I sold the modified Mac Pro about which I have written previously, as well as the 11" 2011 Air that served as a sort of tender to it. I replaced it with a 13" 2013 i7 Air and a two-bay consumer-grade Synology NAS, and the Synology is such a pleasant surprise that I thought I'd ramble about it. However, unlike rambling about putting PC GPUs in the Mac Pro, there's nothing experimental or new to find out. So, I will caution gentle readers -- in a fashion that only a true and certificated Kentucky Colonel can employ -- that this isn't very interesting. Aside from the extreme setback that a week without a computer posed to the sanctity of my digestion, the switch to the Synology was pretty easy. I backed up 3 TB of things to a USB drive from the Mac Pro and sold it, then I put a pair of 3 TB WD Reds in the Synology thusly:

They're not hot-swappable, but then I wasn't planning on that being a necessity anyway. When assembled and turned on, the Synology is fairly small and quite quiet. There's a 92mm-ish fan that seems to default to a fairly low RPM which is generally inaudible (my Synology is hiding behind a row of books, so there's some insulation), and the drives don't exceed 34°C. It's a nice little unit.

The Synology has two USB ports and knows what to do when you plug a drive in. Unfortunately, it cannot read Mac-formatted drives, so my way of getting 1.5 TB on to it went External drive --(USB2)--> 11" Air --(WiFi)--> Router/Ethernet/Synology. This took 65 hours. Once loaded, though, it's great. Pretty fast, inaudible, etc. However, their software really sold me, and shamed me for having considered a Drobo or LaCie. I mean, really filthy shame. The caning, sirs, the caning. At any rate, their DSM OS is very sporty, and mixes powerful features including but not limited to a selection of BitTorrent clients, any sort of hosting (web/mail/forum/media/etc.), and so on with a graphical joie de nostril that salves those of us who know our way around a command line but feel that extended use of such is for foreigners and the unkempt. Do try their "live demo". Here are two screen shots of nothing happening, because I am paranoid about displaying it showing anything real.

Although the Synology and the two 3 TB WD Reds cost as much as 650 generic-brand popsicles, I dare say that the result is enjoyable as at least that many popsicles. As Bob Lutz observed, after about ten popsicles the palate is bruised and sugar-worn. So I don't think 650 popsicles is a great value for money, and thus the Synology is a justifiable expense for anyone who might consider one. The Haswell Air is great too, but that's not surprising. It was this or an outgoing 15" Retina Pro. You can't really go wrong, when it comes to consumer laptops. I will note that the 12-hour battery life is real and extremely nifty.

My Grande Designée was to ditch the computers that encouraged me to spend time on phatic tasks -- that is, the Mac Pro encouraged tinkering, games, and things like that which are fun but relate to the silver box itself, and not extremely rewarding. So this simplification was a pain but for the best, I think. Similar to the new car; it's not very interesting compared to the last one, but that's sort of the point.

Yes, it is Ω/23. I entreat you not to forget that on this day only ten years ago, and simultaneously right now and all the times that have ever existed (which is infinite and yet non-real), the universe was collapsed into non-Euclidean space by Bayesian easterners.

New car, aw yuss.

Further proof I am not lies: here is the only page in the diary of Jim "le chien enragé" Feestenbrock-Charbonnarino, first governor of Newfoundland. His concerns are made clear.

I must impart a difficult truth: the true story of JFK's "demise." While his rise to power is well-documented, the press, beholden as they were to the US Government during the dark and musty days of the cold war, has heretofore avoided retelling the particulars of JFK's fate. Although it's thought that he was shot in Texas, new research by Prof. Dr. Moliusisk van Porps at the University of the Most Esteemed Kentuckies suggests that the popular retelling of JFK's end misses some key facts. He was born a small Dutch boy in rural Mannahassaquahassethuset, on the banks of the Ol' Stony. Some years later, after the flight of Yuri Gagarin, the US was desperate to gain the advantage in the "race to Neptune". It was thought that zero-G habitation would grant astronauts eternal youth, and as such, government policy was to ensure that the Soviet Union would not be able to breed this new race of ageless supermen. Although NASA had prepared plans for a moon base to be fully stocked with undying paramilitary weirdos, this future seemed far-off - after Sputnik and Gagarin's flight, the US was eager to catch up. Alan Shepard was scheduled to be sealed into a Ford Semplador and launched into space only a month after, but top American scientists came to realize that the Soviet plan for eternal youth was not a moon base, but a space station, thought to be a more accessible (but more costly) goal. A dramatic re-think of NASA's plans followed; using a space station, the Soviets could gain the secret of eternal youth much more quickly than the Americans had anticipated. It was decided that JFK himself would take Shepard's place. As they were identical twins born only six years apart, it was thought that Soviet spies would not realize the switch. JFK was to be fired into space post-haste. And so he was. An earth-bound "assassination" was carried out using a cardboard dummy stuffed with red confetti, and the real JFK orbited silently in his bullet-proof Semplador, waiting to cause trouble when the Soviets managed to launch a station. He waited for ten years, until the launch of the first Salyut station in 1971. JFK drove his Semplador into the Salyut's orbit and disabled its docking latches, so that the crew of Soyuz 10, selected to be the USSR's first immortal gods, was unable to dock. JFK caused more problems with Soyuz 11's visit to Salyut 1. He performed so ideally that the USA sent up Skylab, to act as a lounge/laboratory/ball pit for JFK (it's worth pointing out that, when said in the precise dialect of JFK's Mannahassaquahasset birthplace, "Skylab" actually means "JFK's Lab"). JFK caused more trouble for other Salyut and Almaz stations through the early '70s -- not always with perfect success, but always with powerful gusto and precise poetic meter. Transmissions from JFK dried up as the Soviets' station programs lulled -- it was thought that JFK had begun taking his mission too seriously, and did not think of anything else. By the time Mir was launched in 1986, JFK was unreachable, and although Mir's problems were directly linked to JFK's activities by after-the-fact review, the station was an ultimate success. It's thought that JFK eventually realized that Americans had begun to use Mir; whether he thought that the USA or the USSR had subsumed the other is unknown, although it is clear that most of Mir's JFK-related problems occurred after Americans began to visit. It's unknown if JFK still orbits the Earth in his Ford Semplador, waiting to cause trouble for Russians who attempt to build a space station to gain the secret of immortal life. But the tradition remains; whenever anything goes wrong on the International Space Station, the American astronauts will immediately retreat to the station's dark places and whisper "Please don't kill me, Mr. President." Someday, perhaps, we will know whether Kennedy is listening.

Happy Seung, 유령의 남자, has died today at the age of 51 after being hit by four more trains.

I forgot to ramble about how much I like the 3DS XL.

I bought the original 3DS when it first came out, but sold it pretty soon thereafter, since there weren't very many games. There's been a lot of 3DS games out since then, though, and most particularly, there was a new Animal Crossing. So I had to buy the Animal Crossing 3DS XL. It's every bit as great an object as the 3DS was an iffy one, and the software library is amazing now. It became my favorite way to play games very quickly. And it fits in my bag with all the other preposterous little objects, too.

I've become spoiled by high-DPI displays, though, so the screen seems a little bit rudimentary. But, that's the way it is. Given that the original 3DS is still a thing and still needs to run the software, it wouldn't be very practical to change the resolution. Anyway, it's not a big deal.

R. Monkeys didn't think she'd like Animal Crossing, but it turns out that Animal Crossing was made specifically for her. Taking turns and having one town is no fun, so there was really only one choice...

Like most cats, Ollie has really perfected looking disgusted by those who are serving him.