Server Crash!

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Granted, I was probably long overdue for one because I can’t even remember the last time I had to toil away in my server closet / bedroom closet for more than a minute or two, but it sure would’ve been nice to do before or after I was done recovering from my kidney transplant so that I could twist and move to mess with cables and heavy servers in such a manner!

But then again, power outages come at a time when we least expect it, which is basically what happened about a week ago in the early hours of my birthday when we lost electricity for about two hours and when it came back up, my NAS decided that it didn’t want to…

For reference, the server in reference is a Dell PowerEdge C2100 – yes, it’s pretty old, but it gets the job done for now.

My first suspects were all power-related, figuring that maybe a power supply went bad when the electricity came back on or something. I did notice a battery error on one of the UPSes, which was odd because one ran out of juice and the other didn’t, but in hindsight I think that was an unrelated way of reminding me that it’s time to replace the batteries in them – makes sense, considering I bought them back in 2019!

For the longest time, I was at a loss because essentially the lights on the power supplies told me that it was getting power, but a single, non-flashing orange light on the front indicated a hardware failure that prevented booting. I started stumbling through Dell’s troubleshooting guide of unplugging components until I could get it to boot and was about ready to cry when I found a random forum post hinting to try resetting the CMOS via a really tiny jumper that was a pain in the ass to find, and suddenly it booted!

Once!

It spit out all sorts of random errors and sometimes even random characters while it was trying to boot, eventually telling me that it couldn’t find the boot device (which is a USB drive for Unraid) and then went silent again when I killed the power to try a reboot.

After a couple of rounds of resetting the CMOS to work through the various settings changes and watching them disappear shortly thereafter, it clicked that maybe it was the actual CMOS battery that had died, which was correct because once I replaced that … and also plugged back in one of the SATA cables for the backplane for the disks, it started booting fine!

But it still wouldn’t boot into Unraid.

Well, chalk one up to Oops because it turns out that *I* had unplugged the dongle for the USB boot drive when I was trying to locate that CMOS jumper, and although I had replaced it, I guess I must’ve put it in backwards or something because after reorienting it, I was able to go into BIOS and it actually saw the USB as a boot option finally!

So thankfully after a full week of dabbling with this thing a few times a day for as long as I could crouch down in the closet, it’s finally back online and now I just have to endure a 2.5 day parity check because Unraid failed to shutdown nicely when my UPS ran out of battery.

A couple of follow-ups:

  • I need to look into that and make sure all of my servers are set to gracefully shutdown if they switch to UPS power for more than, say, a minute. We get a lot more flickers than actual outages where we are, so that should be the best scenario to shoot for.
  • I also need to replace the batteries in those UPSes … which wouldn’t be so bad at about $25 a piece except that each one contains three batteries!
  • And lastly, but most urgently, I need to verify that the right BIOS is now running because one goofy bug that I encountered when I first got this machine was that the newer BIOSes from Dell didn’t control the fans correctly, thus resulting in it absolutely screaming all of the time, which my wife does not approve of! Backing down to a specific, lower version fixes it, and I even know exactly which one because apparently I made my own forum post when I did it back in 2019, so I need to see whether the resets lost that as well or what.

That said, right now I’m very tired because it’s very hot inside of that closet, especially with one server running at full tilt, so we’ll see what all that involves and how loud it is with the closet door closed to determine whether I get to it tonight or not!

The Ups and Downs of Kidney Transplants

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It’s still kind of weird to think that roughly a week ago, I started off my Wednesday with two (garbage) kidneys and enough anxiety to fill a 50-gallon trash bag, and yet now here we are some 8 days later, a total of three kidneys stuffed in my body, and at least one of them actually works!

It truly was a wild week of ups and downs – kicking things off at the hospital not sure if we were going to have to postpone because I had been carrying a small fever and aches since my final dialysis session two days earlier.

Thankfully, the doctors that oversaw my case ultimately decided that the safest thing for me was to proceed with the transplant, so they did that. I didn’t know until it was behind me and I had woken up that apparently one of my lungs collapsed near the end of the surgery because somehow I got a leak in the cavity outside of it, which filled with enough air to prevent my one lung from being able to re-inflate.

So I woke up in the Trauma ICU with a few extra tubes protruding from my body, including a line literally in my neck, which would’ve been scarier if I wasn’t on so many painkillers at that point!

