Category: Personal

I thought I’ll write something different for once and it maybe something to give you a thought on what to do with ex corporate equipment, in my case, mobile thin clients. These don’t have to be used in an organisation to be useful, they can be used at home as well.

(From a MS Word document)

Have I just created a new word or phrase? I think I need to explain this. So I’m trying to reduce the weight on my back and my current setup is a mobile thin client for personal use, a normal laptop (Dell Latitude) for work and if I need it, a Toughbook for personal use, if I need to use my Toughbook locally.

In the past, I used to expose a custom RDP port to the outside world, along with the Wake-On-Lan connection to my desktop that sits on my desk at home, hidden behind a monitor. You maybe wondering “why am I using a mobile thin client for the task of working on something remotely as in this case rather than locally?” and “What are you going on about?”

Using thin clients isn’t a new concept, its actually pretty old, as old as the computer itself. The previous use of thin clients was terminals and terminals were introduced as a way of interfacing with a mainframe computer, just the connection standard is different these days, compared to when terminals existed. In addition, to interface with a mainframe system, you often had a multi user environment, as sharing resources lowers the cost of computing and resources that otherwise would be sitting idle, gets put to use. Using thin clients is the modern equivalent, just that home users can benefit from using thin clients too. In fact, in a way, Microsoft is going soft is going down that way for everyone.

Home users can also benefit, and for a big reason. You can have a pretty cheap second hand computer, you don’t have to run your normal software on it and on Windows, the tools to do it is already included in Windows – mstsc.exe (the client name. By the way, we are talking about “server and client”.) All you have to do to get the “server” side to work is make sure you are running something other than a home edition of Windows, configure a user account to have access to remote desktop services and find a device that has the appropriate software. It doesn’t have to be a computer, it can be a tablet. Android and iOS have a very useful “Windows app”. Find the name or IP address of your computer and in the location you are (house or otherwise), you should be able to access said computer over the local network with little or no difficulty.
(I strongly suggest you read a tutorial on this, I’m only giving a general overview).

What about outside the house? Well, a little more difficult and I can’t type it out on here. You also need to consider power requirements as the computer, you’d have 3 options – turn it on yourself as eventually it will as if you use windows, turn itself off or go to sleep, bear that in mind. Set the power settings to always on or use “Wake on lan” which requires additional setup.

So you have a computer fit for using everywhere consider security risks, so you may want a VPN for this, username and passwords are a must at the very minimum and strong passwords that need to be changed every 72 days. Don’t store them on the remote device, think of other ways of securing the computer you are connected to, there’s loads of resources online and if you fancy getting to know windows better, gpedit.msc can be your friend. You can set the computer to lock anyone out for an amount of time after an amount of incorrect attempts.

So with all this in mind, why did I consider it?

The benefits outweigh the security concerns. You can buy a cheap second hand laptop and get it to perform just as well as a high end computer with the right configuration and connection. Yes, you can game remotely, Steam play is another way to do this. Plus, it was getting annoying transferring from one computer to another and constantly downloading the file via OneDrive the online storage I use. Its easier to connect to a computer and do it that way. Plus, I can transfer from device to device. Everything moves with me. Plus, there is a massive advantage, that despite the static PC, thin clients are less risky.

On my Dell Wyse, it has a UWF (Universal Write Filter), for those that don’t know, a UWF creates an overlay, it’s a good thing and a downfall and to understand how it works, means understanding how embedded devices work. Back when SSDs were new, a write filter was considered necessary since it reduced the amount of writes to the flash drive, which eventually kills them. So, sending the writes somewhere else, i.e. RAM, helps. What is even more interesting is that the writes to RAM, has one other side effect, security, the fact that ram is volatile, I.e. doesn’t save its state, means that if you are clever, you don’t save any passwords.
In fact, the state is reverted to exactly the same point when you applied the write filter.

Plus theft and loss is not so much of an issue and a thin client – an old laptop repurposed is its own insurance in a way. Lose it? Steal it? No problem, set up a new OS, add your shortcut to your resources and away you go. Not the long laborious task of finding software and trying to activate it. The downside is that I have one single point of failure, my desktop or in an ente

‘rprise environment, a group of servers. This can be mitigated, in fact, I was looking at that problem myself and I could go down the VDI route (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) and back up the files to the virtual machine, off site. This would be easier than when the computer does break, reinstalling everything from scratch. Yes, there are ways to back up PCs these days and restore them, but this is quicker. Just take regular snapshots. Beisdes, not only do you have a computer and mobile thin client connected, what about as I mentioned, iPads?

One final thing, the battery life is a LOT better. The device I’m using which I have restricted the CPU to 2 cores from 4 is showing no ill effects, it has been on charge from a measly charger which it didn’t accept a charge anyway and the battery lasts. Its idling most of the time in comparison to other computers, so really lightly loaded.

