2018: Day 87 the one where I lost a YouTube subscriber
Word count 176,734 + 1,028 or 177,762 of 1,000,000

Dear Reader,

My YouTube channel went from 118 to 117 subscribers. Strangely enough that actually made me want to make more YouTube videos and get back on an upward subscriber trend. I know the audience of folks that wants to watch videos about artificial intelligence news is limited, but it is probably somewhere around 10,000 maximum. Going from 117 to 10,000 subscribers would probably require a combination of luck and extreme persistence. This is the 87th day of my writing adventure. If I had elected to make a YouTube video every day for a year, then maybe that subscriber account would be growing. It is also entirely possible that it could have barely moved. People still watch my older videos. That I guess is a good indicator that my future videos have some type of audience out in YouTube land.

This whole writing every day plan is good, but trying to produce 3,000 words per day is proving to be a questionable plan. Tomorrow is a day that has been set aside to rest. It will be a day without working and that is pretty good. My big plan for the day is to go bowling and visit the eye doctor for my annual checkup. From what I can tell my vision is pretty constant year over year. Sure I should probably spend less time in front of computer monitors, but that is not really going to happen. I have spent a lot more time writing on this ASUS Chromebook Flip C101P. I do not even really look at the screen anymore during the whole writing process. I’m aware that the cursor is moving, but my attention is elsewhere. That is how it goes I guess during these epic stream of consciousness binge writing sessions.

It started raining this afternoon and soon enough the rain turned to really big snowflakes. None of them were sticking to the road, but it was a deluge of very wet snowflakes this afternoon and early evening. I really just wanted to work deluge into a sentence. That happened. I guess i can go to bed now and call the day complete. Ok —- that is not going to happen at the moment. I’m going to push through and try to get at least a few words written tonight.

Topic 1: My new hard drives are so noisy

I had thought maybe it was just an overreaction to the noise level of my hard drives. That does not appear to be the case. My new hard drives are just super noisy. Two WD Blue 2TB Desktop Hard Disk Drive – 5400 RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache 3.5 Inch model WD20EZRZ drives were dropped into my Corsair Air 740 case. Both of them appear to just be loud and super noisy. Today i downloaded my cloud backup to one of the drives and it was really noticeable. It also caused my internet provider to send me a download warning. Apparently downloading my cloud archive was enough to burn up about 10% of my monthly bandwidth allotment. You can imagine that both amused me and I found it exceedingly sad.

One of the advantages of running solid state drives is really silent operation. Those 5400 RPM SATA drives use a platter and make a ton of pinging and popping noises. It has been some time since I had to really sit and listen to hard drives. The level of noise is actually pretty terrible and might just be enough for me to move those drives into my Storm Stryker case and start the process of finding some more data drives for my new computer build. Tomorrow I’m going to power down the drives and verify that the noise is 100% caused by those 2 hard drives. I might try to capture some of the sound for a sweet sweet YouTube video about how annoying hard drive noises are terrible.

Topic 2: Parts have been ordered

Two new parts are on their way from California to my house. A small DVI to HDMI converter and a little bluetooth USB antenna. Both of these parts are for my new computer build to help me create the functionality of a KVM switch without paying for one. They have gotten really confusing and expensive these days. For some reason tonight my Pandora application on my Google Pixel 2 XL smartphone is playing a ton of advertisements. I’m getting one about every 5 minutes. It seems like they really want me to go to either a Disney World resort or Myrtle Beach. Sure I’m up for a Disney adventure at some point. I had tried to get that video adapter at Best Buy, but that did not work out.

I just got totally distracted by my interest in going to see the Ready Player One movie. That looks like it will be a most excellent distraction filled with a ton of entertainment. The reviews even seems to be complementary. For some reason the movie theater popcorn is always just so much better than my microwave popcorn. We have an air popcorn maker and it does ok, but it is also not on par with the movie theater popcorn. It is hands down one of my favorite things to snack on. Perhaps that is one of the main reasons that I still go to the movie theater. I really just want a giant tub of popcorn. That may very well be the case.

Topic 3: I’m still thinking about a new wireless speaker

Tonight I spent a few minutes searching for a new voice activated speaker system for upstairs in the house. The Google Home Max looks like a great speaker, but it is about $200.00 more than what I want to pay for a new home speaker. At the moment, I just want to be able to ask the speaker to play music and enjoy the sounds. That pretty much rules out most of the bluetooth speakers that need my phone as the driver or interface. I have zero interest in answering phone calls on this speaker.

Dr. Nels Lindahl
Broomfield, Colorado
Written on my Storm Stryker PC and or my ASUS C101P using Google Docs