Nitemare Cafe

A day in the life of a computer geek

Home Automation

February 12, 2025 — Wintermute

I've been playing around with TrueNAS, Home Assistant, and the like, and set up the above control panel so that I can view the status of apps and various sensors in my home. There's so much more that can be done, but this is a start. ;)

Tags: truenas, networking, homarr

Comments?  

Cloudflare

February 08, 2025 — Wintermute

I may, at some point, move this site back to self-hosting, as I have managed to get a reverse-proxy setup so that lg15.cassieiswatching.com works whichever upstream ISP is working at the moment. This allows me to self-host even if carrier-grade NAT is being used. I suggest watching the embedded video for a quick how-to.

Tags: hosting, nat, cloudflare, cloudflared

Comments?  

Screaming into the void

February 07, 2025 — Wintermute

For the two people following here, you may have noticed that I've been screaming into the void a bit more often that I was. I have been turning here instead of Facebook a bit more whenever I have something to say. It seems to help me stay off of FB a bit more. ;)

Tags: blogging

Comments?  

Payphone

February 07, 2025 — Wintermute

Some time ago, I purchaced a refurbished payphone online. I bought it unprogrammed, as I wasn't sure how I wanted to set it up, but had some issues getting it to keep some of my settings. I had plugged the internal battery in, and had followed all the instructions. Yet my changes to change collection never seemed to last. Well, recently I also discovered that the phone wasn't working at all. I opened the phone and removed the battery and tested it, and it was dead. So I thought I'd take the board out and see if I could bypass it coin collection completely, and I discovered a second battery on the back of the board. So I did a little more digging, and discovered the first battery apparently provided power to the relay, and the one I discovered powers the chip which saves the setting. I tested it, and the voltage measured a bit low as well. Replacement batteries ordered, so I should finally be able to set the phone the way I'd like it set.

In the process, I also discovered a blog post about fixing a Protel payphone. It appears to be more-or-less the same phone as I have, and has a lot of interesting information that I hadn't run across before. Worth checking out if you're interested in such things at all.

Tags: protel, payphone, retro

Comments?  

Gotta Keep It Separated

February 06, 2025 — Wintermute

Most people who know me personally don't know this, but I have been separated from my wife on-and-off for the past few years. I posted to FB when it happened but that upset my wife, so I deleted the post. I was hoping to work things out, but that looks less and less likely. We're still best friends, and are probably better for each other separately than as a couple. We're co-parenting well, and all is fine, which is why I never told anyone else since that initial post. If this is how you're finding out, I'm sorry for not telling you sooner. I just don't care to talk about it because I am fine and don't want it to be what people focus on when they're around me.

Tags: family

Comments?  

No further news of my father's passing

February 05, 2025 — Wintermute

A few weeks ago, I posted about my father's passing on January 14. Since then, I have heard absolutely nothing. I find it peculiar that I still cannot find his obituary or notice of his funeral or anything else about it online. I expected to at least see a post on Facebook by the half-sister who notified me, but I have not even seen that. I find this rather... peculiar...

Tags: family

Comments?  

Feedburner

February 05, 2025 — Wintermute

I just realized that I failed to update my rss feed to use Feedburner, so have rectified that. The original one provided by the software still works, but I just realized that my blog's two followers probably stopped getting updates a long time ago. lol

Tags: blog, rss, feed, feedburner

Comments?  

One-word review: Dog Man

February 03, 2025 — Wintermute

Dud

Slightly longer review: I know. It's a movie meant for kids. My 10yo daughter loves the books. She and my 6yo daughter seemed to enjoy it, but I was sitting there feeling like I was in a 5-hour documentary on paperclips. Many kid's movies have plenty of humor aimed at the adults in the audience, but if this movie had any of that I completely missed it. I think I laughed once as something that was slightly humorous. The "Bad Guys" short they showed before the movie was hilarious, though. ;)

Tags: one-word-reviews, movies, reviews

Comments?