[Rant] Tech Whine Like a baby thread

[figmentPez]

My internet went out yesterday afternoon. I spent most of the afternoon and evening trying to tell tech support that there was an outage.

First I tried the app. The app wouldn't let me log in, usually a sign something is wrong on their end.

Then I tried the website, which I could log into via my cellular connection, but it kept throwing up error messages. Talking to a bot it kept telling me "I'm having trouble following our conversation, can you repeat that?" Even when I hadn't had a chance to reply. I worked my way through the bot until I got it to agree I needed to schedule a technician to come out, but it just threw up errors when I tried to schedule an appointment.

Then I tried the phone. The phone will not let you talk to a human until you've tried restarting your router, a step which requires you to agree to having them hang up on you and call you back in 10 minutes. I tried to demand talking to a human, but it wouldn't let me.

So I got on Twitter to complain, but they're slow to respond to each DM there. Like 15 minutes of lag between each message. Which took a while because they couldn't find me in their system at first. (Another sign that things were seriously messed up on their end.) Finally the Twitter support agreed that I needed to schedule an appointment, so I got a tech scheduled for 4 - 6pm today.

Then I got a call at 10AM this morning asking if my internet was working. They asked me to check on my router, and as I was headed to the living room the call disconnected. I have no idea what went on there, but I think they were asking me to restart my router again, because this tech did not seem to know I'd been talking to lots of other support, or that I had an appointment scheduled.

Around 11:30AM today I was playing LEGO The Incredibles and noticed my achievements had the correct icons again, and then I started getting other notifications. Which prompted me to check my internet, and it was back on. Guess the problem was something they needed to fix on their end the whole fucking time, just like I tried to tell them.

At least the scheduled appointment was easy to cancel.

If I had any other option for internet, I would dump Comcast/Xfinity, or at least demand they give me a huge discount if they want to keep giving me such horrible tech support.

 

[PatrThom]

the problem was something they needed to fix on their end the whole fucking time, just like I tried to tell them.

I feel your pain. So much.

—Patrick

 

[Bones]

I feel your pain. So much.

—Patrick

 

[GasBandit]

It always is. I'm sitting here on an unopened box with my exact cable modem in it because I am sick and tired of trying to prove to my cable company that the problem is not my modem.

HURRY UP FIBER

 

[evilmike]

 

[GasBandit]

Look, I know supply lines are long these days, but maybe NASA shouldn't be going D-LINK.

 

[Tinwhistler]

So, I got 4 new 14TB drives to upgrade my NAS...figured I'd do one at a time and let it rebuild the raid each time. Takes a while, but should be minimal disruption.

Well, the version of Terramaster OS I have on my box is woefully out of date. It only supports 12TB drives...so, I have to upgrade to the latest OS. This normally wouldn't be a big deal except for several factors:
1) the OS is so old, it's out of service. So I can't auto-update from the web.
2) This particular version of the OS was buggy as hell. It ran Plex just fine, but lots of things didn't work. Including pop-up dialogs on screens like, you know, the "manually update your os" control panel, where you browse for installation files (the plan was to manually upgrade to a version that WOULD auto-update)

Which lead me down this path:

1. Download the latest full OS, since the patch-upgrade path is not viable
2. factory reset the NAS-nope, can't do that. It requires a popup dialog too.
3. Pull all the hard drives and reboot, so the NAS thinks it's a fresh install.
4. Reinstall the OS over the old one. Which means I lose my plex server.
5. Reinstall plex, losing my metadata, which means...
6. Reindex all of my media.
7. then start doing the hard drive shuffle.

I would call this "maximum disruption". I'm about a quarter of the way through step 6. I was so annoyed at step 2, I *almost* plunked $1000 down on a synology and an ssd drive for caching, but since there's technically nothing wrong with this box, I figured I'd stick with it a while longer if I could get it up to snuff.

Edit:
First drive is in the bay and the raid upgrade/repair is proceeding as expected.

Nearly 11 hours to complete. Good thing I'm letting it go over night.

 

[PatrThom]

Welcome back from your trip, I guess?

—Patrick

 

[Tinwhistler]

Welcome back from your trip, I guess?

—Patrick

No one to blame but myself...had I not been lazy, and performed the automatic regular OS updates when prompted, I wouldn't be in this mess. It's a shame I stopped on the one (or at least the one I know of) that was so broken I couldn't manually do it later.

Edit: The estimate was pessimistic. Based on the current percent complete reported, it'll only take a little over 4 hours. Which means I can probably get 2 more drives done tomorrow if I'm not too busy at work.

 

[Tinwhistler]

Drive #3 is in and syncing. Should be done just in time for drive #4 to arrive. That'll sync overnight, and tomorrow I can grow the raid capacity by 20 terabytes

 

[Tinwhistler]

So, the newest OS asked for my email address..I put it in and forgot about it.

