January 11, 2021, and I am back on Amibay. I have just collected the intertest list from page 18 (my last post) to this current date. I have noted inactive users interests in that period just in case they return (like I have). I will update the main post interest list with the names soon.
Now for an explanation of what happened over the ~past year and a half (or more):
1. I tossed my back out in mid 2019, making bench soldering a difficult thing to do for long periods over the rest of 2019, and into early 2020.
2. (In hindsight) My test bed Amiga 2000 (KS ROM socket) and GVP/A2091 cards ROM sockets started to become unstable. Thinking I was screwing up the adapters, and trying to troubleshoot the adapters, #1 made it even harder/more frustrating, and I had to step away from it.
3. In the later fall of 2019, work began planning a major datacenter move from the USA east coast to a point in the not quite on the west coast. We moved the lower development environment successfully after months of practice runs in November 2020. Planning and practice then began to move the production environment by March 2020. Getting it right the first time to move the production compute assets of 1/2 of a ~$26B US company in <12 hours is just a tad bit stressful - I was a fairly important cog in the very large IT staff machine.
4. In January 2020, I had to upgrade my personal computer gear with the EOL of Windows 7, on to Win10. Combined with a double browser aneurism on the old system at the same time, I lost many saved logins, including Aminet's. I tried and failed several times to recover my login through the web recovery process. I left frustrated notes in other forums over Winter 2020 to people I knew that might know someone here, looking for assistance. Nobody got word to anyone here to help me out, or nobody who heard responded (I don't know). When nobody gives a
, you walk away until the stress levels drop, or it consumes you.
5. I had planned to go on a stress-relieving cruise at the end of March 2020, but obviously that got canceled because...
6. COVID wave 1 hit the US in mid-March 2020. We shelved the #3 (DC move west) for a few months as the entire company shifted into Work From Home (WFH) mode, and learned to function in new ways. As the largest USA/Canada wholesale distributor for consumer grocery store food and goods, we became a major critical business function. As a result, we went to ~130% production levels - with 100% level = the busiest Q4 holiday season from December prior. That production level has stayed mostly constant all year long, and is expected to continue until the pandemic subsides.
7. In May 2020, we started #3's datacenter move practicing up again.
8. In June 2020, with announced extended WFH the norm going forward, I was going mad inside these 4 walls. Turning on an Amiga (see #2) was not stress-relieving, so I didn't. I started rotating away-home trips. Work from remote 3 weeks (friend's homes in other states), then return home for 3 weeks, rinse-repeat. This was to observe the 2+ week quarantine requirements at each location, and to try to keep me and my friends sort-of sane. The Amiga stayed off.
9. We landed the production datacenter successfully in the new location at the end of July 2020. I was mentally burned out. I walked away from computers after the work day. I took several long weekend road trips into the mountains and avoided people and technology equally.
10. The rebuild of the disaster recovery site then began late August 2020, into September, and October. Ever see a large pallet with 35 2U servers stacked in 3 piles? I physically moved that gear out by myself, and moved in the bumped-down gear from the old east-coast datacenter. I then re-cabled it, and then configured it with 2 other (remote) colleagues. We pulled off our first DR test against the new datacenter location on it in November...successfully.
11. Around late November holiday, I finally got my A2000 back working stable. I was also able to repair some of the cards used to test the adapters in December. I needed ZIF lever-sockets installed to reduce the plug-in/out wear.
12. It's January 2021, and the 3-week work from remote / work from home rotation trips continue. It will probably continue into the Spring 2021 in some form until COVID gets beaten back into submission.
13. I still need a real vacation once the pandemic subsides.
I will try to get back into building GuruROM adapters in the remote-home gaps. I need to set up the workspace again, line up the parts, and get a good stack of adapters built before I engage my overseas distributors again - shipping costs still sucks for single and small items going out of the USA.
For those that have waited, thanks - it will be a bit longer. For those that have moved on, I understand.
Robert Miranda