Today was quite busy again.  And the rain has returned after having just a single day off.

Dominica and I decided to go out and get some lunch today.  So we went out to Pastel’s and got omelets.  They were yummy.  Liesl sat in a high chair at the table beside me and clearly had a look about her like she felt that she was being a big girl and was very proud to be sitting at the table instead of sitting in her car seat.  She was very happy all through the meal and was very engaging with everyone who passed by.

After lunch we ran out to Yorktown Heights to hit Clemente Cleaners to drop off our dry cleaning and to talk to their tailor about my newest suit.  The sleeves on my suit are far too long.  The tailor thinks that she can have my suit fixed by Friday which is important because I need it for the wedding this weekend.  I am having the sleeves fixed, a button moved and buttons added to my suit pants so that I can use suspenders instead of a belt.  Nothing from Casual XL Male has suspenders buttons in it which is really frustrating that a shop dedicated to larger sized men doesn’t accommodate the most obvious things that they would need.

Back to work once the errands were done.  Oreo and I stayed home while Dominica and Liesl went back to head to the post office, Kohl’s and some other shopping.  She had a bit of shopping that she had wanted to do so that worked out well.

The new drives for the Proliant DL185 G5 arrived today and I had a chance to finally get that server built and tested out.  I had thought that those drives would not be arriving until the end of the week and that I might not have enough time to get the server put together before we had to leave for the weekend so this was a real blessing.

I had a lot of work to do today and ended up working solidly until eleven thirty at night.  Normally I like to be in bed by ten thirty but there was just far too much to do.  I have been really wanting to play a video game for days and have not had the chance at all.  So tonight I decided that I was just going to do it anyway.  So at eleven thirty I popped in Oblivion on the PS3 and started playing.

Dominica stayed up with me and read a book on her Amazon Kindle while I played Oblivion.  I had a really good time.  I really missed having this downtime.  I played for four hours!

When I started playing I found that my last saved game was from February 4th!!  Four and a half months since I have been able to play anything at all.  Crazy.

In my four hours I managed to complete one entire new quest that was triggered right as I started playing (Lifting the Vale) which was pretty fun and I also completed one quest that had begun just before I had last saved the game (Spies).  I also raised my character from level five to level seven.  It was very good progress for one night of gaming.  Too bad I won’t get a chance to play again for a really long time.

It was three thirty in the morning when we finally headed up to bed.  Ramona is coming down to visit us tomorrow sometime in the morning.  She is expecting to arrive around noon or so.

When buying a hot-swap SAS or SATA 3.5″ hard drive for use in your new HP Proliant DL185 G5 you can acquire them directly from HP with the drive carrier (or sled, caddy) already attached.  This is the easiest method.  If you are like me and prefer to select your own drives from third party makers (in my case, I want to use low power, high capacity Seagate Barracuda LP drives) then you must purchase your hot swap drive sleds separately.  Finding the correct part number from HP can be quite a hassle.  Even calling them for support can be tricky as almost no one buys this part directly.

If you wish to get your drive trays separately and not through HP you may be in tough shape.  HP does not stock this part and, in fact, is unable to even look up this part number for you.  I spent some time working with HP in the US on this issue and they were able to provide a visual confirmation on the part for me but could not verify the quality or the usability of the third party drives that I was able to find.  So I was stuck taking a risk to see if these drives would work.  For some machines HP can provide a part number and sometimes can even sell the caddy themselves, but not in the case of the 185 G5.  I have taken the time both with HP and with the third party vendors and with the server in-hand to verify these parts so you do not have to do so.

The part that you need to purchase is HP Part Number: 373211-001.  This part is generally priced around $35 USD.  You will need as many as fourteen of them to fully populate the DL185 G5 drive with the two optional large drive bays (twelve in front and two in back) but you can use them individually as well, or course.  I have had good luck and have gotten a good price getting these trays from Discount Technology: DL185 G5 Hot Swap Drive Tray.

Beware of shops attempting to sell you a much lower cost alternative to this part number.  Quite often the lower cost part is actually a drive blank.  A drive blank is simply a plastic air dam that corrects airflow through the server chassis when a drive is not present. Many of these drive blanks should ship with your DL185 G5 when it is new.  They are readily available and very inexpensive but, mostly, useless.

The big advantage of working with third party sleds and drives is that the DL185 G5 can be populated for thousands of dollars less and can house as much as 28TB of storage in a tiny 2U server.  This is possibly the second densest storage unit on the market when used with the Seagate Barracude LP 2TB drives – the densest is the Sun x4500 “Thumper” 4U storage server at many times the cost of the DL185.

Also, when ordering a DL185 G5 you should be aware that if you get the larger twelve hard drive front drive bay that you cannot also have a front loading optical drive and will need to get your optical drive rear facing.  If you get the optional dual hot swap rear facing drive option then you cannot have a rear facing optical drive.  If you choose both of these options you must use a USB-based optical drive in order to boot from optical media.  This is not always obvious when you are attempting to order one of these machines.