I just found all the emails in the junk folder from the drive sync status updates...that's kind of nice. I can quit periodically checking on it now, and just wait for the notification that it's done.

 

[Tinwhistler]

Well, after all the whining, it really only took a day to get things back to some semblance of normal. Final array rebuild should be done around 4am if past rebuild times are any indication. So, when I get up in the morning, I'll expand the pool to give myself another 20tb on the RAID

I guess I can skip that handbrake step to reduce file sizes now.

 

[PatrThom]

OH
MIGOD
SO MANY TIMES

--Patrick

 

[Ravenpoe]

View attachment 43015
OH
MIGOD
SO MANY TIMES

--Patrick

*Applying updates 1/507*


Also I doubt @GasBandit has ever even seen that prompt

 

[GasBandit]

*Applying updates 1/507*


Also I doubt @GasBandit has ever even seen that prompt

My work laptop is windows 10

 

[@Li3n]

View attachment 43015
OH
MIGOD
SO MANY TIMES

--Patrick

Is this some sort of SSD-less joke ?

 

[Tinwhistler]

Well, after all the whining, it really only took a day to get things back to some semblance of normal. Final array rebuild should be done around 4am if past rebuild times are any indication. So, when I get up in the morning, I'll expand the pool to give myself another 20tb on the RAID

I guess I can skip that handbrake step to reduce file sizes now.

View attachment 43013

Got an email notification at 3:42am that the last drive sync finished. Then the system immediately kicked off another sync. Looking at the storage pool, it looks like the system automatically kicked off the process to assign all the new free space to the pool. Convenient for me, because it started the process 4 hours before I even woke up. But maybe problematic for those people who might have wanted to use the new space to create a new, separate storage pool.

 

[Ravenpoe]

My work laptop is windows 10

It was less a joke about you using obsolete OS's and more a joke about you never turning your computers off

 

[GasBandit]

It was less a joke about you using obsolete OS's and more a joke about you never turning your computers off

Ahh, gotcha. Well, I do have to turn my laptops off.

 

[PatrThom]

Is this some sort of SSD-less joke ?

No.

maybe problematic for those people who might have wanted to use the new space to create a new, separate storage pool.

With ZFS, at least, that is the default behavior when replacing your existing disks with larger ones, especially if it was told at initial setup to “use maximum available” rather than “use this specific amount.”

—Patrick

 

[Tinwhistler]

No.

With ZFS, at least, that is the default behavior when replacing your existing disks with larger ones, especially if it was told at initial setup to “use maximum available” rather than “use this specific amount.”

—Patrick

From what I can gather, Terramaster OS is based on BTRFS. I don't recall if there was a setting for "use maximum available" when I set it up, but I don't see any kind of indicator or switch for it now. I don't mind it. I just was thinking that I wanted a separate volume, say, to install a dockerized cloud storage solution and get rid of DropBox, I might be feeling a little annoyed.

Edit: It seems like they rolled their own file system at one point. ZFS

https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19253-01/819-5461/zfsover-2/

ZFS eliminates volume management altogether. Instead of forcing you to create virtualized volumes, ZFS aggregates devices into a storage pool. The storage pool describes the physical characteristics of the storage (device layout, data redundancy, and so on) and acts as an arbitrary data store from which file systems can be created. File systems are no longer constrained to individual devices, allowing them to share disk space with all file systems in the pool. You no longer need to predetermine the size of a file system, as file systems grow automatically within the disk space allocated to the storage pool. When new storage is added, all file systems within the pool can immediately use the additional disk space without additional work.

 

[PatrThom]

ZFS is also notorious for being very difficult to alter once created. That is, if you decide to add additional disks after the initial pool creation, you could potentially have a bad time (scroll down to the part about "Hating your data"). btrfs does not have this limitation (allowing you to resize pools), but I wouldn't consider btrfs mature enough for critical data storage.

--Patrick

 

[Tinwhistler]

ZFS is also notorious for being very difficult to alter once created. That is, if you decide to add additional disks after the initial pool creation, you could potentially have a bad time (scroll down to the part about "Hating your data"). btrfs does not have this limitation (allowing you to resize pools), but I wouldn't consider btrfs mature enough for critical data storage.

--Patrick

Well, my NAS array is full, so I'll never be adding a single disk in any case.
The final expansion operation took longer than expected---about 27 hours. But now, finally, I have this:

Whee!

 

[PatrThom]

I’m in the process of replacing all the 2TB in my “practice” NAS with 4TB right now (which would double my pool from 6TB to 12TB), but since I’m replacing them only when they fail, that means I’ve done only 1 of 5 so far, which means I may not replace them all prior to the construction of my “real” NAS, which I intend to be a 7-drive monster.

