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Bird Food?

I wonder if the birds would eat year-too-old oatmeal?

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Posted 18 hours ago

My Backup Routine

I'm offering up my backup routine to provide you some ideas and to get feedback on possible holes.

I want my backup to protect against:

  1. Accidental or mistaken changes or deletions of files or data. I.e., losing address book entries, deleting files I don't think I'll need, but wish I had a week later - that sort of thing.
  2. Hardware failure. The only hard drive I've had fail on me, in recent memory was when I worked at PowerSchool. That hard drive failure was concurrent with a blip in their backup process and I lost about three months worth of work. Hardware can fail and it won't happen at a cosmically convenient time. 
  3. Theft, fire or natural disaster at home, which is where my data lives.

What didn't work.
Mozy. Mozy is a service that backs up your data over the internet and stores it on their servers.  I used their free version (2 gig limit) for months and it was great. I tested a few restores and it worked just fine with that 'limited' data set.

Then I upgraded to their "home" package to get unlimited backup and it went to hell. There were two problems. The first, during the big initial backup, my computer and net access ground to a halt. All resources were taken over by Mozy. I worked around that by scheduling the backups at night, but there wasn't an easy way to automate that.  Mozy would essentially have to start over each night and figure out where it left off. It took weeks to do that. The time investment is to be expected, I don't blame Mozy for that, but it needs to run better in the background - it needs to be more invisible.

But the 2nd problem was it would get stuck on a file and just freeze. That is, if it couldn't move a file, for whatever reason, it didn't log that and move on, it stalled.  

I haven't cancelled the account, because there is some data up there and I'm paid through the year. Mozy has updated their software a couple of times since I gave up on it; I may try again.

What is working.

Time Machine.  Built-in back up for the Mac. It backs up hourly and snapshots your data daily, and weekly for as long as you have room on your backup drive. When you run out of space it deletes the oldest backup to make room. There are only two configuration options. On/Off and you can exclude files from back up. It's fairly transparent.  In my home environment the hourly disk grinding can be distracting especially if I'm already having a hard time focusing. Being somewhat geek-like, I wish I had more control. If I did, I'd schedule daily, rather than hourly backups and I'd like to be able to manage some of my larger files manually. (i.e., this huge 10 gig data file (VMWare, ahem) need only be backed up monthly, not every time it changes. Overall, Time Machine handles the first and second case pretty well.

DropBox.  DropBox is another internet solution. Like Mozy, you're limited to 2 gig of storage for the free account. And it's not really designed to be a backup solution so much as a file sharing solution. Not in the 'rip off music' file sharing old days. But in the 'here's yet another way to share photos, etc. with your friends' way.  But what's really cool about DropBox is that you can use it to  synchronize data with multiple computers.

You designate a folder (or accept the default) to be your 'dropbox'. After that, anything in the folder is automatically copied to the DropBox servers. If you install their software and login from a different computer, then anything that you've put in the first computer's dropbox folder is copied to the 2nd computer. Anything you put in the 2nd computer's dropbox folder is synchronized with the first computer.  Very cool.

I use DropBox to back up my active client projects. Using a trick to synchronize data outside the drop box folder I'm able to maintain my preferred file organization. 

Dropbox provides protection against hardware failure and theft or fire. If you're interested and sign up by clicking this link, I'll get some extra free space.

Mom. Mozy was supposed to be my complete off-site protection in case of theft or fire. When that didn't work out I switched to plan B. Mom. In this scenario, I purchased two small external hard drives and did a complete backup of my computer to a drive and take it to mom's. A month later, I back up to the 2nd drive, take it to mom's and bring the first one home. Wash, rinse and repeat. I use the Western Digital portable drives and Carbon Copy Cloner to do the backup. This is the theft and fire protection. Not the best because I'm up to a month out of date on things. But I've designated the most important things to be backed up by DropBox, so I'm not out of business if it does happen. Of course, if California falls into the ocean, like the mystics and statistics say it will, having a back up at Mom's won't help. But, at that point, I probably don't care.

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Filed under  //  Backup   DropBox   Mac   Mom   Mozy  
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Posted 1 day ago

Wing-Nutzoids Stand up for Sarah

An employee at the bookstore where my daughter works dissed the new Sarah Palin book:

"Our customers are thinking people," said Nathan Emetson, a bookseller at Pendragon Books in Oakland. "They're not into reading drivel." There's not a single copy on the shelf. Embretson said no one has asked for it except for one guy, who was kidding.

The fringe commenters at 'freerepublic' aren't going to take this, uh, standing up! (I'm guessing they're sitting at their computer while they spew their hate.) They quoted the first sentence (mocking the book) but didn't include the second sentence, explaining their customers weren't interested. So the freerepublic community piles on… I think they smell a conspiracy!

"When you live in the fag-mafia territory, you live by their rules."

"Can’t wait till our side gets back in control and drops the hammer on San Fran. We’ll make the whole city one big prison for rapists and child molesters. It’s logistically efficient."

