I set up a VPN Internet Gateway. VPN means you can login from anywhere with a secure connection. Internet Gateway means you can only use that connection to go to the Internet rather than the internal network you're logged into.

Two use cases:

• If you're using a dodgy or untrusted network, such as free WiFi at many places, you can secure your communications so they can't be eavesdropped or someone doing a man-in-the-middle attack.
• If you're traveling you are considered "at home" which is useful if you want to watch a streaming service overseas while on vacation.

OpenVPN has two products, an Access Server which runs on your server and CloudConnexa which still runs a client on your server but the cloud connection is more flexible. AS is free for 2 connections (not sure if one is the server itself), CC is free for 2 connections (and one is definitely the server itself).

I decided to use CloudConnexa as that seems to have more documentation and examples.

Sign up for a free account. I had an issue that it wanted a six-digit code but the verification email just had a link. Eventually I had to login via Google login after that I could set the password and add 2FA authenticator app.

You specify a domain which users can then reach via .openvpn.com so it's kind of nice you don't have to maintain a DNS record nor do you care if your server IP changes since clients connect to CloudConnexa and it's up to CC to connect to server when it changes IP address.

Generically we're following Make a Network act as an Internet Gateway and basically method 1 which has specifics to Add a Network for secure internet access.

Users > Users: add gateway users.
Users > Groups: add a group, add gateway user to group. Turn Split Tunnel Off — this is to make it simple that when a client is on VPN he is on the VPN network not in their local network.

Add a Network and choose Secure Internet Access which then goes through a wizard. Use OpenVPN as the protocol because then you use the OpenVPN client which is much easier than setting up IPsec. Add a connector (for server host).

Deploy connector, which is a download link for a custom OpenVPN client configured with your connection details. Start it up on the server machine and login and you're set there.

I didn't add any Applications or Routes/IP Services as I just wanted a plain gateway.

Add Group you created above.

For clients they can now login to .openvpn.com and download a client. For mobile you can download OpenVPN app and on first start it'll have you login to .openvpn.com and will download the configuration file and set up mobile device VPN for you.

That's it for a simple setup. You can't access the VPN network nor even that host machine. You can set the client to restart and reconnect after reboot although not sure if it'll do it without computer user login in. Meanwhile the host can use the internal network and Internet as normal.

Bundle of Holding has two Mongoose Traveller 2E Bundles.

Traveller 2024 Update ($18 static price)

The core Traveller rulebooks went through a 2022+ update cycle, not a new edition but more than a new printing.

Traveller Core Rulebook Update 2022 (own)
Traveller Companion Update 2024 (own)
Adventure Class Ships (own)
Small Craft Catalogue (own)
Robot Handbook

This bundle I already own everything but Robot Handbook ($30 pdf). Probably still a bit cheaper here as I rarely see Traveller pdfs at discount and usually 25% or 30%.

Traveller Sectors ($42)

Sector Construction Guide
World Builder's Handbook
The Third Imperium
Core Adventure 1: Invasive Species
Core Adventure 2: Last Call at Eneri's Cantina
Core Adventure 3: Errant Lightning

Spinward Extents, The
Behind the Claw (own)
Deep and the Dark, The
Trailing Frontier, The
Rim Expeditions
Aliens of Charted Space v3
Aliens of Charted Space v4

This bundle is definitely worth it. The issue is that if I buy this I have to commit to not buying the printed books. There is so much being produced for Traveller (one or two products per month) that I guess I should do PDF when I can and print for boxed sets and KS.

Sat Dec 07 2024

Sleep 0600 to 1230 (6-1/2 hours)

• When I returned home from the dentist I dropped my iPhone on the parking lot and cracked the rear glass. Today I went into the support app and entered my issue. One of the options is having a replacement phone sent to me and then I ship the old phone back. I tried that and it puts a hold of $629.50 (I think breaks down as $530.50 for a new phone with tax and $99 for AppleCare) which is charged if you don’t send your phone back in 10 days.
• Setting up new Time Machine backups. Forgot that TM wants to be the only user of the volume so if there is already another machine’s backups there it will create a new volume. Since I use two rotating hard drives the default volume name doesn’t work as then in TM settings it has both backups with the same name. So you need to create the new volume first then tell TM to use that empty volume.

Sun Dec 08 2024

Sleep 1115 to 1600. (4-3/4 hours)

• M3 Pro is so fast I have to be careful about auto-correct. Used to be if I typed fast enough auto-correct wouldn’t kick in but now it constantly wants to auto-complete or auto-correct which is rough if I’m writing foreign words like names.