My first real dose of pain came that day when they wanted me to move from the bed to a chair, and it was easily the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life. Thankfully, pain-wise I did pretty good from there on out – the next day easily saw it cut in half to a 5 instead of a 10, and soon it really only hurt when I needed to pivot out of the bed. Eventually we did some walking in the hallway with a walker, and another day or two later I was walking without it, the pain now only hitting me when I hit certain positions and I can usually sit in one place without any pain whatsoever.

Along side all of the physical therapy, they also started scrutinizing my oxygen levels because they would be fine while I was walking, but randomly dip when I was just sitting and watching TV. Eventually as the other hoses began to get removed, they narrowed their focus on the O2 and found that it wasn’t hitting the levels necessary for sending me home with oxygen, and eventually after a lack of symptoms we had to say good enough.

I think one of my scariest times was last week when my new kidney hadn’t quite picked up its pace at processing urine and filtering out old toxins yet, to the point where they were considering putting a dialysis catheter back in so that I could go get an emergency session if necessary. Thankfully, my Creatinine and GFR continued to see tiny bumps that were more encouraging, so they said that was no longer necessary, which I was particularly grateful for.

Even today, there were new questions about my heart because I guess it was creating a bizarre waveform while I was sleeping, and only while I was sleeping! The cardiologist finally came by and explained that it wasn’t necessarily good or bad, just odd, which is a good overall summary of my health to date, too.

And so late this afternoon, on day #8 after my transplant surgery, they finally cleared me to go home and gave me a huge binder of information to read along with an even bigger bag of pills that I’ll need to take for the rest of my life in order to keep my new organ from feuding with my cranky body.

Admittedly it’s still really overwhelming, but frankly that’s why I’ve got the next couple of months off from work to adjust to new habits and figure out the best ways of taking care of myself to make this sucker last as long as possible!

Oh yeah, and I also literally go back to the Transplant Clinic three times a week for the next month so they can follow my labs and adjust my meds accordingly, so I still feel like I’m in pretty good hands.

I’m sure I’ll have much more to write in the future as my brain begins to decompress from all of this, so right now I just wanted to cover – it worked, I’m home, and I’m ready for the next mountain that life has for me to climb.

Well, metaphorically, anyways – I’m pretty sure I won’t be climbing anything larger than my bed for the near future while these latest scars in my torso take their time to heal!

Welcome to the next chapter in Scott’s life – here’s hoping that it’s a good one…

Passing Some Time at Dialysis…

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Today is my second to last dialysis treatment before my kidney transplant next week, so I thought I’d try to pass some of my four hours of blood filtering with a random brain dump of thoughts that have crossed my mind recently.

  • How many traffic accidents could be prevented just by people staying in their damn lane?! I see so many people weaving in and out of traffic on our roads, only to save what – half a minute on their travel time??? Your safety and that of everyone else on the road is far more important!
  • Politics is just depressing these days. I’m so tired of seeing what new thing Trump found to destroy on a daily basis.
  • I think so many aspects of our lives would improve if everyone dialed back the judgment of each other. Whether it’s family or co-workers or even strangers at the grocery store, 99% of the people around us don’t know everything going on in our lives or the challenges we’re currently facing, so just chill and give people the benefit of the doubt.
  • In remote work, we have an acronym – API, or Assume Positive Intent – and I think it applies in a lot of areas of our lives, namely when interacting with other people. It’s pretty simple – just don’t assume someone is acting maliciously because things didn’t go the way you expected.
  • I’ve written about it before, but I think this next phase of my life is going to focus a lot on embracing passion as a way to filter out negativity, particularly but not limited to all of the noise online. We only get so much time on this pale, blue dot of ours and I’m tired of wasting any of it on being angry about things that are outside of my control.
  • It’s amazing the variety of people around us who we never really know. Right now in dialysis, I can see one person watching Thor, another watching one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, and a third watching Friends. And we’re all just trying to get through another session!
  • There’s a lot to be said for “Not yucking someone’s yum.” If somebody enjoys something and it’s not hurting anybody, let them enjoy it. I used to hate country music growing up just because it was the opposite of rock music and it felt like we were supposed to, but now … who really cares?! Just because it’s not what I want to listen to doesn’t mean it sucks and it means a lot to some people just like rock music means a lot to others. Let people enjoy their football or bowling or Dungeons & Dragons or collecting shiny rocks or whatever the case may be – those kinds of passions are what make our lives worthwhile!
  • I’m starting to come around on unnecessary movie sequels for the same reason. I personally don’t care for them, but their existence doesn’t ruin the original that I might’ve loved. Creating a new Ghostbusters movie doesn’t ruin those first two movies that were absolute classics when I was growing up. If you don’t want to watch them, then just don’t watch them…
  • Dialysis, and modern medicine in general, are amazing technological advances … yet I’m not going to miss coming here one bit after next week!
    • P.S. Please remind me of this whenever I grumble about working out instead of having to go to dialysis once I’ve recovered…

