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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 30th, 2023

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  • AFAIK no you can’t use different sized drives. I have read about the update to allow you to expand existing pools but it hasn’t made its way to the version of ZFS that Proxmox uses, but I hope it does soon.

    Previously, I was using SnapRAID which does allow you to use any size drive provided your parity drives are equal or larger to the rest of the drives in the pool so you may check that out. It worked well for me on Windows, is available on Linux, and makes it very easy to expand the pool.

    I would caution that if you plan to build a big library over time, to just bite the bullet and get matching drives to start with because I tried mismatched drives purchased over several years (whatever was a good deal when I needed to expand the pool) and it got to the point where it was becoming unmanageable once I hit about 8 drives as SATA ports became limited and HDD capacities on the market increased (why waste a port on a 6TB drive when you could have a 14TB-20TB drive instead?). With this new server build, I just bought several matching 14TB drives from serverpartdeals.com and had to transfer everything from the old SnapRAID pool to my ZFS pool which took about a week with rsync.




  • Most low wage jobs in the US have a mandatory drug test when you’re hired, which is easy enough to defeat. The only things that don’t leave your system after a couple days are all the mild things like weed.

    I’ve had several retail and service jobs where I had to drug test before getting hired and just took a “cleaner” from a headshop before doing them and passed each time despite using the devils lettuce in my off time, but none of these were places that do random testing after being hired. Being able to be choosy with jobs is somewhat of a luxury in the US, so consider yourself fortunate.

    A delivery job is a tossup because it may be more heavily regulated than jobs that don’t involve heavy machinery. If it’s a delivery job that requires a CDL, I would skip it because you can be pulled over and tested at any time. Even marijuana can be penalized here since these jobs are covered by federal regulations and national insurance companies which have requirements for a drug free workplace.







  • Honestly with such a reliable car I don’t think you need much and the skid plate was just a fluke. Oil and coolant are probably not needed unless either are leaking. I drive a similarly reliable vehicle, a Camry that just crossed 210k miles, and just carry jumper cables, gloves, a flashlight, and a tow rope that I had laying around. Anything big is going to be too much to repair on the side of the road, so a flat tire or dead battery is about all I’m concerned with.

    In your tool list, I didn’t see you mention a ratchet/breaker bar and socket for the lug nuts. The ones that come with the vehicle are usually lacking, so you may consider adding those.


  • Harbor Freight has come quite a long way and has multiple tiers of product quality now, including stuff that can be compared to SnapOn, Matco, etc (the Icon line). Some of it is really good without requiring you to pay insanely inflated tool truck pricing and the rest of the market outside of tool truck brands is also built in China now so it’s fairly slim pickings if you don’t want to pay outrageous prices. If you use your tools for a living, there’s a good argument to use mainstream brands like SnapOn for their convenience, but for hobbyists and the like HF will suit you well. For power tools I mostly use DeWalt mainly because they’re better quality and because of the battery lock-in, but I do have a few Bauer power tools and they work great and cost half as much along with batteries being half the cost. DeWalt wants you to pay $100 for four 18650 batteries which is insane. For stuff like griding disks, cutoff wheels, or other consumables, I do tend to go with name brand since they’re all universal and the cost difference isn’t that much.

    I do agree to be careful with stuff like jackstands, but I always double them up keep the jack under the car, put a tire under the car, and avoid being completely underneath them when possible. I actually bought a set of ramps just to avoid having to use them when I don’t need the wheels off.