"I was thinking neutron bomb.
My grandma lives in Palo Alto and has a few years left in her, so I'd like to spare that town, but otherwise, I'm all for nuking the Bay Area from orbit! "

"This is Pelosi’s District... And this is why she thinks she can be as left as left can be — they’d never vote her out!"

(Actually, it's not Pelosi's District. But, this isn't the fact-based crowd.)


"I am sure that Sarah is crying over this..I really do not care what the queers of SF think.. and I doubt anyone else does either..One day the earth open up and swallow all of you pathetic pieces of garbage up…"

"Lest we forget, this is how the “Reality Based” community operates. How they can claim that is beyond all logical thinking. Liberalism is a mental disorder and that is the true reality."

I asked the daughter if she hung up on the callers (they've been getting pelted). She said: "Nope- I've been asking where they are. They think we're in SF because they're all calling from other states, so when they say San Francisco I offer to find a book store there and that usually ends the conversation."

I'm proud of her, of course, for remaining polite to folks who would like to see her bombed.

Just for the record, I get my monthly Runners World at Pendragon and have purchased some Dashiell Hammett and Born To Run and John le Carre. Nice place. And Pendragon does carry Ayn Rand. So, it's not like you can't find your serious right-wing whack there.

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Posted 2 days ago

And for my next trick

Ok; I ran a marathon. Next I'd like to join/play in/start a band.

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Posted 3 days ago

Tapering

You're supposed to taper before the big marathon. Sadly, I think I've tapered before the peak. Three days in SF last week without any foot time, half of my run this weekend. I'm off my feed.

What surprised me Sunday when I ran was how much it felt like I was slogging through molasses. I've never started out so slow. A minute or two behind my normal pace.

Actually, I think I'll do ok at the CIM. Not great, but ok. One thing I've learned is that one shouldn't let a single run summarize your state. But Sunday was discouraging. We'll try again Wednesday. And I'm going to try to do a long run on Sunday.

Then it's two weeks until the next marathon. After which, I think the half-marathon is my sport.

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Filed under  //  Marathon Man   nablopomo  
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Posted 5 days ago

The history of the internet in a nutshell.

http://sixrevisions.com/resources/the-history-of-the-internet-in-a-nutshell/

There might be a quiz.

I've had a well account, a GEnie account, an AOL account, an AppleLink account, an eWorld account, a CIS account.

The blog went up (as I try to mention at least once a year), in 1996. It really does make me a pioneer. But I'm one of those pioneers who went off the rails and no one followed, so it doesn't count. :-)*

* Emoticon invented in 1983, apparently.

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Posted 6 days ago

Cut the death rate

I have a whole lot to say on this, but I just found the start to the stats I need.

Fatalities from car accidents: http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx

Transportation related fatalities: (includes non-auto related, including transit related.): http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx

Now I just have to find the transit-related fatalities per passenger-mile.

The hypothesis that I want to test would start:

A vibrant public transit system could save tens of thousands of lives each year in the US.

And, a side note. The number of auto fatalities dropped 10% in 2008 from 2007. The biggest decline in the reported years. Due to the slowing economy?
The available numbers go back 30 years.

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Posted 7 days ago

University of Craigslist

Because of this little thing, I'm shopping for a new laptop. Coincident with pestering my few remaining friends at Apple for an employee discount* I looked at Craigslist. I think I found a good deal. I'll find out tomorrow. Just a few things:

1) I hate dealing with cash. $100 here or there is fine, but having laptop-territory cash around makes me nervous.

2) People are amazing. I've commented before about the person selling an Apple router for list price. Then a few weeks later it comes down a few bucks and a few weeks later a few more. The current price (and they've had them listed for months) is about $20 below list, but you have to buy two.

3) People are amazing part two. If this isn't a hot computer, I'm tempted to call the person and ask why they're selling a $2,800 computer for $600.

4)  People are amazing part three. This person got huffy (I think she was huffy-  it was via email, but she all capped "FIRM") when I asked if she'd come down a hundred bucks. But the day before the same computer was $1,100. So, it seemed like a fair question. $1,000 is not a great deal.

There. I've just pissed off someone selling a hot computer and suggested I had a lot of cash lying around…

* Apple has a program called "Friends and Family". It's there just begging you to harass anyone with an employee badge.

Update: Actually looking at the picture of the $600 Mac, I don't think they're selling what they think they're selling. To be charitable, they must have looked up the current edition of what they've got and just posted the specs.

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Filed under  //  nablopomo  
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Posted 7 days ago

Tech Support Form Hall of Shame

I've been using Google Voice since before it was Google Voice. I had a suggestion for them (I'm full of ideas.) The Google team, not surprisingly, uses Google Docs to collect feedback. So, I filled out their simple form and hit submit.

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Filed under  //  TSFHOS  
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Posted 9 days ago

Tech Support Form Hall of Shame

I've been having problems uploading data from my Garmin Forerunner to the Garmin web site. So, I thought I'd send them some error messages that were cropping up.

This is their support web form: (comments added. :-) )

And then, when I try to submit the form.

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Posted 10 days ago