Wah you all make me feel like I complain too much. 4 hour drive to Johor Bahru or KL, yes city there. But Singapore itself is city, just everything expensive and enterprise markup 3x. My eBay alert from US or China, ship 1-2 week, pray customs don't tax.
I try the cron + sqlite idea. Found a tutorial, will report back. Currently my "system" still 3 browser tabs + spreadsheet + prayer.
Post the link when it works or I will write one. My setup: sqlite with tables for item, count, threshold, last_tested. Cron every 6 hours runs Python, checks count < threshold, sends email via local postfix. 150 lines including comments.
I also log every disk serial and power-on hours at install time. When spare goes in, I know its history. No more mystery "spare" that sat on a shelf for 3 years.
This thread went from "what inventory system" to "how I test spares" to "my country's shipping speed." Classic drift. I am here for it.
I am in Sao Paulo. Same-day exists for some things if you pay Mercado Livre full price. For server stuff I use local distributor TDI, next day if stock, else 5 days from their SP warehouse. I keep 1 week buffer, use a Trello board with due dates for test reminders. Free, visual, good enough.
Did anyone settle whether Shopee works for enterprise SSDs? I am in Hanoi, Shopee and Lazada have consumer only. For real server parts I need to contact Supermicro or Asus distributor directly, MOQ applies, very annoying for small DC.
I use a simple Excel with pivot table, count by status: in-use, spare-good, spare-untested, dead. The pivot auto-updates. Not pretty but I know my untested count, and that is what kills you at 2am.
Has anyone tried Grist or Baserow as spreadsheet replacement? Self-hosted, more structure than sheet, less than Snipe-IT. I am testing Grist now, like Airtable but local. Early days.
Also re: testing spares, I now do it monthly, automated with badblocks on an old motherboard in corner. Email me if test fails. This thread changed my behavior, thanks all.
