I'm still working on it. There is a nightmare of wires in the back that I'm still trying to beat into submission. I would have put everything into one rack, but I didn't want the rack to be higher than my monitor. I also didn't want all of that weight in one spot on a glass-topped desk.
The rack monitor was recently installed, but I'll set it up with a monitoring dashboard when I get the time. My next project is to find a 10-inch NAS.
I work with exotic birds. Parrots in particular, and I'm positive that's where my tinnitus came from. It wasn't until this past March that I realized I had it.
I started working with parrots about 10 years ago. I have bred them at home, and I also manage an exotic bird store. In preparation for moving cross-country, we have sold almost all the birds, and the two pets have been relocated out of the house. I can't risk a potential buyer sticking their finger in the cage and getting a nasty bite, nor do I want someone to see that I have a rare parrot in my house. Once the last of the birds moved out, that's when I noticed the tinnitus. For the first time in a decade, I finally had almost total silence at home. I've always had better hearing out of my right ear. I discovered that my left ear canal is narrower than my right. Normal for some people, but I wasn't aware my ears were like that.
To rule out it being a medication side effect, I discontinued one of them, but that does not appear to be the cause. To cope, I've started using bone conduction headphones to play dark noise from my iPhone. That has helped cancel out the noise. It's been difficult to sleep if I just go to bed and lie there. I read for 20-30 minutes first, which gives my brain time to disconnect before I can sleep. I've also started using a conductive speaker under my pillow. I play the same dark noise through my phone. That has made a big difference in my being able to sleep well at night.
It's annoying, but not debilitating. I'm hoping that once we get relocated, I can find an ENT for more guidance on a treatment plan. I won't be working with birds once we get there either. There will be just the two pets, and no longer a huge flock of noisy macaws.
My Gen0 ancestor is my grandfather's grandfather. They were born in Montreal, Quebec, in 1859. I have not been able to find birth or baptism records for him. He moved to Michigan in 1870 and married in 1881. I do have his marriage record, which shows he was born in Canada. The 1880 Census and the birth records of two of their four children list him as being born in Canada. The Gen 1 ancestor is his daughter, but there is no birth record for her. From what I can piece together, the boy born the year before her died at two and a half months. She was born the following year, and then her father died when she was two months old. He was only 30. There are several reasons her birth wasn't recorded. I have a large probate document for his estate and her inheriting half of the farm he owned with his brother. So there are a lot of things that prove that she was her father, just no direct documentation.
When I get all of this bundled up for submission, will these things be enough to tie people to their birthplace? Obviously, the hunt continues. My grandmother spent decades doing this research. She did it by going to the archives, looking through books, making photocopies, and looking at microfilm. I have a binder containing a fraction of the work she did; luckily, it's about her family and my grandfather's family. However, I'm packed to move cross-country, and that binder is packed away somewhere, and it may be months before I see it again. To my dismay, I discovered that my aunt had thrown away all of my grandmother's research after she died.