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Yesterday I saw the "big buck" down in our field. I put the binoculars on him and could see the buttons above his ears. Last year he was 10 points with a nice broad beam. It'll be interesting to see him this fall. A couple years ago he and another near his size squared off in our field. I grabbed my phone to video it but then a doe came out of the woods and walked past them and down the hill behind my field. They decided to postpone the match. That would have been something to see.
Day before I saw 2 does, probably missed the 3rd. I think they're 3 generations. Mother, daughter, granddaughter. I remember when the youngest was a fawn. We'll most likely be seeing a couple three fawns soon as well.
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One spring, a swallow built a mud nest in the corner of our patio.
Three baby birds were cheeping their heads off and keeping mama busy.
Then one evening, I see a rat snake with three bulges leaving the area.
No bird ever tried to reuse the nest, so we eventually cleaned it up.
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I'm surprised that a swallows build nests on your patio. All the swallows I know of around here, build their nests high up, under the eaves or in tall trees. (Swallow's nest[^].) As kids we always wondered how the chicks could learn to fly - how they managed to return to the nest after the first attempt, to make a second one. (I believe the answer is that the parents grab them in their beak and lift them up to the nest.)
Wikipedia (Norwegian) says there are 86 different swallows, only 4 of them in Norway. They are not all like ours. Maybe those who nest on patios could learn something from the Norwegian ones 
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Pretty accurate picture to my nest. It was in a corner under the roof. There was a little flat spot from the trim, so the swallow had a head start on the construction.
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Mike Hankey wrote: and I had considered taking it down but since spotting the owlett[^] I think I'll leave it.
If you identified it correctly then you don't have a choice. That type of owl is covered under the US migratory bird act and as such you cannot do anything to it.
So hopefully that tree lasts until they fly off.
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The last couple of days the chicks (we found that there are 2 of them) have matured, their feathers have darkened and they are no longer around nest as much.
When I said take the tree down I didn't mean while they were nesting, I would not do that. The tree is in very bad shape and I was going to take it down after they were done with it. But since the Barred Owl uses the same nest year after year I will leave it until it can no longer be used. Probably won't be long!
Give me coffee to change the things I can and wine for those I can not!
PartsBin an Electronics Part Organizer - An updated version available! JaxCoder.com
Latest Article: Simon Says, A Child's Game
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They will use it as long as it is standing. I don't think they can figure out 'next wind storm this is coming down'.
On the other hand your house/shed/car/head might not be as forgiving if the tree comes down on it.
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The tree has slowing been coming apart for the last couple of years. We've had 4 dome down in the last 3 years so it's just a matter of time. No structures are in danger if it does come down.
Give me coffee to change the things I can and wine for those I can not!
PartsBin an Electronics Part Organizer - An updated version available! JaxCoder.com
Latest Article: Simon Says, A Child's Game
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Maybe take it down off season and then put up a owl friendly house close by.
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It would take a small tree house. They are big birds!
Give me coffee to change the things I can and wine for those I can not!
PartsBin an Electronics Part Organizer - An updated version available! JaxCoder.com
Latest Article: Simon Says, A Child's Game
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Yes, they keep rodent population down.
Give me coffee to change the things I can and wine for those I can not!
PartsBin an Electronics Part Organizer - An updated version available! JaxCoder.com
Latest Article: Simon Says, A Child's Game
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Message Closed
modified 15-May-23 19:06pm.
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You want protection against catastrophic failure? Get another computer. Nothing beats physical redundancy of the entire machine. If my main dev box where to croak, I'd just switch over to the other laptop, which I keep sync'd anyways since I use it when I go "out of the office."
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RAID is a good start but it is very important to remember that RAID is NOT a backup. That needs to happen separately.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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And RAID introduces its own potential problems that don't exist when you don't have RAID. I've had a controller fail on me, which meant the data on all drives was suddenly inaccessible.
I'd rather stick with a single, large drive, and frequent backups.
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The MTBF of SSDs and HDs are far, far lower than that of a controller. I consider it utterly absurd to use that as a reason to avoid using RAID.
Also - your issue applies only to a striped RAID array. Data from mirrored drives CAN be recovered easily which is the only kind of RAID I ever use. So, even more absurdity. 
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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Rick York wrote: The MTBF of SSDs and HDs are far, far lower than that of a controller.
Well that's reassuring. But it still happened, with a controller that was just a few months old, and was only seeing light use.
Rick York wrote: I consider it utterly absurd to use that as a reason to avoid using RAID.
