A mate of mine brought me up a can of First Tracks Stout from Capital Brewing in Fyshwick (ACT). It tastes fantastic.

I found one of these awesome Companion Safari camp stoves on Gumtree. It's freestanding so it's going to work better for my purposes. The current 3 burner stove takes up all the table space. These older units seem to last forever.

These fiber optic stars have been going for approx 12 years. Originally purchased on clearance at Tandy more than a decade ago. I have removed the supplied power brick and both strings of Christmas lights are controlled with a "smart" power supply. The power supply has an ESP8266 on it and is able to be turned on and off via MQTT messages from home assitant on a schedule.

The kid's seeds have just about all sprouted in their veggie planters.

Not what I pictured myself doing at 04:30 on a Friday morning! Emergency provisioning hypervisors.

Yet another steak. Delicious. Baby spinach and pine nuts with cream sauce. Some pesto pasta salad leftover from a BBQ.

Lenovo notebook BIOS sucks. You cannot upgrade your wifi module unless it has been whitelisted by Lenovo in that particular BIOS.

Today I put together some pasties for tea with leftover roast lamb and bbq chicken. I didn't even need to add extra veggies as there were plenty of roast potatoes and pumpkin to put in.

More power rail testing. I wrote an expect script to step through each outlet and power cycle it. You can watch as this happens to verify that the relay clicks and indicator lights are lit / extinguished. This gives you a reasonable idea whether everyhing is functioning correctly.

Got a few APC power rails to test, so today I threw together a quick 20A test fixture. It allows you to connect a 20A appliance into a 10A power socket. You can't run the rails at 20A of course, but it's enough to fire up the rail and validate that all the switching and control works correctly.

Scored a new 10G switch today. A Juniper EX4500. 28 10 gigabit ports.

Porterhouse Steak with Mushroom, Pine Nuts and Baby Spinach. Nom nom... and of course some Tooheys Old.

Came across some interesting stuff in the bottom of my drawer. This is how Tandy / Radioshack electronic components used to be sold; individual hang-sell packages.

Nachos! This time seasoning from scratch. Ground cumin seesds, coriander, cayenne pepper, oregano, smoked paprika and granulated garlic. Yum.

Slow cooked some beef ribs on the bbq. Easy to do, just need to keep them moist. They were placed on cooling trays with a tray of water underneath.

Recently acquired a three burner companion camping stove. Tried it out for the first time today. It just needed a new hose.

Cauliflower Gratin is fantastic. You need this. Easy to make. A white sauce roux with some cheese. Bake it in a dish. Done.

Threw together a chicken and veggie pie with leftover roast. Delicious. Just make a roux and some gravy... Chuck it all in. Let if cool. Line the pie tin with pastry and dump it in.

Today I got fed up with the coffee machine as it was not turning on when it should. I stripped the controller board except for the LED and the buttons so that it could be reused. I then added a Sonoff to it so that it could be turned on and off via MQTT or with the button.

The starter motor in the Barina died, so I had to replace it. Very difficult to reach! It's on the backside of the engine under the intake.

Firing up the HP DL585G7 to see what spec it is. 600W idle. 4 x 12 core opteron 6172s.

Attaching ears and securing the power supply on the SRX210H in the lab rack. I'm moviving it hot. It has 439 days of uptime.

Holding the patch cables out of the road so I can decommission the old EX3200 switch.

Scored some rosemerry cuttings from my mate Cam

Scored a pair of SRX210H firewalls from eBay. One is PoE, the other standard. Updated and ready to go. They also came with the nifty ears that hold the power supply.

Quiche Lorraine - yum. Should have made two =)

20 gig aggregate for the server to the top of rack switch =)

The BIAB brew stand is mostly complete. This is a mock up of brew day to see that everything fits. I added a loop to the fence so that the tarp could be secured.

Messing with these graphical displays, only problem is they use nearly all the IO on an ESP8266-12.

Juniper EX4200 TOR (top of rack) switch and 10G upgrade for the lab!

Working on a new BIAB brew stand. It's made from an old Dexion workbench and other scrap.

I built some storage bins by recycling some MDF packaging.

Tried out a new water bath setup for slow cooking ribs. They turned out fantastic! The ribs sit on mesh trays which are sitting on baking trays with water in them.

More delicate repairs on the TDS-540

Lasagne from scratch (including making pasta). Lots of hard work but delicious!

We made a shepherds pie with the leftover roast chicken and veggies. It was delicious.

Garden light #4 failed. It looks as though I fitted a 25V cap instead of a 35V cap on the rectified AC side of the power input and it got pretty unhappy.

Started re-capping the board in the TDS-540 Oscilloscope. Hopefully this will allow it to pass the self-tests. This is a common issue with these scopes. A very tedious process though, but getting through it. The solder they used is pretty stubborn, so I've got the iron up at 350 celcius.