• This case started in the United States District Court (D.D.C.) This is the court that covers Washington, D.C.

    Two cases were brought AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition v. United States Department of State and Global Health Council v. Trump. Docket Number: 25-cv-400 and 25-cv-402.

    The two cases were filed in the same court at nearly the same time.

    After the district court issued their TRO, the Trump administration appealed to the D.C. Circuit court.

    Midday yesterday, a federal district court ordered the Executive Branch to pay nearly $2 billion by 11:59 p.m. tonight as an interim remedy in a putative Administrative Procedure Act (APA) suit brought by ten plaintiffs—eight nonprofits and businesses that receive federal foreign-assistance funding and two membership associations whose members do. The order directs the Department of State and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to pay “all invoices and letter of credit drawdown requests” for reimbursements on foreign-aid-related contracts and grants for “work completed prior to” February 13, 2025. App., infra, 86a. On that date, the district court entered its original temporary restraining order (TRO), which barred the government from relying on the President’s Executive Orders as grounds for blanket suspension or termination of foreign-aid funding. App., infra, 86a. And the government has, since then, complied with that order, instead relying on its discretionary authorities and individual reviews. Neither the original TRO nor the district court’s subsequent clarifications in any way suggested that the government must pay particular invoices on particular dates.
    — Motion for stay, 24A831

    The state’s motion is better than I expected. My expectation was that this was going to be a full throated attack based on Article II standing and authorizations.

    The state goes on to point out that the court’s order requires them to pay all invoices and drawn-down requests even if those payments are not due, have not had normal vetting done (was the work done), have not been checked against the statement of work, or that these bills are legitimate in any way.

    The state also points out that there is no court record (it is not in the record) of the bills that the plaintiffs (bad guys) want paid.

    To be very clear, the government is committed to paying legitimate claims for work that was properly completed pursuant to intact obligations and supported by proper documentation. It is attempting to navigate the district court’s evolving orders—and the ensuing, resource-consuming contract-review process—as best it can. The government is undertaking significant efforts to ensure that it can make proper payments. Agency leadership reports, for example, that the Secretary of State “has directed that invoices identified by the [respondents]” in their submissions to the district court “be processed and expedited for payment without the ordinary vetting procedures,” and that approximately $4 million of such payments “are expected to be issued today.” App., infra, 146a. And the payment process is “being prioritized” by USAID. Ibid. The district court’s underlying orders are erroneous, but the government is doing what it reasonably can to comply in good faith.
    — id

    Of note, the state (the good guys), are pushing that this is a constitutional issue.

    When a case is appealed at the district level, it is appealed to the Circuit court. It is very unusual to skip directly to the Supreme Court. This was done.

    The state did appeal to the Circuit court. They were intending on dorking around to force the state to either pay the $2 billion or to directly violate the district court’s order. When the state filed with the Supreme Court, they informed the Circuit Court, which then issued their opinion.

    There is a guideline in the court system that says that TROs cannot be appealed. This does not stop the state (as bad guys) from appealing TROs that go against them. This happened in —Antonyuk v. Hochul, No. 22-2972 (2d Cir.).

    The Circuit court was unwilling because the state (good guys) didn’t appeal the TRO when it was not as intrusive. The Circuit claims that this means the TRO can’t be appealed. They cited to Dellinger v. Bessent which is another case where the rogue inferior court decided that they could order the president around.

    Before the midnight deadline, Chief Justice John Roberts issued an administrative stay.

    I was surprised there was not more yelling about a single judge (Justice) doing this. But that could be because even the leftest understood that screaming about a single justice stopping a single judge might undermine their position.

    An administrative stay is issued before any briefings on the merits have taken place. They are issued when there is a possibility of a whip-lash situation. We saw this in the Duncan case out of California.

    The district court issued a final judgment saying that California’s ban on magazines was unconstitutional. This happened before Bruen. This led to what is known as “freedom week” when millions of magazines flooded into California. The state appealed to the Ninth Circus, which then put a stay on the judgment, stopping freedom week.

    When the same judge found that California’s magazine ban was still unconstitutional, post Bruen, he issued his final judgment and then put a 30-day administrative stay on his judgment.

    The state did appeal. The Ninth Circus did issue a stay. There was no Freedom Week II.

    The Chief Justice has ordered the parties to have all briefings in by noon today. The Supreme Court will then issue their order regarding vacating or staying the TRO. That will likely happen on Monday.