The other interesting thing. You may think this is a new concept, did you know that if you have a work laptop, you may already be using remote access? Did you know that there are other versions too? Google Remote Desktop? (I’ll be honest, its not the most secure, but it works).

If you touched a Citrix resource, a VMware resource, Anydesk, Teamviewer, it’s the same technology with similar capabilities. Just the security reasons? Not only can you see what you are doing, someone who is looking at your computer can too.

I know I’ve not said anything for around 2 months, things have been rather busy, but been working on posts in the background.

I wanted to keep my work off this blog but I’m going to have to do it to explain some of the issues as some of the content coming up I have planned will talk about my recent trips. Work for me is basically, I’ve gone from one company to another basically overnight. Those in the UK will know about the big change that came out with transport, ironically 02:00 the day I wrote this blog – so by now, I’ve probably blown my cover to who I worked/work for which isn’t a secret, however, as part of this, I had 4 weekends where I was using up – I would say entitlements, but this isn’t the correct word, the word would be “benefits” which is basically my box cards (was 10x free travel over 48 hours on First group Train Operating Companies and Open Access Operators) and my Friends and Family Discounts, I spent 3 out of 4 weekends travelling with my family – some of, wheras the weekend I had to myself went to Hull.

I’m also writing up about thin clients as I had to “hack” – again, not the correct word – one, to upgrade it due to Dell’s support or lack thereof in this case, which is unusual for Dell as they are pretty good. I guess retaining old, ex corporate equipment isn’t in their remit, especially if it is a “Wyse” investment. Pun intended.
Having said that, my Dell Latitude 7300 which my work place has provided has gone well past its 5 year birthday and is still supported, good! I don’t want to give it back to IT and keep using it for work! VoyagerPlan On Citirx just doesn’t like modern laptops and a lot of software doesn’t like chiplet based designs which is ultra frustrating, maybe if they gave me an Intel N100 laptop, I’d take it as it isn’t a chiplet design.

The one big change I’ve made and its to this site, is I started another blog

“What? Another one?”

If those haven’t noticed, the first time you log into my blog, it seems to crash with an “Error 500 – internal server error” or something like that. On the virtual machine I’ve copied this WordPress blog to, it doesn’t happen, but I have a suspect in mind. A 3D plugin as it sort of appeared after that.

The idea is to split off my development into a separate blog, where I will use this one for my personal experiences with life, hopefully concentrating what I am able and capable of doing. I’m also using a different blogging engine, so this will eventually when I can finish setting it up, will be located at https://www.wessexelectricnut.co.uk/flat. Nothing interesting yet, but hopefully in a few months time, I’ll have a few articles. I also planning on replacing the site with another static site. I was going to use WordPress for everything, but hasn’t worked too well.

In previous years, I don’t usually get 2 sets of annual leave requested quite close to each other, I.e. 2 weeks between which what happened this year.

In early March 2025, I went away with my mum and my younger sister and the photos I came up with were… rather good. This was spent in “Crawford Lakes” near Holsworthy, Devon UK. The photos around the lakes were impressive as for March, we had very good weather, if a bit cold!

As I write this, I’m away in a place in Wales, near Llandrindod Wells and the weather hasn’t been that great in comparison to Devon, plus I’m surrounded by sheep!

And I’m only 3 days in as I write this. You may of noticed that the Severn Valley Railway features, this was on day 2.

Yes really, its my 39th today, I apparently don’t look it, just a lot younger. However, there is more to this story.

So finally 39, well over half my life (I think!) its come with a lot of problems and still not the most stable person. I do have some tasks before I turn 40 though, one being my own place as I still live with my dad. Finanically, I’m better off than I ever have been as I’ve avoided kids and marriage somehow. I’ll discuss another aspect after this bit.
How does it feel? I need to lose weight and I’ve been trying that since June 2024 with the gym, there are other aspects as well but job wise, everything has been massively better than it has been. I am now getting to the state where my body is making itself known however. Like my skin, developed Ezcema according to my doctors and think I could be potentially asthmatic with one of the illnesses I’m getting.

Your next question is what did I get for my birthday? See below:
To be honest, I don’t ask for much these days, most of which is what I got and to be honest, I am not interested much else as I am saving up for a house and the Blue Espace which needs about 2,000 pounds (US keyboard) of work done on it as the cambelt on a Renault Espace Mk3 V6 requires an engine out. You could always start a go fund me page if you want as I would like to enjoy it and restore it, even if I have the money. But that money is for other things (housing).

I actually also got 4 items, a DNA kit to find out my ancestory, a book for dog walks (thats going with me everywhere where the dog and I go), hand cream (for previously mentioned issues) and one missing. In a pub, I got a prick, in my finger. I found a new fear of needles and the idea was to find out what blood group I’m in… I found out and its not good.