The extra steps in setup and recovery--given the results I ultimately got--make it absurd to me. I'm glad it serves you well, but you need to lose an entire array only once to make you question the value. YMMV, and that's the beauty of it - you can make your own choices. I base mine on my experience. I've always loved the idea and it took me a long time to finally go ahead and do it, but I rather quickly backed out of the whole thing because of this.
Rick York wrote: Also - your issue applies only to a striped RAID array.
It was striped and mirrored. I wouldn't trust striped only, since you're actually increasing the chances of failure. I'm ok with striped and mirrored however since, given the number of drives involved, the odds are getting smaller that you'll get some catastrophic failure to cause them all to fail at the same time. Of course I didn't count on the controller failing, as common sense (and yourself) says, "the MTBF of SSDs and HDs are far, far lower than that of a controller". OOPS.
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I have RAID, and it's been (mostly) good to me.
I've had two HDD failures on RAID 5 arrays, and in both of those cases I could continue working uninterrupted while ordering a new HDD and replacing the dead drive - so in that sense they were brilliant. (I'm now on my third RAID 5 NAS box.)
But ... and it's a big "but", I cannot lie ... I had a failure of software or controller, or something and lost all the partitions on the RAD array when one disk failed and upset the controller - the data was not recoverable, so 11GB vanished in a moment: RAID is not a backup, or at least not a backup you can rely upon. (Fortunately, I don't - I have air gapped backups as well.)
It's also worth remembering that ransomware will find and corrupt all connected devices - so if your RAID is online and you get hit, it will get screwed just as well as your OS and data disks. An air gap is the only real safety net there!
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Quote: It's also worth remembering that ransomware will find and corrupt all connected devices - so if your RAID is online and you get hit, it will get screwed just as well as your OS and data disks. An air gap is the only real safety net there!
Helped clean up after 3 of those. Yields tears as big as horse turds. 
>64
Some days the dragon wins. Suck it up.
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Re: ransomware -- Only the AOMEI Backupper software has the password to the account with write access to the backup file server (Synology). All other access is by read only accounts, or logging into the server via its web UI, and manually entering the admin password. This seems like it should protect the server from ransomware corruption. Or have I missed something?
(And, yes, I need an air gapped copy of the backup server, eventually.)
"Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed."
- G.K. Chesterton
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I do my work with systems running virtual. W10 (2) and W11. Have 7 and 8 in mothballs if I want to test something. Oh, yeah, I have an XP system somewhere.
I back the VM folders up to my NAS weekly and then shut the NAS off. I also backup from the NAS to removable drives. I can take the VM's anywhere, install the VM hypervisor to a system and am back on line. Have a DR kit setup with software, keys, passwords and such, including hardware. NAS is TrueNAS running on a decommissioned workstation.
Murphy is out there.................... waiting. 
>64
Some days the dragon wins. Suck it up.
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This post reminded me that I'm currently living dangerously.
I've been a work-from-home solo developer for a small company for the last 15 years. One of my responsibilities is maintaining the company server. This box sits behind me in my home office and hums 24/7 doing all kinds of stuff like hosting a couple dozen web applications/services including our main domain name, and holding virtually all of our projects/code.
It has been a good machine, (aside from a HDD data drive failure several years ago) and still performs adequately. The problem is, every component with the exception of 2 6 y/o SSDs, is now around 13 years old and has been running pretty much nonstop for time.  I actually have plans to migrate most of it's responsibilities to the cloud but haven't decided yet what to do with the code. I like the idea of cloud-based, but I just don't trust it. 
For the sake of not sounding like a complete idiot, I do perform regular weekly backups which includes powering up my laptop and letting it synchronize the folders on the server, after which it is powered off. I also do daily backups and offsite storage for databases.
So it all comes down to how much are you willing to lose, or how much trouble are you willing to go through to get everything working again. In my scenario, I might lose 6 days of work if the data drive on the server gave out. If the system drive gave out, I could replace/rebuild in a few hours and have services back in a day or two. In a previous bad experience, the data drive (a 4 y/o spinner) gave out completely.  I had things back up quickly, but lost a few days of development and a few days of recovery. Not catastrophic, but not fun either...also not an option if downtime is costing you money! Good luck and thanks for letting me vent! 
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
"Hope is contagious"
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Every few years, I buy a new machine (and another external drive), and anything of interest gets migrated to it. Then the old machine slowly slips from the mind, waiting to be rewakened. I also rent a dumpster sometimes.
"Before entering on an understanding, I have meditated for a long time, and have foreseen what might happen. It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly, secretly, what I have to say or to do in a circumstance unexpected by other people; it is reflection, it is meditation." - Napoleon I
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Message Closed
modified 15-May-23 19:06pm.
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