Mon Dec 09 2024

Sleep 02345 to 0600, 1-1/4 h nap (7-1/2 hours)

• Noticed that Disney+ has some Hulu and ESPN+ content. Let’s see if I can finish Castle (last episode watched is 5.06 with my sister) while I have the chance.
• Backed Boreal Frostlands on BackerKit. I have the previous products.

Tue Dec 10 2024

Sleep 0230 to 1030 (8 hours)

• Hmm, guess I did watch more Castle s5 episodes than my notes said.

Wed Dec 11 2024

Sleep 0430 to 1330 (9 hours)

• Played 45 minutes of Resident Evil 2, about 15 minutes configuration and switching to my Xbox controller (with a mouse it shows cursor and if the cursor is at the edge of the screen you can’t keep tracking so stop turning which is fairly annoying). Anyway, about half an hour of gameplay then you have to purchase the rest.

Thu Dec 12 2024

Sleep 0130 to 0700, 1330 to 1530 (7-1/2 hours)

• Sent old iPhone back.

Fri Dec 13 2024

Sleep 0030 to 0430, 1030 to 1430 (8 hours)

• Called SafeCo to change my home insurance billing so that I can pay instead of my lender. Took three people but they were all friendly. Change should be updated tomorrow so I can pay my insurance then.

Using modchecker to check where I'm a mod or VIP on Twitch:

Modding

• akaNemsko
• PhotoChess

Earlier this year I dropped all other mod duties since I couldn't keep up. Now that PhotoChess is on Kick there's only the one channel I mod for.

VIPing

• AnnaCramling - Not sure I did enough to warrant when I got it but I think I made it up later.
• BotezLive - Made VIP while it was still Alexandra Botez's channel.
• BotezLiveDark - Andrea's old channel. I became VIP before the Botez sisters teamed up.
• ChaeDoc
• gerberbaby3
• gmjlh
• GMNaroditsky
• GrandmasterGauri
• JoeBruin
• manaspaldhe12
• Naycir - VIP for donating for a new computer.
• neeko - Made VIP before she went viral with a Tick Tock. Her next stream was wild with thousands of new followers.
• omidmalek
• Rangermeme

Mostly I get VIP for donations since I'm not a talker. There were a fair amount of other channels but I've been slowly losing them since I'm not around much and a channel only has a certain amount of VIP slots.

[Image Text: Hours Watched 1.76k, Distinct Days Visited 335, Chats Sent 3.52k; Top Channels: 1. akaNemsko 1126 hours watched, 2954 chats sent, 2. BotezLive 210 hours watched, 3. AnnaCramling 183 hours watched, 4. PhotoChess 65 hours watched, 5. Elkfyou 30 hours watched; Top Categories: Chess, Just Chatting, Poker, Marbles on Stream, Palworld; Most Used Emote: akaNemsko Raid]

1. akaNemsko because I mod and she streams a lot.
2. BotezLive hasn't streamed a huge amount. A bit more event based streaming but those drain their energy.
3. AnnaCramling I miss many streams. Even though she does stream a fair amount USA time she's in Sweden so also streams in the very early AM for me.
4. PhotoChess moved to Kick so those hours are only going down. But even if not she is EU so same problem as Anna.
5. elfyou is a cosmetics company channel which sponsors Nemo so she sometimes streams there.

Sat Nov 30 2024

Sleep 0900 to 1315, 1530 to 1730 (6-1/4 hours)

• Lunch and dinner at mom and dad’s then left for home. Light traffic so got home and was only a little late to gaming.
• Gloomhaven night.

Sun Dec 01 2024

Sleep 0715 to 1615 (9 hours)

• Annoying that Windows games might crash on launch because of default graphics settings. Solutions on the Internet are “edit this settings file to set graphics to DX 11 (or whatever)” when the game should allow you to do that on launch. More annoying if game crashes before it’s gotten a chance to save the initial settings files (e.g. Red Dead Redemption 2).

Mon Dec 02 2024

Sleep 0115 to 0530, 1030 to 1130, 1515 to 1830 (8-1/2 hours)

• Last month was a good month for my stocks. Would like to sell some so I can keep aimlessly drifting with no job.

Tue Dec 03 2024

Sleep 0130 to 0600, 1130 to 1530 (8-1/2 hours)

• Star Trek Fleet Command daily events this month are a bit different than usual. I like the variety though some of these are pretty hard to do. Also lack of easy research events means the 50% week-long bonus we got for winning Incursion might go to waste.