O NEGATIVE!!

What is so significant about that? For me, don’t have an accident as it’s like liquid gold to the NHS. So now I find out I’m pretty much an alien. Thats what my dad called me and I agree. I’m an alien, a legal alien. For those that don’t know me, what doesn’t help is that I’m 6ft 2in nearly, ginger hair and blue eyes. So with the ginger hair and blue eyes, I’m already 0.17% of people with that combination because of recessive genes. Now I find out I have a rare blood type, makes things worse. For me, I’m now in pretty small numbers. I was shocked and worried, but then I do have a blood donor across the table, my younger sister has the same blood group, so I’m sort of OK.

Now that was my birthday, 2 days before is valentines day. Then something unexpected. I had a date, not with the lady on the train sadly, I bottled it talking to her (I get a lot of glances), however, on the dating front, I did get a date and I went out on an inpromptu date. Who is it? My ex, from Kazakhstan! We havent spoken to each other for 5 years, matched on the same dating site about 8 years ago and I do admit to missing her a lot as there were positives, so we have been talking for a while. The problem can forsee is that we both do different jobs, she does permanent nights and I do office hours. Previously, I worked shifts (earlys and lates, with one night shift) and she did 12 hour days which strained both of us massively. Plus my mental health fell apart completely.
So, this time, I’m rushing but not at the same time. I’m seeing what happens and keeping an open mind, but I got thanked afterwards as I did buy 2 boquetes of flowers and a large chocolate bar, as well as taking her out. So things maybe going forwards or backwards, we will see.

On the other hand, my week did go wrong, apart from doing loads of overtime and suffering from the lack of sleep due to it because I had deadlines to meet. It happens, its the work I do, in the process, I’m at the very end, so if someone is late down the line, it affects the crew I work with which affects the work we do. Its nothing I or the industry can sort as sometimes, Network Rail have to work to short deadlines when something breaks, like a cracked diamond crossing, 3 weeks before we have to publish a plan. It happens. Sometimes, certain tasks get complicated like for me, helping with a blockade in the Portsmouth area.

Finally, the worst bit, I spent most of my birthday, fixing my Network Attached Storage device, looks like this:

Ok, what happened here? Well, 2 problems, the first one is these 2, one works one doesn’t. They’ve been together for a year and a half and one wanted to divorce the other – not great.

So, 2 drives, one dead one part 2. What happened? 2 words, THINK WISELY. When you set up your NAS, at least on these, they use software RAID, Redundant Array of Independent Disks. This NAS supports 2 modes, RAID 0 and RAID 1, aka, striped and mirrored. You can guess I went for the striped (maximun capacity) modes and you’ll be right. It was a huge undoing of mine. I knew beforehand and I wanted to go over to RAID 1, but that required moving 1.5TB of data as changing the RAID setup deletes your data and I didn’t have a spare disk I could use to move it all. Until… it all went wrong. So the hard drive, started refusing to recongise anything, 2 clicks and it was dead. Wouldn’t work in another PC and it just.. died suddently.

Thats it, I lost 1.5TB of data or did I? You may of noticed underneath the NAS is a USB drive, its only 3TB but has a backup of the NAS and it stayed there for a VERY important reason, so I didn’t accidentally delete any data from when I was reducing the size of the folder on the NAS as there was a lot of duplicates.

I also prioritised the data, so I see 4 categories, A, B, C and D
A – High risk, irreplacable
B – Medium risk, difficult to replace
C – Low risk – easy to replace
D – Replacable

Of course, high risk data is projects you worked on that will take a lifetime to replace if not more, like my meshes. They were at the top of the list to save and I have them not in one location, but at least 2 or 3. We are talking about 20 years worth of work if not more. Current projects live on my onedrive, so are quite well protected. The downside is that I lost a lot of photos that were on the drive after my backup date, 08/05/2024! Ouch!
So I would be upset right? I reckon I didnt lose a huge amount, about 1GB worth if that. What saved me is fragmentation, yes, I wiped an early hard drive and sold it, but I have 2 other backups of that from later. That was affected. My camera photos on one got wiped, but I was able to recover them using a program which recovered most of them and some of it was backed up to an online drive. So some survived that way, I’m annoyed that the computer didn’t complete the task. I used a free version of TeraBox for that, so thinking out of the box, shows what is possible.

So apart from my estimation, is there anyting else? I’m still assessing the damage, but I’m positive. Plus I am positive that the drive could be recovered by a specialist.

Not quite a start I expected, but came down with a cold, gets worst than that though..

(more…)

Its not deliberate… honest, just things have taken a change for the worst or better.

