it’s still cheaper than just the i7 CPU…

Firefox 3 is fantastic. Huge upgrade over Firefox 2. But Mozilla Weave is, so far, a terrible replacement for Google Sync.

PS3 is a nice system. MGS4 looks amazing. Need to finish MGS3 first. Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix is awesome. Need more FFXIII information. Game controller costs are getting ridiculous – $50 for a Wireless 360 controller, $55 for a Dualshock 3, $60 for a Nunchuck + Wiimote, and never mind Classic Controller attachments. The World Ends With You is a wonderful game, but I still need to finish it. Homebrew via CycloDS Evolution is cool (thanks David!). Phoenix Wright games are quite good. Picross is awesome.

The Hulk was pretty good. As was Get Smart. Anne Hathaway looks gorgeous.

Code Geass season 1 was amazingly awesome, even if I don’t like Lelouch. At all.

… but the Sony G500 21″ CRT I got off craigslist will do. I had forgotten how much more comfortable it is to do, well, anything really, on a 1600×1200 screen compared to a 1280×1024 one. Web browsing at that resolution is just SO much better it’s not even funny. And I *finally* realized my dream of being able to use 3200×1200 dual monitor wallpapers. =)

On the other hand, there are downsides. This thing is freaking huge. Even though it’s shorter than most 21″ CRTs, it’s still a mammoth screen, and I had to rearrange my room/desk (again) to find a good way of setting all 3 screens up. And it puts out quite a bit of heat as well, which isn’t exactly a good thing when I already had 3 computers, 2 monitors (the third is usually turned off), a receiver and a speaker system almost always on.

So anyway, life has more or less settled into a routine for me – something that’s hard to avoid when working 8-to-5, Monday-to-Friday. Can’t say that it’s a bad thing either, though the newfound lack of free time does come at a somewhat annoying time.

And, of course, there’s still that one thing. To ask me to forget the unforgettable… just can’t do it.

P.S.: I still hate my router.