    Question of the week?

    Are you tired of winning yet? Is this what you voted for?

            

  • My mentor was a federal employee. He, and his team, worked odd hours. I would put in my 8 hours as a contractor and then go to his lab and work with him and his team until midnight or later.

    Somewhere along the way, people noticed that his team didn’t have set hours and raised a fuss. They complained to the IG that he and his team were mis-reporting their hours.

    This led to the IG sending people to investigate.

    Now, this was in a secured area. During normal hours, you could just walk in after you should your badge. After hours, you had to sign in and out.

    What this meant was that his team had security logs showing when they left for the night. And with a bit of work, they also had the time when people got to work.

    After a thorough investigation, they found that yes, the team was misreporting their hours.

    They were underreporting by 10 to 15 hours per week.

    For me, it didn’t make any difference. I was on salary to the contractor. The time I spent with my mentor, working on projects for the government, were not billable hours. I didn’t care. I learned astonishing things.

    Our system administrators were a pair of very sharp ladies. They arrived on time and they left on time. During their 8 hours, they worked constantly. I never felt like they gave less than 100%. When they needed to work late, they did.

    Others I worked with were the same way. They gave their 8 hours and left. We got what we were paying for.

    Some scientists over worked too.

    Then there were the “slackers”. They arrived at work exactly on time. They went to their desks, were seen, then went to the restroom for their morning dump. This lasted anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes.

    Subsequently, they went and did a bit of work before it was time for morning break. After the morning break, they had a pee smoke break. Then lunch, then a bit of work, then home, exactly on time.

    Total time working, maybe an hour and a half.

    A former friend worked for the state government. He was proud of the fact that he got paid for 8 hours of work per day, but on a normal day, he only spent about 2 hours working. The rest of the time he was doing own time projects/stuff.

    Now, sometimes people look like they are cheating, but they aren’t really.

    We had a group of scientists that looked lazy. They would get to work and sit around talking, reading the paper, for anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour or two. Then they would get busy pouring over results for a couple of hours. Then they would have another long gab session.

    After that, they would spend a bit of time putzing with their program before telling the program to “run”.

    They would twiddle their thumbs doing nothing until quitting time.

    They were incredibly productive. They submitted a run before they left for the day. That would run overnight. If they had the parameters right, the run would complete shortly after they got to work. They would then analyze the results and submit the next run.

    On Fridays, they would submit jobs that would run all weekend long. That made Mondays look like they were goofing off for an extended time as they waited for the runs to complete.

    Their work was so important that it justified a major computer upgrade. The new computer was 4 times as fast. What used to take them 16 hours of run time now only took 4 hours. They should now be able to get two or three runs per day done.

    Nope. With the faster computer, they were able to get more detailed results in the same 16-hour run time. They adjusted to the increased speed by answering more of the question more accurately.

    All of this is to say, when I see former federal employees screaming about being fired, my heart gives a little thump of happiness. If they are good or needed, they will be rehired. In the meantime, learn to code. I hear COBOL is a good choice.

            

  • This image came across my Facebook page this morning. It had the following rant attached:

    Copy pasta:
    Signal boosting.. CN: mentions the actions mandated by Ohio law to be taken by a doctor on the body of a girl suspected of not being “female enough” to play sports on a girl’s team, which plausibly verge on sexual assault.
    ——–
    This is my daughter. She just turned 9. Here is why I would never allow her to play middle or high school sports if we lived in Ohio…

    A few days ago, the Ohio Republicans passed a change to state law that was snuck in at the last minute, under the guise of “protecting” girls sports.
    Am. Sub. H. B. No. 151 (various versions of it are here)

    This law allows ANYONE to dispute the sex of an athlete on a school team. There are no safeguards in place to ensure that this is not used maliciously. Girls who do not look feminine enough, girls of color, girls who are “too good” are likely to be the biggest targets. But any girl could be targeted. Maybe someone doesn’t like her parents or maybe someone wants to make sure the opposing team doesn’t have enough eligible players.

    So what does a girl have to do to prove she is a girl? First, the physician has to examine the girl’s external and internal reproductive anatomy. I have to emphasize that this will impact girls as young as 5th or 6th grade, ~10-11 years old. A year or two older than my daughter.