(more…)

 

I wrote this ahead of time, so it may well be about 7 days out of date and anything can change. So you are hopefully reading this on the 31st December 2024, that means…

Happy New Year

I hope!

So I’ll do this review thing, what happened?

 

• Got promoted to CO4 from CO3 in July 2024, that was a really unexpected thing to happen. I failed my first CO4 interview but I was suffering at the time and so I was expecting it.
• Learnt another trade at work. I was previously in Timings, I’m now in Train Crew and one of the things I’ve made a habit of doing now, is asking train crew for their diagrams and get feedback on how its gone, I’ve learnt a lot and so have they.
• Actually volunteered for several events at work. Worked at Ascot, Portsmouth AND Twickenham. More than I did last year.
• I don’t like talking about money, but that has got a lot better as the year has gone by.
• Seen more of the UK, done the Far North Line (Inverness to Wick/Thurso) on a really warm March day! That was a big thing as its the furthest north I’ve been. Previously, it was Dingwall. Also been to the Isle Of Man for the second or third time in my life.
• Finn and Bailey have now formed a very strong bond to me, these are 2 dogs, both setters that I haven’t talked much about but will do one day. Finn is particularly interesting as he is a rare breed.
• Joined a gym!
• Finally and this is a thing for me, been on a century old tram. Why is it big? Well, the only place you can find them next to the newer trams is Blackpool and every time I go to Blackpool, I miss them. I also did the Blackpool North tram extension not long after it opened by mistake.

The bad bits though and thus missed the mark.

• Still single which is really dragging me down
• I’ve done one unexpected thing this year and I’m not proud of it, its to do with my personal life and very few know about it (I want to keep it that way).
• I’m still living in my dads place – I live with my dad that I’ve probably never mentioned and sometimes, it gets very heated with how things go in the house. He has a physical disability but still can do things, but I feel I do a lot more than I should and it drains me.
• I’ve not done as much Trainz work as I like.

 

Now you may of noticed a theme, I didn’t mention the blog, which is the start. The reason I didn’t is because the first 3 bad points is the reason I started it, my mental health has been quite frankly appalling this year for stress reasons and for once, its not my job. Interestingly, I go to the office, I want to go in every day despite my dad telling me to work at home. I’ll even work as long as I can or need to on something and if I am knee deep in deadlines, I will basically work until something gives in, like I got pretty dry one day and started coughing as I was focused on my deadline. My fault entirely. Then my eyes started stinging so had to take a break. These are things I am bad at. I also bottle up a lot of problems, with the problem on the train, it  had been going on for 6 months and if I am honest, its a 2 way thing. I got an interest in this individual, I’ll be open about it but what worries me is the answer of “no”. Like a lot of things, I had someone at work about halfway through the year, I knew her name anyway but I wanted to keep it quiet, however I wanted to point out something about ASD, she may of dropped loads of hints of interest I am guessing, but I was cautious because I was worried that my interpretation of “interest” is different to theirs. It’s not their fault, its a compatibility problem between the genders that we can all learn from.

Likewise, someone I travel with occasionally, yes, I have an interest, but as soon as I saw a ring on her finger, I didn’t bother, I also struggled to talk to her to begin with. However, more recently, I discovered more about her and was surprised that the ring wasn’t on her finger and interestingly, talked quickly about university and our immediate family, which I had to go away and think “Oh wait, what? I missed a trick there!”.

 

This is where I wonder that in the office, am I really alone with single life? I was under the impression most (I’d say 95% of them) are married at least and with happy families – if I was really honest, I actually felt pretty much alone. Likewise with my ASD difficulties, I honestly thought they were not many on the spectrum in the office and more normal. I only recognised one and that was it. The interesting thing is, I am discovering I am not the only one, although I feel alone with my journey through life and my difficulties, I’m discovering I’m working with others who have the same problem and the discussions in the pub outside of work is proving it.

 

So, 2025, I already know of some big changes,  the company I work for is going from private to government ownership and the phrase that is being used is “Lift and Shift”, now goals I have:

• Lose weight
• Apply and become a CO5
• Actually be a bit more confident with women in particular, at the moment, I have no confidence in myself in approaching women or even talk to them, maybe make friends with them rather than look at them as potential dates? Which may lead to dates? Maybe I should start with the person on the train and just somehow get talking to her?
• I also got a lot of cleaning up to do at home and I’m selling a lot of stuff that basically has no use for me, despite my large computer collection.

The last one has been a challenge, I started this year but I’m trying to go further and further. One of the biggest things I’ve done is basically digitalise everything and whatever loose papers I have, shred them, its saved a lot of shelf space and its something I want to keep going with. Perhaps digitalise my books now I got a Kindle.

Oh and here is some hopefully interesting photos of 2024: