Millstone

A few months ago, after many years of consideration of the matter, I finally bought a NAS. It's a lovely device, that sits proudly on a shelf in pride of place.

And I wish I'd never bought the damn thing.

It took me several weeks to find any time to get the thing out of its box, and then still more weeks to install its expanded RAM, find, a spot for it on a shelf, and the switch it on. And then I promptly switched it off again, because I had absolutely no time to do anything more with it.

Several weeks later I again found a little time, and started on the "quickstart" guide for setting it up. Which took several hours, and got the device configured so that it is usable.

Sort of.

Because while the device itself is usable, in order to actually do anything it needs to be made visible on our network, it needs the relevant files copied across (and regular backups set up), it needs configured as a media server, and all our other devices need set up to act as clients.

And I have neither the time or, frankly, even the remotest inclination ever to do any of that. Because the whole thing is such a massive pain to do anything with that I really can't be bothered.

At this point, the most honest thing for me to do with it, and the thing that would cause me the least pain and hassle, would be to put it back in its box, put the box in the garage, and forget I ever bought the thing.

(I can't even sell it on now, because it's set up just enough that I'd have to restore it to factory defaults before I did. And even the thought of doing that pisses me off.)

The whole thing has just turned into a devastating waste of time, money, and energy. And is, frankly, really upsetting.