Finally having some fun playing around with my mini PC homelab over the past couple of days, after all the dramas I've been thru.
The only problem is that this little thing is actually more powerful than my desktop, my laptop.. and pretty much every other computing device I own, so I'm a bit conflicted now, maybe I should just get rid of my desktop and use this instead as my main PC, lab etc, and get another low end/low power mini PC for my persistent servers..
Must have been nearly $2k by the time you paid for RAM, SSD, and GST on import?
Was thinking or ordering one (or at least putting it on my wish list) but changed my mind when I saw the price. Does it have a GPU? I couldn't see a reference to one.
It came to about $1200 NZD (64GB RAM + 1TB NVMe), didn't have to pay any import duties somehow (they had a checkbox on the order form for skipping duties, maybe they mark it as a gift or something? not sure how that works)
The GPU is integrated (Radeon 780M) and is actually not bad - 60FPS on most games, even on Cyberpunk 2077 (1440p on low, or 1080p on medium). But there's also an option of connecting a desktop GPU externally, via the Oculink port - just need an Oculink -> PCIe adapter/dock.
Making slow progress on the shed. Yesterday it asked me to put rivets in holes that didn't exist (in the roof, no less), in the end I decided there probably should be rivets there so drilled some holes. But up to now it has always said to drill holes when it was needed, I triple checked and it never said to drill holes there. I hope this thing doesn't leak too bad!
How does increased workload effect your sense of well being?
Unless it gets really hectic; I'm pretty chill. Even when it gets hectic I tend to retreat to a technical mindset (I'm an engineer). I will simply solve the problem in front of me, things just get pushed to the bottom of the list unless really urgent.
I'm pretty chill about things most of the time too.
I remember working in a call centre a long time ago. Colleagues would freak out because the queues were getting really long. I'd remind them it's not their job to manage the queues, it's your job to take the next phone call. If the queue is 1 person or 10 people or 100, it doesn't matter to you because your job is just to take the call at the front of the queue.
These days I just keep a list of things I need to do, and identify the important tasks and do those. The Eisenhower Matrix can help.
spoiler
It's very rare for there to be multiple urgent and important things.
I've tried some "button" type things in HA, but I find the whole HA experience so frustrating that i'm gradually moving everything out of it, and anything I need to interact with i'm just going to publish to the mqtt topic with something else instead.
I use mqtt-explorer to ship the device logs, and mqtt-exporter to expose the metrics to prometheus directly, and all the stuff I work with either has its own GUI, or is ESPHome. So all HA is now is an additional kinda ugly GUI that's a PITA to maintain (for me).