    Step one to proving your correct sex is female: A doctor will need to spread open your labia and examine the size of your clitoris. A clitoris that is “too large” could be a sign that you are intersex and not female enough for sports. Step two to proving your correct sex is female: A doctor will then insert one or two gloved fingers inside your vagina, while pressing against your abdomen with their other hand, so they can feel your uterus and ovaries. This will likely be quite painful for these young girls, and extremely traumatic. There is no medical reason to do a pelvic exam on girls this young, absent any signs of a problem. This is sexual assault and will traumatize these girls. That is by design. This part of the exam would probably be covered by insurance, depending on how it is billed. But these next two steps would likely not be covered for most people. Step three to proving your correct sex is female: Your blood will be drawn and your testosterone levels measured. How much testosterone is too much? Unclear.
    Does having “high T” give girls an advantage? No, not always. But this bill leaves no room for nuance. Step four to proving your correct sex is female: Your blood will also be tested to see if you are XX or XY. Except not everyone is XX or XY and there are XY women who have no advantage in sports because of the nuances of their genetics, but that won’t matter here 🤷🏻‍♀️

    This bill offers protection from retaliation for people who report an athlete they suspect is not truly female. There is no requirements that they make these reports in good faith. There is no protection for the athletes accused of lying about their sex. Any athlete who suspects they were “harmed” by an athlete who lied about their sex can sue that school district. If that athlete’s parents are unwilling to have their daughter sexually assaulted, or cannot afford the testing, the district will have to pay $$ to the accuser. So from an administrative standpoint, you basically have to require that all female athletes do this testing in order to play interscholastic sports. Otherwise your district is in danger of having to forfeit games and losing litigation if you don’t have this paperwork up front. Interscholastic sports in Ohio will only be accessible to girls whose parents are willing to subject them to sexual assault and very expensive and unnecessary bloodwork.

    Congrats to everyone trying to “save” women’s sports from your trans athlete boogeymen. Is winning the most important part of high school sports? Because setting aside the incredible trauma and expense caused by this bill, at the end of the day, the message is that winning is what matters the most. That’s not the lesson I want my daughter to learn from sports.

    (more…)

            

  • People have a difficult time making hard choices.

    The Trolley Problem brings is one of the ways that we explore ethical choices. The general premises are that there are five people that will die if you do nothing. There is one person, who is currently safe, who can be sacrificed to save the five.

    Do you do nothing and let five people die, or do you throw the switch and kill the one?

    What if we change the problem statement a little, what if the one was a child? What if the one was a woman? What if the one was a “person of color”? What if it was your wife?

    Now take that same list of changes and insert it into the five. What if one of the five was a child, a woman, a person of color, your wife?

    Ok. How about if your daughter was the one and your son was one of the five?

    The problem hasn’t changed, but the emotional stress is greatly increased.

    Politicians know this. They use it to their advantage.

    The term is “Emotional Blackmail.”

    Consider the following dilemma, you can choose to pay more in taxes or the school system’s proposed budget is capped at a half million increase rather than the 3.5 million increase they were asking for.

    For me, that’s an easy choice. Cap at a 0.5 million increase. At which point the emotional blackmail begins.

    “If you don’t give use the extra three million dollars, we will have to fire teachers.”

    Is that really the only choice?

    That is the question I posed a teacher. What other things in the budget can be cut, before we have to fire teachers.

    Now, I’ve been told that I’m against teachers. That I oppose her. Why? Because I don’t want to cut teachers?

    For her, there are only two choices, pay or cut teachers. If I don’t want to pay more in taxes, I must hate teachers and want them fired.

    So I asked her about programs in the budget that could be cut instead. In our first iteration, there were no programs she was willing to cut.

    The problem she has is that every cut is equally bad. Every choice is equally bad. Since all the choices are bad, the only option is to get the 3 million dollars out of the stone of taxpayers.

    We had a similar issue at a family level years ago. We had a 16k windfall. We all agreed we would put that money into the homestead. The problem was that nobody could agree on what we should do.

    Should we get new siding for the house? Should we replace one of the vehicles? Should we pay off a loan?

    It wasn’t even that simple, there were about a dozen different projects or expenses we were considering.

    By default, humans will spiral rather than make a hard decision.

    I had to listen to people tell me that project A was more important than project B, but B was more important than C. And C was more important than A.

    It was a circle. Everything was more important than everything else.

    The first process was having everybody create an ordered list of by importance.

    They couldn’t do it. They all had situations where they had multiple things with equal importance. Or worse still, some couldn’t do it because they couldn’t choose.

