Author: Sarah Happy

I just moved my little cloud server to a new and more spacious virtual private server. I’m always surprised how fast files can be copied between cloud providers.

I spent the last few months shopping around looking for a good inexpensive hosting option billed in CAD and located in Canada, eventually settling on ServaRica in Montreal. It took me two weekends to get everything moved over. This is a personal server so there is nobody to complain if a service is down for a bit.

Why move? A few reasons,

I want to be billed in CAD, this option is not available on Linode.

I want a place to try running a NetBird server. (requires 2 GB RAM)

I may also put up an OnlyOffice collaborative editing server. (requires 4 GB RAM)

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The new Virtual Private Server:

• ServaRica: V2 KVM Slim Slice 2 – https://servarica.com/plan/611/ (sold out)
• $9.00 CAD + tax per month ($10.68 CAD per month)
• 8 GB RAM
• 2 CPU Cores
• 250 GB SSD
• Unlimited bandwidth @ 250 Mbps + 1 Mbps/day up to 1 Gbps
• Montreal, Canada

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Moving from:

• Linode: Nanode 1 GB – https://www.akamai.com/cloud/pricing/north-america#container-5f6592f923
• $5.00 USD per month (currently $8.29 CAD per month)
• 1 GB RAM
• 1 CPU Core
• 25 GB SSD
• 1 TB bandwidth @ 1 Gbps (I never came anywhere near this limit)
• Toronto, Canada

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The major steps:

• connectivity
• firewall
• docker
• email
• containers
• web sites
• backup old server filesystem
• delete old server
• fix up any remaining configurations.

The booster pack in my van wasn’t charging while driving. Moving the plug around helped sometimes depending on which way I pushed it, so it needed fixing. Also the barrel connectors I have on hand do not fit in the dc plug of the booster pack, so the one that it came with needed to be fixed.

When I started investigating the connector, the barrel connector came out of the boot.

So I cleaned up the ends and reconnected them.

and the other.

and finally, protection from the world.

All good to go for the next while, I’m glad it was easy to fix.

The washer at home was having a lot of trouble getting through the spin cycle, the error code was “dc” and the basket hit the sides of the washer a lot.

After some investigation I found the appropriate part, and ordered it.

Today the new shocks arrived, and I installed them right away. The old ones were very dirty but not hard to remove. The new ones were quite easy to install.

Now the washer should get through the spin cycle easier again.

My everyday handbag got some fixing up over the weekend.

The inner liner developed a hole at a previous repair.

The previous repair was many years ago before I had opened the top edge of the bag. This time I sewed it on the inside the bag, making it less visible too.

While I had the edge of the bag open , I took the opportunity to clean up another repair attempt.

The green ribbon is of the style where the edge falls apart readily, oops, most of the Dollarama ribbons are super strong, but this one was from somewhere else. I know the double layer floss stitching is strong from how much work it took to rip out the old stitching on the ribbon.

The red ribbon is plenty strong, this should hold the structure of the bag quite well.

The bag also got cleaned out good, including some of the original foam liner that falls apart easily and does not help the structure of the bag. The bag may actually be slightly lighter than before.

I keep wearing out the elbows of my clothes, over the weekend I patched the accumulated holes and made the sleeves longer on one of my hoodies I wear a lot in the winter.

The patch material in flannel, and is probably going to drop threads for a while.

The Velcro square that holds my umbrella closed has been getting unreliable, so I changed it to a button.

My bluetooth headband stopped making sound in one ear, for the second time, so I replaced the second speaker wire.

Soldering so close to the batter terminals makes me nervous, but I did anyways.

The original wire break.

Putting the control module back together. The other end of the wire still needs to be finished.

The wires get soldered to the pads where the old wires were, the wires get a spot of hot glue to stay in place.

The original fabric tape on the back of the speaker didn’t survive pealing it off, so I put a piece of hockey tape over the area to protect everything.

All the guts batch together again.

It all works again.

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/394490027454 – Where this headband came from.

I am well aware that the effort to do the repair is more than the original purchase price. But, I do not need to wait the weeks for delivery, and I get practice.

I like socks that cover most of my legs, but I also destroy the end of my socks with my feet, so I took another worn out sock to patch these socks.

The patches took an afternoon each to pin and sew.

The clothes dryer stopped making heat, again, I replaced the heating element a year ago, and now again.

After confirming the failure was the heating element, the part was ordered, a week later the new heater arrived and was promptly installed. The dryer works again.

I have this zipper bag from the Dollarama, I keep various tools like sockets, ratchets, and screw driver tips in it for easy transport. It is highly overloaded.

The first round of making this bag stronger was to sew some ribbons inside the top part of the body of the bag where it was pulling apart.

This round was to fix up the mesh pocket that has been leaking bits for quite a while.