Wed Dec 04 2024

Sleep 0130 to 0515, 0915 to 1145 (6-1/4 hours)

• Dentist cleaning, x-rays, visual exam. Dr Dowd will get back to me if x-rays show something bad.
• C3 Dinner. Kajiken —> Nikumori Aburasoba (dry ramen with pork, a little spicy). Was good.
• Saw CJr playing the Gloomhaven light game, Buttons and Bugs. A scenario is one room with a few bad guys, takes half an hour, and he barely won on his last turn (before he ran out of cards, though he was also very low on hit points).

Thu Dec 05 2024

Sleep 0115 to 0615, 1515 to 1815. (8 hours)

• Termite inspections this morning for first floor units. Woke up early anyway to mod an akaNemsko stream.
• 7.3 earthquake off the coast near Eureka, I guess about 250 up the coast from me. I barely felt it — building settled then I felt a slight tremor and with enough experience you can tell it’s an earthquake tremor. Tsunami warning went out a few minutes later.
• Pacific Coast Termite was here to do an inspection and they did some but then that crew was pulled to fill in for another job and they didn’t tell us until we asked. Annoying since first floor residents had to be at home waiting for them.
• Installed Steam via Whisky. Installed Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands. Works fine and doesn’t give me a “can’t save settings” error.

Fri Dec 06 2024

Sleep 0115 to 0600, 1115 to 1400 (7-1/4 hours)

• Received another $7.43 from Equifax from their data breach back in 2018/2019. It’s in the form of a virtual debit card which is charged $6 (per month!) if inactive for six months so I should use it immediately or I’ll forget.
• Few stores allow you to pay with two payment methods and going through PayPal also doesn’t work. I’d rather not leave anything for the administrating entity to claim as free money. I guess the easiest is buying something small and using the remainder on a Pay What You Want item.
• Bought 1 item from DTRPG. 2nd item kept getting card error. Got tired of wasting my time so 2nd item from itch.io and I did a PWYW with the remaining amount on the card. Done.

Humble Bundle has a Shadowrun 5E Mega Bundle for $18. With this and the Shadowrun 4E bundles I'd have pretty much everything so will probably buy them.

Shadowrun 5E Core Rulebook
Run & Gun
Street Grimoire
Run Faster
Chrome Flesh
Data Trails
Rigger 5
Howling Shadows
Forbidden Arcana
Street Lethal
Kill Code
Dark Terrors
Stolen Souls
Market Panic
Complete Trog
Seattle Sprawl
Serrated Edge

Other print items not in bundle (from List of Shadowrun books)

Shadowrun Gamemaster's Screen
Court of Shadows
Beginner's Box
Runner's Toolkit - Alphaware
Splintered State
Boundless Mercy
Bloody Business
Book of the Lost
Lockdown
Hard Targets
Cutting Aces
False Flag
Ripping Reality

A lot of adventures not included and I guess few adventures in the bundle. Now I realize they offered this bundle a year and a half ago and declined it then. So now I guess I'll still decline it again since it has few adventures.

Bundle of Holding has two Shadowrun 4E bundles.

Shadowrun 4E Core Mega ($33)

Shadowrun 4E 20th Anniversary (379 pages)
On the Run (56 pages)
Runner's Companion (186 pages)
Runner's Toolkit (208 pages)
Arsenal (202 pages)
Augmentation (178 pages)
Street Magic (194 pages)
Digital Grimoire (18 pages)
Unwired (210 pages)
Shadowrun 4E GM Screen (32 pages)

Attitude (178 pages)
Street Legends (186 pages) and Street Legends Supplemental (47 pages)
Runner's Black Book (186 pages)
Runner's Black Book - 2074 (200 pages)
Parabotany (51 pages)
Parageology (32 pages)
Parazoology (33 pages)
Safehouses (18 pages)
Sim Dreams & Nightmares (17 pages)
Shadowrun 2050 (202 pages)

Shadowrun 4E Sprawl Mega ($32)

Sixth World Almanac (210 pages)
Runner Havens (144 pages)
Seattle 2072 (200 pages)
Sprawl Sites: North America (32 pages)
Sprawl Sites: High Society and Low Life (40 pages)
Corporate Guide (234 pages)

The Clutch of Dragons (154 pages)
Corporate Intrigue (150 pages)
Dirty Tricks (160 pages)
Hazard Pay (168 pages)
Running Wild (224 pages)
Vice (194 pages)
Corporate Enclaves (138 pages)
Feral Cities (140 pages)
The Land of Promise (24 pages)
Montreal 2074 (21 pages)
10 Gangs (22 pages)
10 Jackpointers (31 pages)
10 Merchs (52 pages)
Magical Societies (23 pages)

Offhand I didn't see any adventures so either 4E didn't have any or there will be a third bundle soon. Anyways these two bundles to December 30th so I can wait before deciding. I'm leaning towards buying it since I already have 1E to 3E plus 6E.