    The method that did work was creating binary choices.

    We lay out a grid, in that grid we compare every item to every other item, asking if item row was more important than the item in the column.

    Once that grid is filled out, we can create an ordered list. Once we had ordered lists, we could present and come to an agreement as to what our priorities were.

    Roof Paint Gutters Truck Car Computer Foundation
    Siding Roof Siding Gutters Siding Siding Siding Foundation
    Roof Roof Roof Roof Roof Roof Roof
    Paint Gutters Paint Paint Paint Foundation
    Gutters Gutters Gutters Gutters Foundation
    New Truck Truck Truck Foundation
    New Car Car Foundation
    New Computer

    From this table, we can create an ordered list

    1. Roof
    2. Foundation
    3. Gutters
    4. Siding
    5. Paint
    6. Truck
    7. Car
    8. Computer

    The problem we have with our school budget is that every program is equally important. In the end, they will likely fire teachers and programs.

            

  • For my lady:

            

  • This past weekend, I had the pleasure of attending, vending at, and cooking at the Northfolk Nightmarket in Phillipston, MA. This was its first year, and wow, it was amazing. I did pretty well, and I had a blast. Since this event is Viking themed (though “fantasy” Viking more than historical, they delved into the mythology of Beowulf in a day-long roving play), I decided to both dress as and cook as a Viking woman would. That meant coming up with meals that could have been served in Grylla’s mead hall. I decided to make a pork roast with apples, and a green soup. The soup was delicious, but the pork… It was divine. The following was food for about four or five people (but we were hungry from being out in the cold all day).

    Ingredients:

    • 1.5 lb pork loin, plain
    • 4 apples, rough chopped
    • 2 red onions, rough chopped
    • 24 oz beer or ale (light, NOT dark)
    • salt, pepper, oregano, marjoram, about 1/4 tsp each
    • 1 tbsp dried rosemary

    Get your fire quite hot and make a good bed of coals to cook in (alternatively, set your oven to 350° F). Over a quick flame (stove burner set to medium high), heat up some olive oil and toss in the apples and onions. Saute them until they begin to soften, but before they start to crumble. Place the pork loin over the vegetables, and sprinkle with the salt, pepper, oregano, and marjoram. Add in the beer, a little at a time so it doesn’t bubble over, until the pork is almost covered (you may need to add more beer later if you don’t cover your pot). Sprinkle the rosemary liberally over the top of the roast, and pop it over the coals for 2 hours.

    Check on your pork every 30 minutes or so (or every time a patron asks you what you’re cooking and why does it smell so damn good?), turning it so that every side spends time under the liquid. If the liquid boils out, add more beer or some broth. Continue to cook until the roast is ready to fall apart when poked with a fork. If you’re cooking it in the oven, cook for 2 hours at 350°, then an hour hour or so at 250° while lidded, for the best result.

    Remove the pork from the liquid and slice into coins. Using a slotted spoon, pull out the apples and onions and serve them alongside the pork, with a side of rice.

    Notes:

    I used old apples I’d found forgotten in our crisper drawer. They looked like apples that had been sitting around since autumn, which worked well for my event. Because of that, they were a little older, a little softer, and a little sweeter than a fresh apple. I highly recommend this, because the result was incredible. This came out moist, and absolutely bursting with the flavor of the beer and rosemary. It has a little bit of a sweet immediate taste, with a lovely savory flavor that hits you after.

    If you can, I really do recommend cooking this one in cast iron over a fire. It was really easy, and it was very showy for when people came walking by. But the smell of it, and the slight background taste of smoke and ash, just really came together.

    I will also say, we didn’t eat it with rice when we were at the market. We ate it with our fingers, dribbling juices into the snow and ice at our feet, and giving no f*’s. LOL… It was just so good!

            

  • The order list for today has come out. Snope and Ocean State Tactical are distributed for conference this Friday.

    They are still live.

    Today’s order list was 58 pages, including 30 or so pages by Thomas in different cases. I’d say a hundred cases were closed out.

    This looked like an end of term broom, sweeping out the crumbs. There were a couple of cases that were granted cert.

    Things are on hold for our 2A cases until next Monday.

            

  • Whenever I see a motion for a TRO, Preliminary Injunction or a Stay, the opinion of the court always includes a reference to —Antonyuk v. Hochul, No. 22-2972 (2d Cir.).

    These are known as the “Winter Factors”. They must be addressed in order by the court before granting any of the above.