Life is Fragile

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Having now spent five solid weeks in hospitals this year alone for all sorts of infection-related issues, I’ve noticed a pattern where as I get closer to getting better and going home, it starts to hit me just how incredible modern medicine and its providers can be…

Like this morning, they did an echo to make sure my heart hadn’t gotten damaged by this infection and I was able to lay there on my bed and actually watch my own heart beating, complete with seeing how my blood was flowing through it!

Or how these annoying electrodes connected to my chest allow me and a bunch of nurses real time access to my heart rate, which was pretty elevated when I got here but thankfully has mostly returned to normal now.

Or even the new straw that they stuck into my shoulder this morning to replace the infected dialysis catheter that got removed on Tuesday so that I can continue receiving lifesaving dialysis to filter the toxins out of my blood because my kidneys don’t really work anymore.

At least, the dialysis part applies for another 5 sessions until I lay down on a table with bright lights overhead once more, this time to put another human’s donated kidney into my body to take the place of my broken ones, which is a thing that modern medicine actually does now instead of just letting people die of organ failure like they did only 70 years ago!

It’s both amazing and terrifying how this collection of organs and flesh and bones work together to make up life as we know it as humans, and that we’re able to “fix it” in the miraculous ways that we are today, however something that I’m also becoming more keenly aware of is that there are also things that we can’t fix as well as risks that come along with the fixes that we can do that I don’t want to think about, but can’t help but consider because I have a family waiting for me at home who I’m nowhere near ready to say goodbye to yet.

So 12 days left until I give our medical system another spin and our biggest collaboration to date! We can do this, science – I have 99% faith in you…

Roller Coaster of Kidneys

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One thing that I’ve learned about kidney transplants in the last two weeks is that there isn’t just one approval, there’s a zillion of them.

Two weeks ago, it was the approval from the Kidney Transplant Clinic’s board deciding to take on my surgery after reviewing about a dozen different tests from both myself and my donor.

Then a few short days later, it was the financial authorization from my insurance agreeing to actually pay for the half a million dollar, lifesaving surgery … which almost threw a hiccup when they said they wanted me to redo a bunch of testing as well as some new testing, only to go ahead and approve it anyways a day later!

Today’s round of approvals were in the form of pre-op testing where I had to redo a select handful of tests to make sure that nothing has changed that could impact the surgery … and thankfully, nothing has so far.

The next two weeks are kind of a quiet period where theoretically nothing should happen, but I have to be on high alert and let them know immediately if anything at all changes with my health. It’s also not the time to go out and get a shiny, new vaccine or change my meds because everything hinges on the snapshot of me in this moment.

And then one week prior to surgery, my donor and I will both go in for one last blood draw to verify that we’re still a match with tissue typing and a bunch of fancy biology stuff that was well beyond my aptitude in college.

Then comes the transplant itself.

It’s definitely starting to get all the more real the closer we get. Today I met with several different doctors and nurses on the team and went over everything from what to expect from the surgery, recovery, and beyond. It’s … alot … to the point where I think it’s important to quantify it not as reaching a goal, but instead getting over one hill with another new one to challenge me right on the other side.

One described the recovery process by saying, “I don’t expect for you to feel better on day four than you do today, however by week four I expect you to say that you feel much better than you do today.”

And I can accept that – in essence, I’m trading one set of challenges with dialysis and fatigue and exhaustion for another set of my body learning how to use this new organ without trying to kill it, while also physically recovering from having my belly split open.