Sat Nov 23 2024

Sleep 0630 to 1430 (8 hours)

• Forgot about the ElfQuest Classic Deluxe KS which ended a couple weeks ago but you can still do late pledges. I did have the boxed 1E set as a teen though only read it and I don’t think I’ve read the comics. Would not just be a nostalgia purchase but a nostalgia purchase of something I only somewhat liked. Guess I’ll pass since it’s a pricey $100 boxed set + shipping. Even $50 for PDF only is quite a bit.

Sun Nov 24 2024

Sleep 0615 to 1230 (6-1/4 hours)

• MacWhisper on an M4 Pro CPU doesn’t trigger fan and runs about 8x to 16x faster than on my Intel MBP. Handbrake triggers fan (but it does run 3x faster on this Mac).

Mon Nov 25 2024

Sleep 0615 to 1230 (6-1/4 hours)

• Copied some of my home tv shows to new MBP and when adding to TV app it still has meta-data, so I could just copy all the video files from one machine to the other and only lost some data (e.g. I’m guessing Play Count).

Tue Nov 26 2024

Sleep 0300 to 0730, 90m nap (6 hours)

• macOS: Docked applications that aren’t on startup disk show as ? in Dock I guess because remote volume doesn’t mount until after Dock is initialized. This also applies to Login Items.

Wed Nov 27 2024

Sleep 0400 to 1630 (10-1/2 hours)

• I did have my alarm wake me up at noon but then I was still tired and went back to sleep.
• C3 dinner. Leftovers.
• Csr, Cjr, and I played a game of Unlock! (a circus scenario). It's a puzzle game with cards where a lot of clues are numbers and you tend to add two numbers to get to the next card. The clues are rather clever. Sometimes it's hidden in the picture and sometimes you have to physically arrange the cards right.

Thu Nov 28 2024

Sleep 0315 to 0900 (5-3/4 hours)

• Drove to parents in the morning.
• Turkey dinner with parents, C3, Steph, and Jaime who is my nephew and studying here in the States.
• Dad mentioned we still have Peruvian and Chinese citizenship. Mom clarified that it’s Taiwan.

Fri Nov 29 2024

Sleep 0130 to 0700, 2-1/2 hours of napping (8 hours)

• DC Heroes RPG 40th Anniversary reprint KS. $695 for everything (though a few books are not in the reprint list). You also get slipcases to hold your collection and for sets of cool 2d10 dice. Add $90 for shipping. No PDFs. Since I already have everything in print and for the most part it’s a straight reprint there’s not much point for me. Contrast with Ars Magica Definitive Edition KS that I backed even though it’s essentially a reprint of a couple of books, a few changes, reformatted, and with new art. But it’s one volume that’ll look good on a bookcase.

Black Friday Apple Deals

M4 Pro 14" MBP (12C CPU, 16C GPU, 24GB RAM, 512B SSD): $1,749 ($250 off)
- bought this last week from B&H. Nice that the price hasn't gotten lower.

M4 Pro 16" MBP (14C CPU, 20C GPU, 24GB RAM, 512B SSD): $2,199 ($300 off)
- not a bad option I guess but CPU upgrade and bigger screen are not as important as getting extra drive space via an external SSD. My new MBP is so much faster than my old Intel MBP that I'm satisfied even though it's the lowest end M4 Pro.

DDO Black Friday Offers

I bought Vecna Unleashed Ultimate Fan Bundle for $50 (50% off). It came out August 2023.

Magic of Myth Drannor came out last August and is 10% off which is fair. I'll wait until it's at least 50% off.

Black Friday Streaming Deals

Paramount+ $6 for two months would be nice to catch up on Star Trek. Passed on this since I have enough stuff to watch right now.

DirveThruRPG Black Friday Sale

I'll probably buy Tide World of Mani $9.10 (30% off), "a revolution sandbox adventure module for the Mothership Sci-Fi Horror RPG." This author also did Desert Moon of Karth which I own though haven't read.