12/02/09 09:24 - ID#50433

New Laptop

Jeez I think my entire net pay this month is going towards computers. Thank god for my savings account.

Laptop died on Monday, I ordered the replacement, and then when it was too late to cancel the order for the new laptop, the old one magically came to life (a True Christmas Miracle(tm)).

My new one gets here Friday, I'm half excited and half sick over the unneeded expense. The ~20% restock fee on the new laptop would make it kinda stupid to return it, so I'll be trading my old one down the line to friends and family. Everyone gets a bump when I get a new computer.

Permalink: New_Laptop.html
Words: 111

Category: computers

11/16/07 11:22 - ID#42161

8 Terabyte Storage Array

12 SATA 1TB Drives ($300 ea)

1 12-bay rack mountable SATA enclosure ($1200)

1 4x SAS Controller w/ Battery Backup ($1000)

Hooked up to a Solaris host with Raid-Z double parity ZFS, and two online spare drives for live failover and rebuilding.

= 8 terabyte of doubly redundant storage for ~$6000.

Biggest problem? How to back the sucker up. 20 tapes a night?

Permalink: 8_Terabyte_Storage_Array.html
Words: 82

Category: computers

10/17/07 04:30 - ID#41692

Leopard

So, I preordered Apple Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard (™, ®, etc). This is what I'm looking forward to:

- Spaces / multiple workspaces
- Tabbed, internationalized terminal
- Time Machine
- Death of Metal
- Finder Improvements
- Learning Objective C 2.0 now that it's got GC
- Playing with the Cocoa-Ruby bridge.

But also to some new 10.5 only apps that are coming out shortly.

Permalink: Leopard.html
Words: 61

Category: computers

10/02/07 10:01 - ID#41467

Backup Hard Drives

OK, so this is getting ridiculous.

I have one external backup drive for my laptop, one for (e:james)' desktop, and now two more on the way to attach to the network for photo storage (100+gb so far). No more room on my laptop for them all.

I'm going to need to buy a house soon just to install a datacenter in the basement, and I don't think we'll need to worry about the house being cold this winter with all these electronics going. We have like four 8-outlet power strips in room with our computers.

Or maybe just get one of these...

tinypliny writes at 01:36:21 10/06/07 - Comment #25832: That reminds me that one of these days my laptop is going to die on me and I am going to be a total wreck because I am just too lazy to back-up anything.

metalpeter writes at 06:45:06 10/04/07 - Comment #25770: I take pictures on my digital camera and store them on CD but I really do need to back them up other then on the computer. But I print all of mine out that is what photo albums are for. The thing is they are esaier to view in albums then on a computer. I really need to figure out how to get the ones on floppy's on a disc and then copy that disc.

jim writes at 10:41:16 10/03/07 - Comment #25719: Yikes!

Jenks that is no good :)

I can't believe that anyone uses those disks anymore. I've had to try a few times in the last year, and the disks or drives are invariably dead.

jenks writes at 10:35:48 10/03/07 - Comment #25718: ok, this will make you guys cringe.
At work we keep a list of all the patients we are taking care of. It's a dinky little excel file. But it is full of all sorts of private info, so it's "protected information" blah blah.

But there is no place we can store this file, that everyone has access to it. And they have just banned flash drives.

So we have been storing it on a FLOPPY DISK. The SAME floppy disk. For TWO YEARS now. With NO backup copy. And I am the only one that seems remotely concerned by this.

I didn't know computers even HAVE A: drives anymore!

dcoffee writes at 08:06:41 10/03/07 - Comment #25710: Yea, I know the feeling. I have my photos on DVD and hard drives. But I don't trust computers at all. We should print more of our favorite photos. I know us digital photographers don't print much, we post things online, email stuff to friends, group it into folders, but printing at a photo lab? I went about 3 years without adding a single photo to a photo album, but it's so rewarding when you do. I admit it takes a bit of time, and I haven't printed anything for myself in at least 6 months. But I feel like prints, are a real backup.

jim writes at 07:50:59 10/03/07 - Comment #25707: I've got remote offline storage covered, but this is all about making sure I've got two copies of everything locally too.

I'm super paranoid about backups, don't worry about me :)

metalpeter writes at 07:46:50 10/03/07 - Comment #25703: Seriously I noticed you didn't mention CDs or DVDs. I will admit that one little scratch can mess them up but that would give you another way of storing pictures and video and with the pictures then if you have a DVD player that would be another way to view them. Backing things up is really important and a lot of people forget to do and then when they lose stuff it is gone and they can't get it back.

jenks writes at 06:17:24 10/03/07 - Comment #25689: well shit, at only 24K, I'll take two!

Permalink: Backup_Hard_Drives.html
Words: 103

Category: computers

08/25/07 04:01 - ID#40730

And Another Thing

I really dislike using Windows. Every little bit of it rubs me the wrong way. It was all I used for 6 or 7 years, and then after about a week with my Mac a few years back, I've never looked back.

This is one of the ideological reasons why I hate Windows: if you run Windows update to get security fixes, it makes you revalidate your Windows installation (it checks your serial number to see how many times it's been used, if it's pirated, etc), and it can lock your computer down to reduced functionality if it thinks there is a problem.

Once you initially purchase software, you should never ever need to go back and verify that you are legit. It's like all those lame warnings on DVD's or before movies telling you not to pirate, when you've clearly just paid for the DVD or movie.

So - the problem: the Windows validation servers are down right now, and may be down until Monday:

Nice. Innocently run software update, and bam! there it goes. Way to treat your paying customers.

Permalink: And_Another_Thing.html
Words: 188

Category: computers

04/27/06 12:06 - ID#24490

Launcher

Does anyone know of a launcher similiar to Quicksilver (a Mac app) but for Windows?

I'm going nuts.

EDIT:

Found something.

Colibri is the retarded cousin of Quicksilver, but at least it gets done the launcher aspect of QS, if not the pipes and manipulation actions.

EDIT #2

AppRocket is better than Colibri but still not quite there either, but at least something useful comes up after hitting Ctrl-Space.