You are confronted by a formidable server rack in a dark alley. What do you do next?

Wait a little season

Adminisk8or

01/23/2024

Ladies and gentlemen, we've hit that time of year when things are about as slow as slow gets. This last week, however fine, was pretty boring.

I think the only thing of note was last night, in fact. During the day, a client had reported their internet had gone out. Found out the UniFi USG router's power brick had gone bad... and it's by far not the first one I've seen, unfortunately. But it was the first one I saw that bricked the USG itself, after replacing it. But, as I've taken one of these routers apart before, I knew there was still hope for it. I swapped it with a working one to get our customer up and running, and worked on it later that night.

In simple terms, all that router consists of is just a few ethernet ports for your internet connection and network connection, a tiny, basic motherboard, and a literal flash drive that runs everything. Seeing as how that flash drive was totally dead, I got to work researching how to get a new one working. To make a long story of probably 5-6 hours short, I did get it working- but my biggest obstacle during it all was an unexpected issue- the flash drive I had put in there was too slow. That's not to say the flash drive itself was slow, but the USG router didn't recognize it as a bootable device fast enough... sometimes, and so just when I thought I had gotten it working, it suddenly broke, and I was racking my brain trying to figure out why.

If there's an everyday life parallel to draw from this situation, in my opinion, I think it would be the eternal truth of times and seasons. Here I was, prepared with an arsenal of various flash drives, memory cards, etc.- ready to use whatever was needed. To be resourceful, I went with the smallest space flash drive I had; and while space had nothing to do with it, that flash drive just wasn't the right one for the job. And yet, in quite a few other circumstances, it has proved useful. And there it is- the concept that everything in life has its place, its time, its reason... though I'd almost argue that wasps, puncture weeds and Facebook fall out of that spectrum. Joking aside, it is both encourage, and yes, sometimes frustrating to remember that where one thing is right in a situation, it may not always be so in others.

My cheap 16GB SanDisk flash drive has helped with a lot of quick and easy file transfers and storing in the past- but here when I needed it to be a dedicated boot device, I just assumed it was the right tool for the job without comparing. My Linux Mint desktop is superb for most everything I need it to do- but for those rare occasions I need to run a Windows-only program, and don't have the time or resources to look up how to use WINE or something similar, as much as it pains me to say it, in that moment, Linux Mint falls under the same category my flash drive did when I needed it to boot the USG router.

And during these slow, cold winter weeks, that's one of the best things I can tell myself- just wait it out for another season. Good days will come, as they always do, and disappointments and frustrations don't need to overshadow it. With that in mind, I hope I endure these long winter weeks well; and I hope all of you do, as well- here's my well wishes and prayer for you!

So, until next time, see ya!