Projects
MediaCow Touch 2
It is at this point where I have just paused development on MediaCow Touch 2 altogether along with other circuit design projects in favor of personal finance and projects essential to financial gain.
I am considering picking back up on the project when I have time to do so. I have probably said this before at this time last year but this project has gone on for much too long and I want to see results.
"Polyvinyl Chloride"
More details in the previous post: Week 30, 2025
I made a list and the cost of the build is to be around US$4300. I am very excited and hyped for this build as it would introduce many firsts for me while having essential usecases.
Homestuck Appreciation
Though received the week before, I am going to describe it in this week's post as it is relevant
I received a print-on-demand keychain from a indvidual seller on Etsy that is of the Hiveswap character Marvs Xoloto who I adore very much. Homestuck merchandise is getting harder to find and with Hiveswap, it is practically nonexistent. I greatly appreciate that someone would take the time and effort to make something like this.
Along with the keychain itself, the package had some candy from Portugal; where this came from and a thank-you note that had Marvus hand-drawn onto it. I greatly appreciated the candy and Marvus drawing that was included along with the keychain itself.
July 29 Faygo Run
On July 29, 2025, I was able to locate a store within the Richmond, Virginia area that had Faygo in stock, which is increasingly becoming a rarity. I seeked out Faygo as it is frequently referenced in Homestuck/Hiveswap as the drink of choice for highblood trolls like Gamzee and Marvus
2nd Life Inc.
I started to see more of the debugging of embedded hardware, mostly in networking equipment.
Day 10 - Wednesday, July 30, 2025
Most of this day surrounded the inspection of server hardware, ranging from Xeon E5-2630 v3 (2014) to Xeon Gold 6138 (2017).
Day 11 - Thursday, July 31, 2025
On this day, I finished inspecting the pallet of servers. I came across a Dell SCv3000 storage system. There seemed to be no way to directly access the systems installed, which I later found to be two separate blade-like nodes installed that have one Intel Xeon and 32GB RAM each. In an attempt to try to get access to these main systems, I used the USB console port on the management module to access the console. Four serial devices were exposed over one USB, the first, ttyUSB0 was a console that I was not able to reset the password to, ttyUSB1 allowed root shell access to Linux running on the module. I noticed with uname -a and cat /proc/cpuinfo/ that Linux was compiled for SuperH 4 architecture, notably used in the Dreamcast game console. The CPU specifically was a Renesas SH7757LCR, an embedded controller SoC supposedly common for these modules. The SH7757LCR has also been used on the Supermicro X9DRG-QF and X9DRW-3F/iF. Even through all this, I have not been able to access the host nodes,
Day 12 - Friday, August 1, 2025
On this day, I brought in grape Faygo for everyone, surprisingly seeing some Homestuck recognization.
This day, I worked on inspecting thirty-two Aerohive AP250 access points, using a USB-serial cable to view logs and test the radios. Resetting these systems consisted of holding down the reset button on the side for five seconds; until confirmation is seen on screen. These systems are similar to Cisco hardware where they use a RJ-45 connector for serial and use Cisco IOS.
It has definitely been a while since I have worked with Cisco IOS but I picked back up on it.
Personal
This week saw some struggles while seeing major growth in personal development.
Social Media Expansion
Though likely to be only noticed by family members, I have begun to proactively use Facebook for the purpose of finding gig and freelance work in order to raise money to build the "Polyvinyl Chloride" AI workstation described in the above sections.
I have also expanded to Nextdoor and Fiverr for this purpose. On Nextdoor, I immediately introduced myself in a post offering tech services relating to servers and PC hardware. I consider Nextdoor is a secondary channel for local gigs, while Facebook is to be used to drive broader outreach.
I started to become active on Instagram again following the break (called "ban") I had to take starting June 8th.
Media
I finally got around to watching Castlevania Nocturne. I am not going to mention much here to avoid spoilers. I enjoyed it, at times even more than the original series. I am looking forward to what comes next.