WHAT A MESS, but IT’S FIXED. I can say, that I came out of this triumphant, but let me tell you had to employ most if not all of my skills, plenty of which are preoccupied paying the bills. I will do a follow-up, hyper detailed post about how I did went about fixing this with my unique set of configurations. I didn’t find any guides or help on the internet that strung this all together, so I guess I’m making one. Stay tuned for that page-turner. I’m just pleased as punch my main computer is back in action.
This is going to be a short one. I want to treat this website better because it’s something I own and control, BECAUSE IT IS MY NAME! BECAUSE I CANNOT HAVE ANOTHER IN MY LIFE! *cough* Sorry, that line pops into my head from time to time.
Anyway, I’ve been trying desperately to close out some projects. The one I’ve been putting off, and for good reason, is updating the storage in my computer. I run my longterm storage in a hardware RAID 1 configuration. You don’t have to worry too much what that means, but it’s to provide data redundancy. I use my motherboard onboard RAID controller to manage it, which is probably a little too trusting on my part. I originally had 2 4TB drives, but ran out of space. I don’t really like to delete things. I had to upgrade.
Storage is cheap, and getting cheaper, but I still am not made of money, so I bought two 10TB external usb drives on sale. You can remove the internal drives from these enclosures in what commonly referred to as “shucking.” Why buy external drives if you are just going to destroy the enclosure? For some reason the drive manufactures will often make those cheaper than buying the bare drives. Well, I did that, and it turned out to not be that bad.
The hard part came when I tried to install them and they wouldn’t power up. Turn out there is a 3.3V pin on the power connector, and if that has a voltage on that pin, it disables the drive. The workaround is either tape off that pin or use a Molex to SATA adapter because those don’t carry 3.3V. That seemed better so I did that.
Then my RAID controller was acting up so I had to backup my stuff to an external drive before proceeding for extra precaution. I use a utility called rsync, it works really well, but it’s a Linux utility. The new Linux subsystem on Windows works great with it, albeit a little convoluted.
Finally, it all worked! I had my new 10TB drives with all my stuff back. It took like 5 days, but I got it.
That was until this morning. I was updating stuff, and one of my motherboard utilities was updating a chipset driver and it blue screened my system and now won’t boot. One step forward, two steps back. This is why I cautiously backup though. Nothing can be easy, can it?
Hey, welcome to April end of May. Only *checks watch* 5 months late on the start of this. It’s fine. It’s fine, let’s just pretend this is January. I’ll set the mood. It sucks. It’s cold out. Your body is never going to be warm again. It’s persistently grey-skied, and it’s seemingly always night. OK, now that you are sufficiently depressed, let’s get this train wreck a-rollin’.
In summary, 2018 was a good year for fitness for me. Thanks
for coming everybody!
Fine, let’s dig into the numbers a bit. This is what we are
known for here at Killer Tofu HQ, data dives and frequent, on-time posts. The
two things.
I personally approached 2018 as a makeup year for 2017. I
really felt like I slacked off in 2017. So, did that show in the numbers? Well,
let’s start with the baseline, the number from 2017.
2017
Running:
Total Runs: 86
Total Distance (Mi.): 650.47
Average Pace: 10:42
Average Time: 1:12:14
Full Marathons: 1 (1 failed)
Half-Marathons: 2
10ks: 2
Lifting:
Total Weight Lifted (Lbs.): 129,741
Days at Gym: 80
2018
Running:
Total Runs: 114
Total Distance (Mi.): 874.81
Average Pace: 10:55
Average Time: 1:25:13
Full Marathons: 2
Half-Marathons: 2
10ks: 1
Lifting:
Total Weight Lifted (Lbs.): 83,896
Days at Gym: 74
I definitely put more miles in. 224.34 more miles! I’m very
happy with that. And I will say, it shows in the race outcomes.
I PR’d in Chicago, and then turned around and beat it in
Indy. I am so stoked with those races. I also PR’d for a half during the Santa
Hustle. I never broke 2 hours for a half-marathon, and I just crushed it by 8
minutes. I am ecstatic how I finished out 2018. I wish the weather didn’t turn
because I felt like I was in such a good groove. I would very much like
permanent fall please. A breeze 65 degrees at all times would just be peachy.
Alas.
The average pace went up, which is not great. It didn’t jump
a whole lot, but speed continues to be my weak point. I think that is going to
be my goal. I really want to speed my runs up. At the very least I’d like to
continue to beat my PRs.
At least for this year, I’ve changed up my Marathons. I’ve
done Chicago and Indianapolis for the past few years, trying for NYC. Well, I
didn’t get into NYC again, and also Chicago this time. I still want to do at
least two marathons, so this year I’m running Minneapolis, Minnesota and
Madison, Wisconsin. I’ve never ran Minneapolis, but Madison is one of my
favorite towns in the few times I’ve been there. Great running town.
Sidebar, last time I ran in Madison, I ran around one of the
lakes, about a half-marathon. I parked at some public garage, near a support.
Well, after I was done, and when I was pulling out, I wasn’t paying attention
and dented the passenger-side fender on that support. Normally, and
understandably I would be extremely upset at myself. This time however I was on
such an endorphin high that my reaction was basically, “Oh well, cars are made
to be broken.” That was until hours later when I calmed down and then realized the
damage I did and had the proper reaction, you absolute idiot (me to me).
Now for lifting. I definitely spent less time in the gym
this past year than I did the previous year. It was a 32.6% increase in the
number of runs and a 34.5% increase in number of miles. It was also a 8.1%
decrease in the number of times I made it to the gym and a 35.4% decrease in
the amount of weight I lifted.
These are rough measurements, but it seems like the more I run
the less I left and vice-versa. This should be apparent with just how time
allotment works, but now it’s in the data! It seems to correlate at roughly the
same rate. Glad we can confirm the obvious here at KT HQ.
With any hope 2019 will be better than 2018 with more improvements. OK, I’m going to stop writing or this post will never get out. BYE.
