The world as I see it…

completely random!  (and I do mean…  com-plete-ly!)

I just saw this today and couldn’t help but be amazed and somewhat bewildered. It’s fun though…  in a totally nerdy way.

I was supposed to post a different blog here, but I haven’t actually finished it yet.  :)  I was writing it a couple days ago and I put it aside as I started backing up my computer files and documents to prepare for my big hard drive swap. I went ahead and did something I know I didn’t absolutely need to at this point in time, and went out and got myself a hard drive upgrade for my macbook.

My computer has a 250GB and I upgraded only to 320GB.  I know that’s not much of an upgrade and some people will probably do the 500GB…  but I don’t need that much space ON my computer, especially since I already have a 250GB external, another 80GB external and with this new install I’m adding another 250GB external.  almost 600GB in external HD space.

psh…  that’s kinda ridiculous, eh?

I think that a lot of people think that “bigger is better” or “more is better” with the HD space.  Well, not me.  I prefer to keep it as low as possible. Who uses that much space anyway?  Well, not me.  I use about 2GB of space per year on my drill design…  my iTunes folder is the kicker at around 90GB.  But music is my life and I stock up on all I can.  But past that, a few applications and my web design work – I maybe use about 140GB total at any time. But then I have thousands of photos and videos from my travels and trips around the world.  (well, I can’t really say “around the world” – just the couple countries I’ve been to. )  But I would rather not store them on my computer. In 2006, my old Dell Inspiron crashed…  I lost everything on it and that included so many albums of photos and videos that to this day, I don’t know exactly what was on there.  I never really made a big deal out of backing up my data, but from that point on I don’t mess around.

Now a days, I’m perhaps overly protective, but that’s mostly just for my work related data than anything else.  I lost ALL of my 2002-2005 drill files, and that includes some of what I would consider some of my best work.  I was fortunate to be able to recover a majority of those files from e-mail attachements when I would send them to Mitch….   but I’m still missing a ton. I don’t know if you remember, but back in around 2002-2003, Yahoo mail only allowed something like 4MB of disc space. Around 2004 they upped it to 10MB and them immediately to 100MB a few months later.  I forget.  But I did not sign up for Gmail until the fall of 2004, but by then I had already had to delete dozens of emails/files to make room in my yahoo mailbox.  It never occurred to me to open another yahoo mail account, because I never thought that deleting those e-mails were eventually deleting my only “backup” of them.

Now a days, I have it covered is more ways than I think anyone would care to go through the trouble.  First there’s my backup externals.  I keep a complete archive of all of my drill files from over the years, organized in folders on all of my externals AND on my computer.  Not only that, I have an 8GB flash drive that is only for my drill and I keep that in a container on my desk.  I keep about 50% of my files/apps and drill on my own website server, which is a great extra benefit to having a website.  And then I have Dropbox, where I have 2.5GB of storage and I only keep my current year’s drill in that.

If you don’t know what Dropbox is, it’s an application that allows you to sync a folder online from your computer.  That way you can share through the web, or simply log on from another location with your account and access it from that computer.  In the event that my computer gets stolen and I lose everything on it, I will have my drill backed up on that account and I can access it from a different computer or location.

I guess using dropbox or my website file manager isn’t much of a difference…   but again, I’ve become overly protective about my files and I would rather save it all to more places than less.   By this time next week, I will have my entire drill archive backed up on my computer, 3 different external hard drives, a flash drive and a protected folder in my website file manager.  All of my photos are backed up on all of my externals and not on my computer anymore.  My music will eventually be backed up on my other 250GB once I get it outta my laptop, but right now it’s just on my computer and the other 250GB.

One thing I learned over the years, and mostly from my experience in 2006 – you can never be too careful with your computer files, especially if your life and work is on it.  I don’t particularly prefer to have so much on my computer, which is why I said earlier that I prefer to keep as little as possible on there so it’s not a huge loss if something goes kaput!  I also do full-system cleaning about 3 times per year (this one is my 2nd in 6 months) and I think it’s a heck of a lot easier to worry about 140GB rather than closer to 800GB.

Quick note – the new iMacs are friggin’ sweet.  I want one.  But they come with a 1TB hard drive (standard).  What would I do with all that space?  What does anyone do with 1TB of disc space?  How on earth could any casual computing human being honestly fill that disc up with data that isn’t 90% illegally downloaded videos or files?  How?  I would really like to know who’s job/work requires THAT much disc space.  Not only that, if you did fill it up completely…  however the heck that is possible…   what would you do to back it all up?  What if it crashes?   What do you do WHEN it crashes.  ;)  Obviously, I would never hope for that for anyone…   but seriously folks at Apple and the rest of the computing world – take it easy!  we don’t NEED that much disc space.  We just need fast processors, large monitors, mice with multiple programmable buttons and wireless keyboards that have number pads.  Lets take a break, because even with my 140GB of disc usage, I have everything on my computer I would ever want or need in my life, and I would have to try very, very hard to fill up the other 110GB on this smaller HD.  (I guess this is where someone chimes in with the whole growing popularity of the solid state drives. )