—Patrick

 

[Tinwhistler]

This kind of was my 'practice' NAS, too. Originally I was serving Plex up from a machine I cobbled together from parts left over from various upgrades, but I'd been keeping an eye on dedicated NAS boxes. When the Terramaster went on sale at Amazon, I figured it was cheap enough and I could at least get my feet wet. That was years ago, and it's still been going strong, so I haven't felt any real pressure to 'upgrade' the hardware other than the hard drives.

 

[GasBandit]

I'm not getting the range I should out of my EV at highway speeds. From what I've read, both from professional testers and other Bolt EUV owners, I should be getting within 20 miles or so of the advertised range (248 miles) at 70mph, and I'm getting at best 2/3rds that. I need to figure out why.

I'm wondering if it's because I'm leaving the "one pedal driving" mode on all the time, even when I've got the cruise control on. I like it because it means I basically never have to touch my brakes - I push the accelerator, car speeds up using energy. I ease off, car slows down using the motor to brake and stores the mechanical energy from doing so back in the battery. But at highway speeds, I'm wondering if the transfer between mechanical and electrical energy is lossy, and I should be keeping the energy in the form of momentum as I go up and down hills, rather than spending more battery to go uphill and then recharging the battery on the downhill. It might cost less battery over the course of the whole trip to just coast up to higher speeds on the downhill to mitigate some of the energy needed to climb the next hill.

I'll have to test it with some more trips out of town. But so far it seems like, in one-pedal mode, if I go above 60-65mph for any extended amounts of time, the efficiency of my car dives by 25-33%.

It makes me wish the thing had a transmission with an overdrive gear - it doesn't have a transmission really (technically it does, a 1-speed automatic, so it can go into reverse/neutral), the motor is just always 1:1 with the wheels. But who knows, maybe that would just make the problem worse. I don't know enough about electric motor performance to say if lowering the motor's RPMs would help.

 

[PatrThom]

who knows, maybe [having a transmission] would just make the problem worse.

Having a transmission would most definitely make the problem worse. So sayeth the laws of thermodynamics.
Introducing anything which does any kind of conversion will, by definition, also introduce overall losses as a result of that conversion.
Keeping this in mind, you may have answered your own question, as freewheeling down one hill and climbing the next as far as possible solely on momentum would not involve any sort of conversion of energy (beyond that lost to axle bearings), and would therefore be more efficient than converting gravity/potential into stored electric (at a reduced rate) and then turning right around and spending it to overcome gravity up the next hill. Better to use gravity to pay gravity than to exchange it for electric and then have to immediately cash that electric to overcome gravity.

--Patrick

 

[Bubble181]

Having a transmission would most definitely make the problem worse. So sayeth the laws of thermodynamics.
Introducing anything which does any kind of conversion will, by definition, also introduce overall losses as a result of that conversion.
Keeping this in mind, you may have answered your own question, as freewheeling down one hill and climbing the next as far as possible solely on momentum would not involve any sort of conversion of energy (beyond that lost to axle bearings), and would therefore be more efficient than converting gravity/potential into stored electric (at a reduced rate) and then turning right around and spending it to overcome gravity up the next hill. Better to use gravity to pay gravity than to exchange it for electric and then have to immediately cash that electric to overcome gravity.

--Patrick

However, it causes an enormous amount of energy loss in the form of road rage of other drivers who use cruise control and want to shoot you for got 70 downhill and 60 uphill and thus causing them to continuously overtake you and be overtaken.

 

[GasBandit]

However, it causes an enormous amount of energy loss in the form of road rage of other drivers who use cruise control and want to shoot you for got 70 downhill and 60 uphill and thus causing them to continuously overtake you and be overtaken.

Well, in my case, it's more like:

OPM on - 70 downhill, 70 uphill
OPM off - 76 downhill, 70 uphill

The cruise control will keep me at 70 at the least, but it's a lot more agressive about drawing down speed (using regenerative engine braking) if One Pedal Mode is on, I think. There's still a tiny bit of regen/motor drag with OPM off, but with it off the car tries to behave much more like an ICE vehicle would.

 

[Dave]

My big thing up here is the colder the temp the greater the loss in battery. So on cold days I’ll get like 25-50% less battery life.

 

[GasBandit]

My big thing up here is the colder the temp the greater the loss in battery. So on cold days I’ll get like 25-50% less battery life.

That's less of a factor down here

But one feature of this car I like is that it discretely tracks the amount of energy it uses in "Battery Conditioning," which is what it calls the heater that warms the battery up on cold days. It's only been a factor once or twice.