It does sound like they will not be removing my giant, old kidneys at this stage – namely because it’s too dangerous to do everything at the same time, however I’m still hoping that we can revisit the topic once I’m healed so that I can give exercise and good health a real, honest shot this time. Baby steps…

I’ve been thinking more about the impact and what this transplant means to my future so that I can try to put it into words for my donor before the actual surgery. No idea how my wife or I are going to get through the time leading up to the OR without crying, but I think in truly profound moments such as this, that’s to be expected. If I can hold back my tears while I’m saying goodbye to the kids so as to not spook them with the inherent risk of surgery in general, that’s good enough for me.

We also desperately need to get this house cleaned before then so that I don’t have tripping risks every three feet when I come home, so that sucks!

Passion & Emotion & Art

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I stumbled across Yungblud about a week ago when I was listening to some of the acts from Black Sabbath’s farewell tour. He did a show stopping rendition of Changes, which eventually led me to download his latest album, Idols, which in turn I’ve been pretty much listening to non-stop since…

One of the things that really appeals to me about his music is how you can hear and feel the emotion that went into the songs. I’ve listened to a handful of interviews with Dom (the artist) and he’s refreshingly upfront in talking about his mental health and trying to improve himself, and it really comes through in the music, too, as he takes on some tough topics like child abuse and depression and one of my personal favorites – change.

I guess I relate to this song as I feel myself facing some pretty big changes in my life with the kidney transplant, among other things. I love how the words talk about welcoming change and what it brings to our lives instead of dreading it like most of us do. It’s a really upbeat rhythm that I find myself listening to in the car a lot as I drive back and forth to dialysis.

It takes a lot of guts to put yourself out there like this album does, scars and all, to say this is how I felt yesterday, and this is how I’m feeling today, and that’s ok because I’m a work in progress.

I haven’t dove into his back catalog yet because I’ve heard that the music is much different than this one and I’m so in love with it, but I’m still looking forward to seeing what else is out there even if it doesn’t wind up in my general rotation.

Kidney Progress!

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It’s official – I now have a date for my upcoming kidney transplant!

Right now I feel all sorts of emotions, which I suppose I have the next month to do my best to sort out…

I’m nervous about the surgery because this is by far the most complicated and longest procedure I’ve ever had done.

I’m anxious about processing those fears and setting my kids’ expectations without scaring the shit out of them … or myself.

I’m grateful for the generosity of my donor for gifting me something that I could never possibly repay.

…not that it’s expected, but it’s still a massive concept to wrap my head around – the idea that this person is willing to give me a part of themselves in order to give me a better future with my family.

WOW.

If the tables were turned, I’d like to think that I would do the same, but I don’t know. There are plenty of people in my life who didn’t offer to donate and I can’t fault them for that at all because ultimately it’s an immensely personal choice that one can only make for themselves.

Like I said, lots of emotions swirling around my head right now, but that’s what time and reflection and therapy are for!

Only 14 more dialysis sessions to go…

Dude, Where’s My Gallbladder?!

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As of Monday afternoon, it’s no longer in my body. I don’t want to jinx it, but so far my infection symptoms haven’t returned and I’m officially one step closer to my transplant!

My middle is pretty sore and I’ve been relying on pain meds to sleep at night, though as much as I groan, I’m sure this is nothing compared to the recovery from when they fillet me open to play with my kidneys.

Still, I’ll take it if it means moving closer towards normalcy – at least for a little while.

I really miss swimming with the kids, namely because it’s getting hot and it’s such a great way to both unwind and enjoy some time with them at the same time. Lately they’ve been bugging me to let them go in the pool and I’m sure I will eventually, but it’s just not the same sitting on the patio (and sweating!) while they’re splashing around, having a good time.

Believe it or not, I also want to exercise again. Well, sometimes. My body has gotten really sore just doing basic things and I want to start working on that, but there are so many barriers right now between time and having a clear floor to do it and having the energy to do it. I’d like to start with just some basic stretching for now because I know that swinging kettlebells will be a ways off between this surgery and the big one, but I need to get past this place where I just groan and have to take a minute whenever I go to stand up!

My goal is to repurpose some of my dialysis time for an exercise routine after my transplant, even if it just means walking around the neighborhood or spending time on the elliptical. I’ve even thought about getting one of those walking pads for my office, though I don’t have a standing desk so it might be a waste.