I think I forgot to mention this, but why did I just go on a rant about disc space and not needing a whole lot, yet I’m upgrading to a larger HD?  Well, simple.  The HD that I use now is something like a standard Mac/Toshiba something-something 5200 RPM stock hard drive.  My new HD is the western digital scorpio black 7200 RPM performance hard drive.  From all of the benchmarks and reviews I’ve read and seen over the past several months since I began researching this, it isn’t a whole lot different from the western digital scorpio blue (5400) regarding speed.  But it is certain that it’s a heck of a lot faster than the stock drive I have now. (or so I’ve read).  I don’t really know – yet!  But I will in a few days.   I just need something that will be able to read/write just a bit faster, to help me speed up some save/load times with work stuff and photoshop projects.  I know that a lot of what makes the computer faster isn’t just one thing, but several including the processor and the RAM.  I’m pretty set with a 2.4 C2D and 4GB RAM.  Now I get a faster HD (with the added bonus of some extra room) and can hopefully get a better experience out of my everyday work life,whether it be with web/graphic design, or the drill design.  :)

I’m looking forward to this new install.  I love the feeling of a computer when there’s nothing but the bare essentials, and I get to rebuild it with the applications I want and really need.  Every year I download a crapload of apps and junk that I install and never use.  I eventually delete it, but some of them I have on here and think “oh, I’ll use that sometime”.  Well, now I can just install it whenever I actually wanna use it.  Which might be never for some of them.

Okay… I’m just rambling and sounding like a wannabe techie. I really don’t know all there is to know about computers, and every time I go to forums discussing this and asking questions, I get replies from the most ridiculously hard core computer gurus who treat me as if I’m an idiot for using “just a laptop” and that I should have a desktop PC, with a full tower and multiple internal HDs.  umm… sure!

It really feels good to have a job that relies on the computer and not have to get the biggest and best stuff on the market.  I can save my money and buy cooler stuff – like flights to Hawaii or eating out at Cheesecake Factory a couple extra times.  Yumm!!

Weird!  So, my site was down for about 36 hours…  or more…  I don’t even know.  All I know is that I was informed by a friend that it wasn’t there.  I checked.  It was a pic of a cute blonde girl and ads for babies and baby names.

Yeah…  awesome.  What was that?

I contact my peeps to get the low down on that, and apparently my credit card didn’t auto renew.  Must have been some millenium bug – but 2K10 style.  I had my card on file, same one that’s been there since I got it, went to my profile, confirmed it was correct and wrote them back to ask what happened.  I never heard back until just this morning, when my site went back up and the e-mail said “we received your payments and everything is fine.  Is there anything else we can help you with?”.   Umm… yeah.  How about answering the questions I asked you in the first place?

I believe my e-mail to them looked something like this:

“Hello.  I was just informed by your billing dept that my credit card was invalid and the auto renew failed.  I did as I was asked and went into my account and checked the info.  I confirmed that the CC on file and all of the billing info is correct and it is working.   However, since my monthly bill went through on Jan 10th, why was this rejected on Jan 1 as an invalid CC, thus closing my website?  I am very concerned about this happening again and I just want to make sure that I have all of the right information in the account….” blah blah blah…

So, I asked about this and kindly asked if I could get some more info regarding what happened or if there’s something I need to do to prevent this from happening again, but instead of answering that question, I was greeted with a “everything fine – not sure what the problem is…” kind of reply.

Oh well.  :) I have a feeling it was a glitch and they realized it or did something wrong and didn’t feel it was necessary to give me the specifics.  I don’t care that much…   everything’s here and I’m able to write in my blog again.

In other news, I got my room put together about 50%.  It probably looks like more than 50% to the average person, but I have yet to even touch the closet. (I consider the closet about 50% by itself…  all my clothes, organizing them, getting bins and making sure there’s room for storing stuff, etc.)

There’s still SO much in there that needs to get thrown out, donated or boxed up for storage. I can’t wait until we get enough stuff boxed up so we can finally get that storage facility and move things over there.  I can’t believe how much stuff is in this house.  And about 80% of it, I look at it, scratch my head and ask myself “why do we have this?”  I guess we’ll never know.

Well, I’m gonna make a fruit smoothie and chill for a bit.  long night last night and maybe I’ll sleep some tonight.  Have to find some more shelves and hopefully get to hit up IKEA later today or tomorrow.

TGIF!

It’s friggin’ cold in my house right now… so cold, in fact, that I am now wrapped up in a comforter and wearing sweats, head to toe. I could turn up the heat, but the last time I set the temp above 70, my brother had a conniption!

I am almost positive there has to be some draft of freezing cold air that has made its way through whatever crevice and straight towards my work station. Now I know why my dad always had a space heater at his feet when he worked on his computer years ago.

Well, I have to say that work could not be going any worse for me at the moment, but that’s mostly my fault. I put some of this off while trying to take care of, what I considered, more important house-related stuff, but now I’m under lots of pressure to get this done. One thing I learned a couple years ago is that we all need breaks. That’s why I’m writing this. This is my break. Once I get done it’s back to the grind… but for these 5 minutes, I just needed to vent about how much I hate the cold. I don’t enjoy being a complainer… but I just need to do it once or twice to get it outta my system. After that, I’ll be quiet, suck it up and move on.

Okay… back to the drill!