Executive summary: I started fixing the file server and cleaned out the garage today.
I woke up this morning and, after thinking of Jo, saying morning to Button as she walked past my room and then having Jo come in and give me a big smoocher, remembered the curtain rails that have been lying in the corridor for about 12 years that I’d been meaning to put in the garage but it had just blended in to the everyday ordinariness of household items. I also thought for a split second about how our housekeeper must find it gets in her way when vacuuming, and perhaps how she’s had a chuckle to herself every week when she sees it’s still there…
I got up and made Jo and myself a drink, unloaded the dishwasher, stripped my bed, put on a load of washing, made Button’s bed up, played some games with Button, Jo helped me make my bed, we tossed Button around in the blanket (think human-powered trampoline type action), Jo started cleaning up the office/sun-room/craft-room, I started fixing the file server.
It wasn’t our plan, as such, for today do be a domestic day, in fact Jo was planning on going op-shopping with Button, but they both changed their mind in exchange for crafting. Button’s been loving her new easel and just goes up sporadically to work on her works of art, and Jo started cutting foam with the electric bread-knife for her felt food project.
I discovered that the file server’s hard drives were poked, so needed a SATA to USB device that was in the garage somewhere, so I started looking for that. Then went back to get a computer for its power supply for the hard drives. Then went back for a monitor as I thought I might need to plug the drive straight in to a computer as the Mac wasn’t detecting the drive (my Linux laptop came to the rescue in the end), and while I was looking around the garage saw the fridge which needs to be put on ebay, which I needed to move out of the garage to get good photos of it, but it was playing book-end to a whole load of cardboard that needed to be loaded in to the trailer to be taken to the recycle centre, which itself had a trampoline in it.
As there was nowhere for the trampoline, I decided to do a bit or sorting at the back of the garage and unloaded the trailer. The bit of sorting turned in to a complete rearrangement of the boxes and extraction of those I knew I needed to empty and a whole load of sweeping. I then started loading the trailer with the cardboard, and as I was breaking up the boxes I found one whose base broke off due to water and was filled with pictures. I emptied the box and saved what I could (luckily the only loss was one Jo didn’t want) and continued to load the trailer. The trailer was moved to the back of the garage and I started on the house and garden tool area, which comprised a 2m x 2m area of tool boxes, tools, screws, paint tools, and more, unsorted. They received their own place on a bookshelf and the floor swept out.
At this point I was able to get the fridge out of the garage and started to clean it out and took photos. The extracted boxes for imminent unpacking, fridge and a vacuum cleaner that’ll be going on Frankston Freecycle later on, were put in front of the trailer. This 2m x 2m area will be empty within weeks. Meanwhile the right side of the garage, which was the tool floor and cardboard/fridge storage area was now completely empty. Even putting my motorbike back in leaves plenty of space to swing a metaphorical cat.
I came back in to find the file sync from the hard drives in the file server kept failing with a number of files, including a DVD project of Button’s first year, so started a file system check, which thankfully restored all files. I hope completely. The second drive is undergoing a check as I type, but I get the feeling the file server will need a complete rebuild, and perhaps in the process a reformat of the hard drives, so I’m going to just buy some new drives for the file server and copy the files from the old drives when I get them. I’ll use it as an opportunity to upgrade the file server’s storage from 1Gb to a bit more, I think.
All in all, it’s been a fantastic day of domestic bliss; a cleansing for the house as well as the soul. Jo’s been pottering around the house, falling in love with the Thermomix all over again, doing some crafting, washing, cleaning. I’ve done a long overdue check on our IT infrastructure, sorted the garage, taken photos of stuff we want to sell. Button’s had lots of fun taunting her mother with my pronunciation of tooth (tuth), played lots of imagination games, painted, helped pick up bits of foam from the floor, rode her bike, hung out with Jo in the hammock. We haven’t really stopped much, but I’ve had lots of fun.