    The first factor is the likelihood of success on the merits. Is the person requesting the TRO, PI or Stay going to win the case in the end? If it is more likely than not, then the first factor has been met.

    The second factor is the question of the amount and type of harm being done. The key phrase is irreparable harm. In short, this means that the harm cannot be redressed by throwing money at it. All violations of Constitutionally protected rights are considered irreparable harm. You will never again have that opportunity at that moment of time with those people listening back again.

    The third factor is the balance of equities. Who will be most harmed whether the motion is granted or not granted. If the motion being granted will force a business to close, while not granting it will impose an eyesore, the balance of equities’ favorers not granting the motion.

    The final factor is what is in the best interest of the public. The public has no interest in enforcing unconstitutional laws. This always favors The People. The state will often argue that “keeping the public safe” is the correct scale to use for determining what is in the publics best interests.

    The court did not use the Winter Factors.

    Injunctive relief “is an extraordinary and drastic remedy, one that should not be granted unless the movant, by a clear showing, carries the burden of persuasion.” Sussman v. Crawford, 488 F.3d 136, 139 (2d Cir. 2007) (per curiam) (cleaned up). Plaintiffs seeking a preliminary injunction must show that “(1) they are likely to succeed on the merits; (2) they are likely to suffer irreparable harm in the absence of preliminary relief; (3) the balance of equities tips in their favor; and (4) an injunction is in the public interest.” New York v. U.S. Dep’t of Educ., 477 F. Supp. 3d 279, 293 (S.D.N.Y. 2020). If the federal government is the opposing party, then the latter two factors merge. Id. at 294 (citing Nken v. Holder, 556 U.S. 418, 435 (2009)). Moreover, the establishment of irreparable harm is the “single most important prerequisite for the issuance of a preliminary injunction.” Faiveley Transp. Malmo AB v. Wabtec Corp., 559 F.3d 110, 118 (2d Cir. 2009) (quotation marks and citations omitted).

    And this is why she is using the Nken instead of Winter To be able to discount the likelihood of success because of the amount of harm. In other words, instead of having to prove they are likely to win on the merits, the plaintiffs have chosen to prove that they might be horribly harmed if some hypothetical comes true.

    Yeah, that doesn’t make much sense to me.

    IANAL. My opinion is that the first question to be resolved is if the APA law(s) passed by congress limiting the power of the President are constitutional. If they are not constitutional, then they must be vacated and there is no cause for the case.

    Instead, the court assumes the APA overrides the authority granted to the President under the Constitution. She then turns the Winter standard on its head.

    Even though the text reads To establish a likelihood of success on the merits, a plaintiff need not show that success is an absolute certainty. It need only make a showing that the probability of … prevailing is better than fifty percent.

    The plaintiff bears the burden. Not the defendant. This judge says it is the States that bear the burden.

    The gist of this is that the courts are planning to ignore the Constitutional issues as much as possible and instead base their opinions on laws that are unconstitutional.

            
  • This matter concerns the President’s action to remove Hampton Dellinger from his position as Special Counsel for the Office of Special Counsel. Dellinger challenged his without-cause removal in the District Court for the District of Columbia. See 5 U. S. C. §1211(b). On February 12, 2025, the District Court entered a temporary restraining order (TRO) providing that Dellinger should remain in office until the court ruled on his motion for a preliminary injunction. The District Court has scheduled a hearing on that motion for February 26, the day that the TRO expires. See Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 65(b)(2).
    —Antonyuk v. Hochul, No. 22-2972 (2d Cir.)

    Dellinger was fired. He went to the District Court the same day and demanded that he be reinstated, claiming the President didn’t have the authority to fire him. He did this at the end of the day on Friday. The judge in the case issued the TRO the same day.

    The government appealed to the Circuit court, which kicked it back down because the case was in an interlocutory state. I.e., there wasn’t a final judgment in the case. If this status were to continue, this district court would have the ability to block the president’s authority to fire for the course of the case.

    For rogue inferior courts and people like Dellinger, this is a win. All they need to do is drag out the case for as long as they can. Stopping The People’s agenda.

    The TRO will expire on the 26th. The District Court will be hearing arguments for a Preliminary Injunction on the 26th. We can expect the District Court to issue their order on the 26th.

    Given the activist tendencies of this judge, he is likely to grant the Preliminary Injunction.

    If the Preliminary Injunction is issued, the President’s ability to fire anybody will be on hold until this case is fully resolved.

