Dave.

“Why do people do X, when in my opinion if you disregard the two top reasons for doing X, it’s pointless? Prove to me that it would be better!?”

Well, anything’s possible, I say we give it a try and see what happens.

Have you tried…

you know,

(cough)

maybe just, ah …

(air quotes) “heavily implying”

the , ah, you know …

particular…

(taps side of nose)

ah, torrent

in

(eyebrow waggle)

ahem,

QUESTION?

Eh?

Ehhhhh?

Change your thought patterns. Minimise their actions in your mind.

They are not “psychopaths”, they are just “idiots”.

They do not “counterattack”, there is no “attack” from your side. They are just “being a nuisance”. Frame all the bumps and thumps as renovations if you want.

When they make a noise, turn UP your tv, just a little, so you can hear it over it. “Gee those renovations of theirs are a bit noisy, maybe I should put in a complaint.”

When they rattle the ceiling of their apartment, “Hey it must be time to vacuum, thanks for reminding me. I’ll do it now while you’re renovating and making noise so it doesn’t disturb you too much”.

“I hear that plants respond to music so I’m just going to leave some on for Ferris, my pot plant, while I go out shopping for a few hours this morning” - Not too loud, just loud enough for Ferris to enjoy it. If you hear a lot of thumping it must be just them taking the opportunity to renovate while you can’t hear them. I do hope they don’t damage their ceiling with all that thumping while you’re out, oh well.

All that activity on their part takes a lot of energy, your activities take very little. Which one do you think is going to end first?

Inertia, mostly.

Of course Plex then takes advantage of that with the slow erosion of the free edition.

Motor oil tastes funny.

“Oh, it’s got an embedded TIFF of the actual content. That explains it.”

Yes, I am quite old now.

Samsung front loader washing machine here.

It is generally musical while selecting program options. It sings a little song when finished, which is only after it unlocks the door. The little song only plays once. The little song can be changed to other tunes by subtle and undocumented button presses.

After about 10 minutes it plays a few notes while turning itself off that are easily recognisable as the notes it plays when it turns itself off, so if you miss the first little song, once you hear that you know it’s definitely finished. After that it is done. No more door locking shenanigans or tumbling or clothes.

Generally I use the “sportswear” cycle which is about 1 hour, my clothes are generally not that dirty. Sometimes I treat towels / linen to a hot cotton cycle which is 2.5 hours and a 90 degree (Celsius) wash.

Had it for 10 years now, no mechanical or electrical issues. I always leave the door ajar when finished and once every few months I do a cleaning cycle.

I also have a Fisher and Paykel dryer. I have owned it for 8 years, in which time it has needed a replacement drive belt as it gets used heavily. The bushes on the drum need replacing soon, but I just turned it upside down so it will last for a while longer

Regarding your door issues, well that’s because idiots try and open the door during a load, and then when it’s locked, they turn it off and still try and open the door. They subsequently complain about the water going everywhere. Don’t forget that manufacturers have to deal with the lowest common denominator end user.

The doors aren’t violent, they’re resolute

New sign on doors:

"The door WILL close.

Puny human flesh is not an obstacle worthy of stopping the inevitable closure of the door."

You can just use a soulseek client.

However I have a build of this daemon running on a Qnap storage device, which is super handy just for ad-hoc music searches, and people can also peruse my music library 24/7.

There are phases of sleep that you pass through. Seems like you pass through the lighter ones relatively quickly and you’re getting dragged awake out of a deep sleep phase.

Either give it a little bit longer (like 35-45 minutes) or try 10 minute catnaps.

1. Replace CMOS battery.
2. Get small UPS.
3. Discover that small UPS’s fail regularly, usually with cooked batteries.
4. Add maintenance routine for UPS battery.
5. Begin to wonder if this is really worth it when the rest of the house has no power during an outage.
6. Get small generator.
7. Discover that small generators also need maintenance and exercise.
8. Decide to get a whole house battery backup a-la Tesla Powerwall topped off by solar and a dedicated generator.
9. Spend 15 years paying this off while wondering if the payback was really worth it, because you can count on one hand the number of extended power outages in that time.
10. In the end times a roving band of thugs comes around and kills you and strips your house of valuable technology, leaving your homelab setup behind and - sadly - without power. Your dream of unlimited availability has all been for nought.

Conclusion: just replace the CMOS battery on a yearly basis during planned system downtime.