diff --git a/evangelism/episodes/episode87.md b/evangelism/episodes/episode87.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..783af8f --- /dev/null +++ b/evangelism/episodes/episode87.md @@ -0,0 +1,87 @@ +# Operation Saylor - Episode 8/120 + +Hi again and welcome to another episode of the Operation Saylor. This is update number 8, corresponding to February +2023. + +If you are reading this for first time, you might want to check [Episode 1](https://stacker.news/items/47539), where my +plan and details are explained. That will get you in context. + +--- + +## Stats + +- BTC stack: 1.4692 BTC +- € stack: 436.60 € +- Current total value in €: 28,717.60 € +- € into BTC: 30,000 € +- Paid back to bank: 2,563.40 € +- Outstanding debt: 41,380.93 € +- Installments to go: 113 + +## Charts + + + +--- + +## Log + +Another month passes by and we are already well inside 2023. + +This past month I've been busy working on my node. Or to be more specific, working in my new node. In 2022, I +started running an Umbrel node, which has been acting as my bitcoin and lightning node and is still alive and +kicking as off today. But some time ago I decided I wanted to dettach myself from Umbrel, so I'm preparing a plan +to move my node over to a new machine and a new kind of deployment. + +I decided to ditch Umbrel for two reasons. The first one is that sometimes I want to play around within the "guts" +of my node to modify things or add stuff that Umbrel doesn't offer, and so far it has always been a pain in the +ass. My general experience is that it's risky and never ends up looking elegant, but feels rather like a poor +work held together with duct tape. The second one is that updates have not been working properly with my Umbrel +instance (I suspect this may be related with the previous point). This is a red flag, since I want to feel +comfortable upgrading all the services in my node. The couple of times LND broke the past year were good reminders +of the importane of paying attention to updates in the Bitcoin domain. + +Just a disclaimer: I still think Umbrel is great. I don't want this rant to sound like I'm shitting on them. +It's the only hope for a noob to run a node without going bald out of frustration, and it does its job nicely. +It just comes short for a power user or someone that wants to have full and absolute control, which is completely +fine since I don't think Umbrel's goal ever was to catter that audience. + +So, my plan is to move my node to a more powerful machine and deploy everything from scratch myself. So far, I +have already deployed Bitcoin Core, electrs, mempool.space and LNbits. I'm using docker-compose to run all services +as docker containers and keep them nicely integrated with their files, IP, port and other things consistent across +services. It has been great to set this up since it forced me to learn a lot of things, specially about Bitcoin +Core and electrs, that I didn't know. The kind of config details that Umbrel will happily hide away so you don't +need to worry about. + +The next one will be LND, and it will be a tough bone. My intention is not to "kill" my own LND and start a new +one over, but rather to "move" my LND from one machine to another. So, I need to craft a plan to stop LND on the +old machine and start it again on the new one while keeping all data the exact same so that the service runs +mostly uninterrupted and nothing changes from the point of view of my peers. + +A fun side story: the new machine I'll be running the node on is an old gaming desktop box. A neighbor was getting +rid of it and I bumped into him seconds before he was throwing it into a garbage container. I asked a bit and +apparently he just thought it was "too old" and already had bought a new one, so, to his eyes, it was garbage +already. I asked him if I could keep it and he was more than happy to give it away to me. + +Long story short, the machine is running perfectly. I cleaned up the tons of dust that were living inside the +case, bought some new hard drives (my neighbor had taken them out) and gave the CPU and new brush of thermal paste +and voilà. It is not crazy powerful, but it's much better than the modern mini-pc in which I've been running my +umbrel node so far. Since I'm a rather austere person, I was very happy to get my new machine this way. I can happily +use the money I saved to get a few more sats, and the local garbage dump doesn't need to take more stuff. It was +also great to learn more about the hardware of desktop PCs. I had never before disassembled a desktop PC fully, so +I had to do some research to get things done. + +I think that's enough for this month. Thanks for sticking around and see you in the next one. + + +--- + +## Previous episodes + +- Episode 1: [https://stacker.news/items/47539](https://stacker.news/items/47539) +- Episode 2: [https://stacker.news/items/61708](https://stacker.news/items/61708) +- Episode 3: [https://stacker.news/items/71794](https://stacker.news/items/71794) +- Episode 4: [https://stacker.news/items/83670](https://stacker.news/items/83670) +- Episode 5: [https://stacker.news/items/98216](https://stacker.news/items/98216) +- Episode 6: [https://stacker.news/items/111818](https://stacker.news/items/111818) +- Episode 7: [https://stacker.news/items/124601](https://stacker.news/items/124601)