    Any other challenges to being fired will be filed in DC District Court. They will all be assigned to this judge. This judge will then put them under the same PI until final judgment.

    In light of the foregoing, the application to vacate the order of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia presented to THE CHIEF JUSTICE and by him referred to the Court is held in abeyance until February 26, when the TRO is set to expire.
    Missing citations for ELD98L5G
    An abeyance is a temporary suspension of activity while awaiting the resolution of some other proceeding without which the activity in abeyance cannot continue.

    In the case of a plea in abeyance, the defendant enters a conditional plea of guilty which is then held in abeyance subject to a set of conditions. If the defendant fulfills these conditions, the charges are dropped. If the defendant fails to complete the conditions, the guilty plea is entered. For example, a defendant may be required to undergo a drug addiction treatment program or have a guilty plea entered.

    Appeals can also be held in abeyance, usually to await the outcome of another court case which concerns similar issues.
    Missing citations for NNNWLPTJ

    The Court has said that they will not issue an opinion until there is a Preliminary Injunction. This is still a live issue before the Supreme Court.

    The two most liberal justices, Sotomayor and Jackson, would just have denied the vacatur.

    Justice and Gorsuch would have issued an opinion, rather than waiting for the PI.

    I won’t quote Gorsuch, but I love how his dissent is “When the plain text of the Constitution is implicated, it is the plaintiff’s burden to prove a tradition firmly based on this Nation’s historical regulations”. Gorsuch then cites numerous cases from the founding through until now which show a tradition of the courts not having the authority to reinstate fired federal employees.

    When fired federal employees have sued for relief, they have been granted back pay, but never have they been reinstated.

    I will quote the slap down of the rogue inferior district court:

    The district court grappled with none of these complications before ordering Mr. Dellinger’s reinstatement. And if there are answers to the questions its remedial order raises, they appear nowhere in that court’s decision. Accordingly, I would vacate the district court’s order and remand with instructions to consider the “boundaries of traditional equitable relief.” Grupo Mexicano, 527 U. S., at 322.
    Missing citations for ELD98L5G
            

  • That would be me.

    Everything finally came together with the new system. Then I went and messed it all up.

    The motherboard has a weak Ethernet. It is a 10/100 Ethernet, which is NOT a problem for a management interface. When I upgrade the box to have full redundancy, it will get a dual port fiber card.

    What it does mean is that my Wi-Fi to it via a USB dongle is faster than if I were to plug it in.

    Once the box was in position, I connected via Wi-Fi and finished configuration. I tested all the connectivity, and it all just worked.

    At that point, I told it to join the cluster. It did with pleasure, and brought the cluster to a stop.

    Did you catch my mistake? Yeah, I left that dongle in.

    At the bottom of the barrel, we have 10base-T. I have some old switches in boxes that might support that. Above that is 100base-T, which is a good management speed. We can move data for upgrades and restores, but not the fastest. Some of my switches and routers do not support 100baseT.

    Above that is where we start to get into “real” speeds. Gigabit Ethernet, or GigE. I’ve now moved to the next step, which is ports supporting 10G over fiber or cable, depending on the module I use. The next step-up would be 25Gbit. I’m not ready for that leap of cost.

    Wi-Fi sits at around 200Mbit/s. Faster than “fast Ethernet” also known as 100base-T, but not at “real” speeds. Additionally, Wi-Fi is shared space, which means that it doesn’t always give that much.

    So what happened? The Ceph(NAS) cluster is configured over an OVN logical network on 10.1.0.0/24. All Ceph nodes live on this network. Clients that consume Ceph services will also attach to this network. No issues.

    When you configure an OVN node, you tell the cluster what IP address to use for tunnels back to the new node. All well and good.

    The 10G network connection goes to the primary router and from there to the rest of the ceph nodes. One of the subnets holds my work server. My work server provides 20Tb to the ceph cluster.

    On that subnet are also the wireless access points.

    So the new node correctly sent packets to all the ceph nodes via the 10G interface, EXCEPT for traffic to my work server. Why? Because the 10G had a 1 hop cost, while the Wi-Fi had a 0 hop cost. By routing standards, the 200Mbit Wi-Fi was the closer, faster, connection than the 1 hop 10G connections.

    When I found the connection problem and recognized the issue, I unplugged the Wi-Fi dongle from the new node and all my issues cleaned up, almost instantly.