All in all, I’m trying to maintain my calm and take things one day at a time, but I’m also really anxious for the next step so I can feel like I’m truly moving forward with all of this! That said, I’m grateful that I even have the options that are in front of me … I still haven’t wrapped my head around another person giving me one of their organs, and maybe I never will, but I know that it’s a big deal and one that I’ll spend the rest of my time trying to live up to and be grateful for the sacrifice.

Things I Did This Weekend, 4/5/2025 Edition

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  • Got about halfway through 3 of 99 tasks around the house…
    • Have I mentioned how much I hate cleaning?! Probably more times than anyone can count, and it’s only gotten worse as my health has made it harder for me to go without frequent breaks and whatnot. I made a list of everything that needs to get done and admittedly, it’s very big! I’m trying to include the kids wherever I can because if we can train them to actually throw things away and clean up after themselves, in theory it should only make things easier in the long run!
  • Spent way too much money on auto repair parts.
    • Seriously, a new set of wipers for both cars set me back, like, $90! I mean, sure, the shop wanted $75 for one car, so I saved money there, but I still have to muster up the ambition to actually install them … which is easy, if I get around to it. After dropping two grand last week on new tires and brakes for the van already plus another $500 expected for the airbag replacement (stupid pothole), I’m trying to find little things like changing the wipers and air filters that I can do myself. It’s just a pain when everything ends up taking longer than you were expecting…
  • Case in Point – Exhibit: Sprinklers.
    • I hate dealing with these every spring because there’s no good way to fix them without getting dirty and soaked, but I also hate the local sprinkler repair guy because last time I hired him, he only did half the job and when I called him on it, he said he’d be back in a month to finish it when he was less busy! Admittedly I’m learning more like paying attention to the orientation of pipe connections that I’m buying and trying to replace just the broken parts without swapping out the entire head. Still, it drives me nuts how much the whole system has sunken into the soil because it’s a pain in the ass to raise them back up. I read a post about someone fixing this by burying a brick underneath the pipe connection, but that sounds like a next year project at this point!
  • Watched Captain America: Brave New World.
    • I didn’t really care for it, namely because I think the whole mind control concept is about used up in the MCU and I didn’t really care how Red Hulk was implemented. Spoiler Alert – Why do we only get to see him at the end? And how does he know all of the Hulk’s signature fight moves if he’s never fought before???
  • Started playing Final Fantasy IV: Ultima Plus.
    • This is basically a cleaned up version of the Ultima romhack that I already love – they fixed a few bugs and updated a bunch of dialogue, so I decided to give it another play through. I honestly don’t remember where I left off with its predecessor, but right now I’m underground and getting ready to storm the Lower Tower of Babil – still a ways to go before the character selection opens up, which is my favorite feature, but I’ll get there this week, I’m sure!
  • Still waiting for medical stuff…
    • And last but not least, my gallbladder surgery is a week from today, which is step 1 of 3 towards my transplant. Step 2 will be a stent removal a few weeks later, followed by final clearance from my Infectious Disease doctor to confirm that we finally got this bastard infection that’s been plaguing me for the last 2+ months! Baby steps are still progress nonetheless…

One More Thing, Vacation Edition!

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This would’ve been really neat – if it had worked…

Occasionally when we travel, I’ll remember to bring along the cables needed to wire up an iPad or my laptop to the TV in our room so that we can watch something on Plex after the kids go to bed.

This was not one of those occasions, however I was pleasantly surprised to see that Disney added a wireless option where (in theory) you can stream from your own device directly to the TV via Chromecast!

I say ideally because I fought with the thing on and off for about an hour and never could get it to work. The Chromecast connection itself was fine and you could in fact see my screen mirrored on the TV, however best I can tell is that Disney’s guest wifi simply isn’t strong enough to maintain consistent bandwidth both to my device (from my Plex server back at home) as well as to the TV (from my laptop to the TV) at the same time.

I tried lowering the video quality, which worked a bit, and eventually downloaded the movie file to my laptop to eliminate one of the streams, but it just wasn’t cutting it. Ironically, the next night we broke down and signed up for a month of Disney+ so that we could watch some of the new Daredevil reboot and that streamed just fine, although I didn’t check but for all I know maybe there’s a data connection for the TV channels that also carries Disney+ to ensure a good signal there!

It’s still nice to see them making tech improvements, even if they’ve still got some more testing to do. 😉