But whuf, lemme tell you.... the cabin climate control is BATTERY THIRSTY. Running the heater or AC easily increases my power usage 20-40%. At this point, the heated seats and steering wheel were a money SAVING feature, because I can usually get by with just those in the winter instead of the heater, and they're waaaaay more power efficient.

 

[Ravenpoe]

I'm not getting the range I should out of my EV at highway speeds. From what I've read, both from professional testers and other Bolt EUV owners, I should be getting within 20 miles or so of the advertised range (248 miles) at 70mph, and I'm getting at best 2/3rds that. I need to figure out why.

I'm wondering if it's because I'm leaving the "one pedal driving" mode on all the time, even when I've got the cruise control on. I like it because it means I basically never have to touch my brakes - I push the accelerator, car speeds up using energy. I ease off, car slows down using the motor to brake and stores the mechanical energy from doing so back in the battery. But at highway speeds, I'm wondering if the transfer between mechanical and electrical energy is lossy, and I should be keeping the energy in the form of momentum as I go up and down hills, rather than spending more battery to go uphill and then recharging the battery on the downhill. It might cost less battery over the course of the whole trip to just coast up to higher speeds on the downhill to mitigate some of the energy needed to climb the next hill.

I'll have to test it with some more trips out of town. But so far it seems like, in one-pedal mode, if I go above 60-65mph for any extended amounts of time, the efficiency of my car dives by 25-33%.

It makes me wish the thing had a transmission with an overdrive gear - it doesn't have a transmission really (technically it does, a 1-speed automatic, so it can go into reverse/neutral), the motor is just always 1:1 with the wheels. But who knows, maybe that would just make the problem worse. I don't know enough about electric motor performance to say if lowering the motor's RPMs would help.

I'm not an EV expert (unless we're talking Pokemon) but I have to imagine that just using your momentum in the form of kinetic energy is more efficient than converting that into battery power and then converting it back.

 

[PatrThom]

I would argue that the whole purpose behind regenerative braking is counterintuitively NOT about recharging your battery. Instead it is the result of some past engineer saying, “Brakes work by converting mechanical energy into heat, which is then just thrown away and used for nothing. What if we instead recaptured some of that via (re)generation? All the hardware to do so is already present, and then at least the braking energy would not be a total waste.”
A quick check around the Internet asking how much energy gets reclaimed got me lots of, “It’s impossible to know for sure without knowing the weight & speed of the vehicle blah blah etc,” but it looked like, for city driving, at least, the top estimates for what regen braking can return is around 16%. Put another way, that means you would get 16% more range in the city out of a EV with regen braking compared to one with conventional brakes. On the highway, though, that reclamation shrinks to just 3%.

—Patrick

 

[GasBandit]

I would argue that the whole purpose behind regenerative braking is counterintuitively NOT about recharging your battery. Instead it is the result of some past engineer saying, “Brakes work by converting mechanical energy into heat, which is then just thrown away and used for nothing. What if we instead recaptured some of that via (re)generation? All the hardware to do so is already present, and then at least the braking energy would not be a total waste.”
A quick check around the Internet asking how much energy gets reclaimed got me lots of, “It’s impossible to know for sure without knowing the weight & speed of the vehicle blah blah etc,” but it looked like, for city driving, at least, the top estimates for what regen braking can return is around 16%. Put another way, that means you would get 16% more range in the city out of a EV with regen braking compared to one with conventional brakes. On the highway, though, that reclamation shrinks to just 3%.

—Patrick

The numbers bandied about by my vehicle's manufacturer is that regenerative braking in city driving gets you 25% better range. That seems to be pretty consistent to me (that is, I get 25% better range when I have OPM on than off).

IE, the "MPG equivalent" of my EV is 125 city 100 highway.

So yeah, in general, regenerative braking is best for replacing the brakes to stop the vehicle. In stop-and-go traffic, the regen braking is absolutely the bee's knees... but for speed regulation while cruising, coasting to maintain momentum is still the most efficient.

 

[PatrThom]

for speed regulation while cruising, coasting to maintain momentum is still the most efficient.

Three out of my first four cars were all stick shifts, and so many of the skills I developed behind the wheel there to improve MPG are still relevant now that I'm driving a hybrid. People behind me frequently (appear to) complain at my slower starts and the way I will just lift and coast when coming up to lights/going up exit ramps to decelerate instead of waiting until I'm almost at the end and then stomping on the brake because they want to get/keep their car going the speed limit for as long as possible. I ignore them, though, because those people who have to blaze around me in order to screech to a halt at the upcoming stop light (for a net gain of one car length) are also the same people who will complain their EV doesn't get the advertised range, and also people who end up paying 25% more on car maintenance. Not me. I like to have more control over where my money goes.

tl:dr; Momentum is a sunk cost. The more of it you conserve, the less additional energy you will need to spend.

--Patrick