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Jeff Kay's Ridiculous Adventures In Suburbia

A Few Quick Things, vol. 4

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It’s snowing here, and everybody’s out and about.  Except for me and the hound, that is.  The 16 year old is at swim practice, and has never driven on slick roads — not once.  I’ll be all clenched-up, until he gets home.  And Toney is in Scranton, with the younger boy, at an orthodontist appointment.

What the heck, man?  Everybody’s piled up in here for days on end, with drool on their chests, and the moment the weather goes shitty… a beehive of activity.  I think the universe is trying to give me an ulcer.

The Eels announced a whole assload o’ tour dates today, and I think I’m going to take the boys to see them this time.  They’ve grown up on their music, and I’d love to see their reaction to the punked-up versions of the songs in concert.  Always a rocking good time!

Also, I listened to Marc Maron interview J. Mascis, from Dinosaur Jr., last night.  I don’t think I’d ever heard the man speak before, and he sounds exactly the way I expected: laid back almost to the point of coma.  But he was funny, and interesting.  If you’re a Dinosaur fan, you should definitely check it out.  Maron is getting some great, unusual guests these days.

My computer has been acting weird for a few weeks, and I let my Carbonite subscription lapse… oh, about two years ago.  So, I don’t really have any backups, which is a problem.  If the hard drive shits the bed, I’m going to be even sadder than normal.

But I didn’t want to return to Carbonite, for various reasons, and started doing research on other offsite backup services.  There are a bunch of them now.  One called CrashPlan got good reviews, and I went to their site to check out their prices and options.

And when I got there, a few days ago, they had a big banner with a digital clock counting down to some kind of insane sale.  Long story a little less long…  I ended up getting a year’s worth of backup — for the whole family — for $5.76.  The regular price is $119 per year, but they were having a sale where everything started at 100% off(!?), and the prices increased every two hours.  I got in fairly early, and got a hell of a deal.

The downside?  My computer has been connected to their backup engine since Friday, and it’s still less than 30% completed.  I have a feeling they have a ton of new customers, and everything’s moving SLOOOOW.  But once it’s fully backed-up, everything will be cool.  Then I’ll start Toney’s computer, and my laptop.  Maybe we’ll be good by the 4th of July?

Do you back-up your computer, or just hope for the best?  I’ve been living dangerously for the past couple of years, mostly because money’s always tight.  But I’m not going to do that anymore.  I don’t need yet another thing to worry about.  Pass the beer nuts.

Something made me remember this video last night, while I was at work, and I watched it again when I got home.  It might possibly be the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.  It kills me every time.  Keep an eye on the fat guy in the blue shirt, with the white stripes; he appears over and over.  God, that’s great entertainment.

For a Question, I’d like for you to share a link to whatever video pops instantly into your mind when you read the words “funniest thing I’ve ever seen on YouTube.”  Does anything leap immediately to mind?  If so, please link to it in the comments.

I’ll see you guys again tomorrow.  And just so you know… everybody’s now home, safe and sound.

Have a great day!

Now playing in the bunker
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Reader Interactions

Comments

  2. I’ve been bad about backing up, but I’m trying to reform my slacker ways. The online/cloud/whatever stuff confuses me, so I stick with portable hard drives.

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  4. Use a portable hard drive that I got at Costco for something like $80. It holds a terrabyte, which is about 10x what I need at this time. It’s like a big thumb drive. I DO have to remember to hook it up and do incremental backups occasionally.

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      • I back up to a second drive too, then periodically burn a set of DVDs off that drive and leave them at someone else’s house. Hopefully both houses don’t burn down simultaneously 😉 I only do this for irreplaceable stuff – pictures and videos mainly.

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  7. The link for the fat guy in the blue shirt won’t let me view it on mobile. But I have seen it before. The one I think of is the lady holding the cake and steps away from the car and trips or something. She and the cake go flying. Funny stuff

    Reply

  11. I bought something called a NAS for backups (network adapter storage)… and life has been good since. It’s basically a box in which you put 2 hard drives and plug the box to your network. All data you send to it gets replicated across both HDs. That way, if one of the HDs goes bad, you put in another, it does it’s magic, and way you go. It’s also great since it becomes the official backup box of my home network. I used to do my backups on one box, but then that box would shit the can and I would have to start another backup system on another box. in the end I had backups everywhere with no idea which one was good.

    NAS == peace of mind

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  18. When I build a computer and all the programs seem to be working properly I make an image of that drive and store it on a hard drive which then goes on a shelf.
    I then install a terabyte or 1.5 terabyte drive as an “E” or “F” drive and use that for weekly backups.
    It takes about nine months to fill a drive with system images.

    Reply

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