I wanted to post this over in Deep Thought, as I wrote this little spiel just to get some things off my chest that I've dealth with in the last week. However it [fingerquotes] TECHNICALLY [/fingerquotes] not vintage computer related, I suppose it goes here. Word of warning, I rant about race in America, the unstoppable movement of technology, and whatever else I feel like before this buzz wears off. Occasional adult language might be used. You've been warned.

Chapter 1 - the setup, and racism in 'merica
Last week my truck was broken into. I say broken, but in reality I left the doors unlocked. Why? Because honestly I'd rather have someone steal from my truck than have the hassle of finding and replacing a broken window. I have about 4 things of significant value in this truck (in descending order). A 4-cell LED maglight, Anker cell phone charger, about $20 in loose change in the ashtray, a half-used roll of t-rex duct tape. I was more pissed about the asstray! Take the 5 Lbs of change, big whoop, but did you have to take the whole damn ashtray so I cant use it ever again without buying a $40 chunk of plastic? Fuckin' a, man. I did call it into my local police, and because I live in a 'white neighborhood' (no PC way to say it), they were at my door in within maybe 30 minutes. Apparently I was not the only person who had this issue this morning. We ended up with the cop and 10 neighbors in the street out front of my house. I come to find out, a small group of black youths just brazenly tested every car door and robbed probably 20+ cars on 5-blocks. The cops and I found it slightly humorous, as one of the other neighbors got them on video using my flashlight to search cars. For the record, they have already been caught, and are likely to goto jail for a LONG time. I will not be getting my flashlight back as it is now evidence. These teenagers are going to get figuratively curb-stomped in the system and are basically going to be destroyed. I wanted to take a moment and just express my sorrow for the whole ordeal. Addressing the elephant in the room; why did I even bring race up. My neighbors.

I was just stunned at their whole attitude. I've lived next to some of these neighbors since 1989 when I was a child. So the roots run deep here where I live. I watched honest, sensible people just lose their minds over this ordeal. My mother included. For the record, If you don't want to win stupid prizes, don't play stupid games. These damn kids are going to reap what they had sewn. They deserve punishment, but they are also highly likely going to become career criminals, and both sides are going to precipitate the stereotype of young black males in a white neighborhood are there to rob/steel/etc. My neighbors will forever be poisoned against blacks, and vise versa. Why vise versa? These kids are going to get the hammer dropped on them. They are going to blame the white man for this and subsequently act out in the future. Why am I certain of this? Because I came from a poor neighborhood and moved to a nice one. I had my foot in both worlds. The idea of "fuck whitey" is absolutely pervasive in poor non-white neighborhoods. The rich assholes in charge of this country sure have done a good job of dividing us so they stay in power. It would be all too easy to just dismiss these people for making bad decisions, I pity those poor men, but I pity my own inability to change the situation.

Naturally, as a middle class white family, my mother overreacts and goes off the deep end on security devices. Bringing us to...

Chapter 2 - wi-fi for everything, and my tenuous relationship with the NSA.
To call wi-fi and "IOT" pervasive is a massive understatement. Jebus, when exactly did this all take off? I'm not out of the loop by any means. Far from it. I just didn't care. I'm well aware of the google/amazon/apple speakers. I just saw it as a corporate branded NSA wiretap. "Please return to your Prime-House for your nightly Prime-Meal, valued Prime-Citizen. Beep. Boop." So needless to say I haven't gone that deep down the rabbit hole, but I see it coming. For the record, I am not sponsoring anything I'm about to ramble about. That said, if someone from these companies wanted to throw money at me, shoot me a PM and I'll let you know where to send the check.

It started with a Ring doorbell/camera ($200) and a Kevo lock($250). Then new wi-fi AP's(3X $90), then a wifi-bluetooth bridge for the kevo($50), and I'm currently done for the moment but it will end with a minimum of 3 security cameras, and a home based NVR WITH poe. SO MUCH OVERKILL, but I got new AP's so I'm not going to say much. Besides, it will pacify my mother, and its her money.

The Ring doorbell thing is pretty damn schmick. It was fall-down easy to setup and install. I am sad to find out they are going to want a monthly service fee, AND it costs more if you want the option to save the files locally. Not happy about that, but when I consider the target audience... *shrugs* I will be looking into making my own ring storage server. With blackjack, and hookers! Moving on, the actual device seems to work nicely. I already have 2 videos of people walking their dog past my house. 😜 Now initially, it was only the Ring camera and a new lock. But my old wifi points were total shit. Not because of the hardware, but because of the fatass that is between the chair and keyboard. I only ever got them to work at G speeds.

In order for all these new toys to play nice, I needed new AP's. Part of the problem was the Cisco units I got got cheap off ebay. AIR-CAP3502 for those that care. I had managed to get them into autonomous mode with some pirated Cisco software. I was pretty proud of myself and for a time it was okay, but being limited to 53mb/s has become too much of a limitation. I needed to get one of those fancy Cisco ap controllers, but used, they run like $400. So I'm just going to toss these white chunks of crap on ebay and hope to break even. I really wanted something nice. I wanted AC speeds, mesh network with Ethernet back-haul, and EASY software setup. Long story short, I found the TP-Link EAP245. https://www.tp-link.com/us/products/details/c … 039_EAP245.html I just got them setup a few hours ago and it was damn easy. I'm sure the Cisco units would work better, but the idea of needing several networking classes just for access points? Fuck that noise. I tested the speeds and I'm capping the gig connections between my laptop and my nas. That was short lived, and I'll explain later.

