Rambles for the Random

Podcast Recommendation — Old Gods of Appalachia

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 07:35:15 -0400

The Show

Old Gods of Appalachia is a horror anthonology podcast which main contain… you’ll fall in love with Steve and Cam’s voices from the moment you start in on the series.

Thoughts

Having lived a decent part of my childhood in hollers like they describe, I can easily find myself daydreaming of the same things. I remember playing pretend in creeks as the kids do in the series where vast tracts of land are foreign nations. The monsters they encounter, the people, the crosssroads and intersections of history are just marvelous to see recounted.

Worth Listening?

Those who enjoy some level of horror. They promise not to upset some truly delicate things like killing pets, but there are some hard topics encountered so might not be for everyone, but I can promise that it is done tastefully and with great considerations.

Storage Box - Corralling the Streaming Horde (part 2 of ?)

Mon, 25 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Now that it has been awhile and I have had some time to configure and test and define things in OpenMediaVault. I have to say that I really love it.

I come from places of “prebuilt” or “commercial” offerings like Synology and QNAP. Now being back in back in the land of somewhat opinionated but mostly hackable Linux/Debian spaces has been highly refreshing. The WebUI of OMV for the plugins is not really all that difficult but I would recommend being familiar with the commandline as well to fetch some of the necessary data pieces for configuring everything as you will need the UUID of drives.

I am mildly regretting now using a hot-swap drive installation method as well. I have another build I want to do for VM and misc data backup that I’m looking into doing a very similar setup with this improvement. Converting the 15bay to hotswap though would reduce it to 12 bay, but I mean 12x20TB is still a hell of a load of raw drive space.

I have setup mergerfs and SnapRAID, scheduling it once a week on Sunday late-nights, across a half-dozen drives with 3 now in keeping parity and I have a few more drives to install before I near my case drive maximums.

It has totally handled my somewhat taxing loads via random assistant helper programs, such as the various *arrs, and even a sidecar box that is idly monitoring and re-encoding videos to h265 via tdarr for space reduction (which is probably a separate article, but converting to flows has been fantastic!). I have even setup audiobookshelf for podcast management and have the storage backend via this setup

I am now slowly considering moving my highseas docker stack onto it but I really like my proxmox setup for backups and other management so I will probably just keep it as-is until there is a need to change.

TTRPG - Starfinder 2e

Mon, 25 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Setup

Guess I’m in a writing mood.

I recently got a chance to play Starfinder 2e via a module from the Starfinder Society (the echo of Pathfinder Society, but you know for Starfinder).

++ A few months back I also got a chance to oneshot in a Pathfinder Society with some friends that had never played any ttrpg (they also loved it and I later got them into a Mothership game with me as the Warden!)

Impressions

Overall, I am really digging the changes made in Second Edition. It so nicely captures the feeling of choice without railroads or guides. Adapting the best of Pathfinder/D&D and of the more popular “rules-lite” systems like Powered by the Apocalypse and Dungeon World. Somewhat less math, but more and improved ease to roleplay why the actions matter.

Check out your local Starfinder/Pathfinder Society meetups and get into the game.

Storage Box - Corralling the Streaming Horde (part 1 of ?)

Thu, 01 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

By the gods are there so many options these days for streaming and yet never enough places that actually keep the ones I want to continue watching or their ever growing prices and ever arcane licensing models.

The only subscription worth money is dropout.tv

For everything there are ‘Seagate EXOS drives’, lol

For starters, I’m a bit of a linux nerd (yes I’ve used Arch). I keep things, horde things like a dragon when it comes to my little data bits. So to keep my horde mostly safe, in an opinionated way, I’ve constructed a server to handle all my needs and hopefully future needs.

The operating system will be OpenMediaVault with plugins for mergerfs and snapraid for hosting the media contents.

The Build

Server Build Components

Motherboard

Model: Supermicro X11SCA-F
Official Site
eBay Listing

CPU

Model: Intel Core i5-8500T SR3XD 2.1GHz Processor

CPU Cooler

Model: SilverStone NT07-115X
Official Site

RAM

Model: Crucial 32GB (2x 16GB) PC4-21300 ECC UDIMM DDR4 2666MHz 2Rx8 CL19 CT16G4WFD8266
eBay Listing

HBA / Expansion Card

Model: LSI 9300-16i 12Gb/s SAS/SATA HBA IT Mode 16.00.12.00
eBay Listing

PSU

Model: Corsair 750W RM750e Fully Modular Low-Noise Power Supply – ATX 3.0 & PCIe 5.0

Chassis

Model: Rosewill RSV-L4500U 4U
eBay Listing

Accessories

Internal HDD Cable

Type: Mini SAS SFF-8643 to 4 SATA (1 meter)
eBay Listing

Server Rails

Model: iStarUSA TC-RAIL-26 (compatibility pending confirmation)
Discussion & Compatibility
Newegg Listing

Fan Controller

Model: Noctua NA-FH1
Amazon Listing

Fans

80mm Fans (5-pack)

Model: ARCTIC P12 PWM
Amazon Listing

120mm Fans (5-pack)

Amazon Listing

Extension Cables

Model: Noctua NA-SEC3 4-pin Extension Cables
Amazon Listing

SATA Power Cable

Type: Corsair Modular SATA Power Cable
eBay Listing

Post Notes

This build will allow for 16 drives, with the case natively supporting 15.

I reversed the flow of the fans to push out from the back to the front as the bigger fans will help to draw more air across things. This was probably one of the most time consuming changes.

I did some additional labeling across the drive bays to try to tag things so that as I add drives I can assist future-me with finding the right drive should one go bad in the future.

I have ended up in the belief that the right-most drive bay will only house parity drives as to keep some line in the sand about where and what things are and will be in the future.

I still have a lot of SATA slots available on the motherboard itself. I’m considering a bank of 2.5" SSDs as separate set of “scratch drive(s)” for anything that might need it.

TTRPG - I Have the High Ground

Wed, 26 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Setup

Quick Link: https://jumpgategames.itch.io/

I got a chance to play this when the developer Jess hosted a game demo of it at Game Masters in Pittsburgh late last year in 2024.

It is a rather simple system overall, akin to ROCK-PAPER-SCISSORS but upscale as dueling moves like FEINT. Designed to be the battle between two~ peoples in a space ranging from the actual fight scene, to just moments before (is the recommended), to battle of wits, to moms about to throw down at soccer practice with the opposing teams moms, or those revenge plots of an HOA and the over-fined member.

What Happened

In my duel, my opponent and I played members of the Vogon from Hitchhiker’s Guide as we debated between moving the designs that, I, an elder member of the government had laid out and a new up-and-coming member, my opponent, just a few inches over as to prevent the destruction of several planets.

It ebbed and tide, eventually in the leading position, flushing out the story of these two in their office, one favored by the elder giving an edge. Whilst my opponent came more prepared, their edge.

Fiction by fiction, I started behind but eventually took the lead in scoring, but when I attempted a coup-de-grace, as a quick finish to the match. I faltered, only to totally fail in gaining the upper hand and eventually leading to my demise in my overall scoring and with the final point in play, lost with a whine as my opponent secured victory and I was washed behind in Vogon paperwork and left to my poetry.

Impressions

I have my partner, and a few friends, that I need to play this more with but it’s an excellent quick little game of quick thinking, fun bits of reveal, improv, and interesting joint story telling.

10/10 would recommend.

Podcast Recommendation - Thin Places Radio

Mon, 17 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Show

I don’t think I can speak more highly of this podcast. Simple premise. Beautiful stories.