A logbook for a small, stubborn lab
Two half-height racks in a converted pantry, a UPS that is one summer older than it should be, and a habit of writing down what happened before I forget it. That is the whole premise.
Most of what lands here starts as a note to myself at two in the morning: a fan curve that finally stopped resonating with the shelf, a switch port that negotiated 100 Mbit for three months without anybody noticing, a restore that took four hours longer than the runbook promised. I clean the notes up when they turn out to be useful more than once.
There is no newsletter, no comment section, and nothing to sign up for. If a note saves you an evening, that is the entire return I am after.
Recent notes
- The restore drill that failed politely14 August 2026A quarterly restore that succeeded on every check except the one that mattered.
- Moving a Zigbee coordinator without re-pairing everything2 July 2026Backup, adapter swap, channel discipline, and the two devices that refused anyway.
- Budgeting rack power for a pantry, not a data centre19 May 2026What a 10 A domestic circuit actually gives you once the UPS takes its cut.
Current state of the lab
| Layer | What runs it | Last touched |
|---|---|---|
| Compute | Two small x86 nodes, one ARM board for sensors | Aug 2026 |
| Storage | Four spinning disks, mirrored pairs, weekly scrub | Aug 2026 |
| Network | One managed switch, one router, no VLAN sprawl on purpose | Jun 2026 |
| Power | Line-interactive UPS, ~340 W steady draw | May 2026 |
The table is here mostly to shame me into keeping the dates honest.