Chapter 3 - How to fuck up a $300 lock set.
I want to preface this by explaining we were both at fault here. Kwikset and myself. I had the pick of locks at the local Homeless Despot store. I picked the Kevo because it was the only lock that didn't have that asinine keypad on the front. To me, a keypad like this just broadcasts to the area "hey guess a 4-digit code to get in!". Not going to have that shit, so we paid out the ass for the Kevo. Where the Ring doorbell had amazingly easy to follow directions, the Kevo had fuck all. No worries, I manage multiple rental properties, how hard can a lock be when its from Kwikset. OI VEY. First off, My first set was used. This was not obvious until much later, but it was opened previously. Nothing was missing, all the screws were in the packages. Anyway, spent hours fucking with the damn thing. 30 minutes was spent keeping my phone next to the damn thing so it could update the software on the lock. Yea, never figured I'd ever do something like that, but here we are. So, the damned thing just refused to work right. It was so jammed, I thought about getting some peanut butter and bread to make a damn sammich. I'm looking at all the pieces and I just get the feeling it was returned by someone who just took the part out they needed and popped their broken ass unit in the box. So I took it back, pissed. I go on Amazon get free prime for a month (again) and order a new set from them. (I also got the wifi units) I got the package today. A Sunday. The app notified me while I was asleep it arrived, and even had an image of where they left my box. How nice of them, right? Anyway, I get to opening it, and this one has shrink wrap, the last one didn't. so figuring I just had someone else's bad unit I install this one. For the record, things were in different places, so my suspicion I had an open box mounted. Alas, this unit just would not work. It would grind and complain of being jammed. I went to take a dump, just to let myself cool down before I jammed it back into the box and sent it back to amazon. I figure now was a good time to read the manual. DID NOT COME WITH ONE. There were templates for screw holes. An EULA sheet. (Another surreal experience for a door lock) A guide to re-key the physical key to match your existing key. No manual for installation. So I Google the issue. Turns out you need to press a key in a certain order for it to 'program' itself to the door. So it knows how far to turn the lock. Finished my business, washed my hands, and pressed the button twice. Lock made some noises for like 5 seconds, beeped twice, and fucking worked perfectly. JESUS TAPDANCING FUCKING CHRIST! Whomever is/was in charge of the manual/box contents for the Kevo lock needs to be fucking sacked. I pissed and moaned about this for like 2 hours afterwards during dinner and immediatly following. It now works just fine. I'm going to have fun with my roommate, she wont have a key when I goto work tonight. She will ring the Ring doorbell, I will answer from work, 30 minutes away, ask for the password, fuck with her for a few minutes before unlocking it remotely. You gotta make your own fun sometimes.

Chapter 4 - Plans for the future, more devices!
To start, I'm going to need to put my NAS into a proper chassis. Right now I have 24x 1TB laptop dvr drives in a big honking Lian-li v2100 case. I just had a drive fail. I haven't opened the case yet, but its the same drive that failed 2 months ago, so I'm certain it is the cable again. So I'm getting a nice rackmount case with 24 drive sleds. Money I don't have. Yes I know I just regaled you all with $800 of stuff, but that wasn't my money. I still have one AP to setup in the basement, but I'm tired, I'll do it later, but I expect it to be totally plug-and-play like the other two. I want to get them all on POE. So I will be getting a nice gigabit POE switch, probably rackmount. In the near future, I will be installing 3x poe security cameras. One for the drive way/garage door, one for the mailbox, and one inside to watch the doggos. Also when I eventually get a new garage door, the opener will be wi-fi enabled, because why the fuck not. I just installed one at a rental. I even gave them a $2 thrift store linksys router to use and helped them connect it to the house as a repeater. I can now open my tenants garage door from my house. I don't want this kind of responsibility! I see on the tv, commercials for practically all appliances to be wifi enabled. A dryer that can be told to keep tumbling because I got busy? Jesus, I leave my clothes in the dryer for days at a time. I don't need my stove to have an app. I don't need a fridge with a built in TV. I will concede wifi lights might be useful, but I have no NEED of them. But yet, with all this saturation of IOT, I honestly don't feel that bad. I just got a practically new color laser printer for $10 from a thriftstore. (I shit you not) and I feel happy that I am not required to manually wire it up to the network, that I can just throw it literally anywhere in the house now and it will work.

Chapter 5 - final thoughts
I'm actually quite amazed at the state of technology we live in. All of us here are accustomed to old hardware. I remember the promise and initial failure of "plug-n-pray". I remember things pre-USB. I remember thinking how convenient it would be to have a set of ports on the back and not have to power cycle the computer to get it to work. Look at it now. I replaced a working lock with something I have little faith in. Something that quite possibly will leave me outside in the cold one day while I bumble with an app update. But the sheer novelty of having a door automatically unlock when you walk up to it. It really is something to be experienced. I can be taking a shit and answer the door. I believe Ol' Musky said it best; "we are already cyborgs". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrGPuUQsDjo

Whelp, time to go to work to pay for all this shit. Would have been cheaper to just buy another maglight...