SnarkyBytes

It is Monday and I am full of Blog Meh.

UPDATE: Of course now that I wrote that I’ll probably have 5 things that I’ll have to blog right away.

UPDATE: And now that I wrote the above, I’ll be back to nothing…

UPDATE: You see where this is going, right?

I got my current Macbook Pro in 2008 and since then it’s had an OS upgrade and all kinds of things installed and deleted. The kruft had already reached a point that was bothering me and last night’s recording failure was the last straw.

I made sure the Time Machine backup was current, cloned the hard drive onto an external USB drive (belt AND suspenders) and proceeded to format and reinstall Snow Leopard from scratch this morning. Nice to have a snappy, responsive machine again.

Two years ago that was my main computer and everything important was on it. (backed up in at least three places, of course) but lately I’ve been using more devices like the iPhone and iPad as well as several different computers. It turns out that all the important stuff is out on the Internet somewhere now so I’m able to set up the MBP as just another net access device. Other than iTunes and my photo database, all my data resides in several places out on the Internet. Amazon’s S3 has a lot of it, but I have some on Google storage and Apple iDisk as well as on my web host’s “unlimited” storage. Even iTunes and the photos are backed up on S3. I use DropBox for documents so I have access to everything from anywhere. (WiFi and/or AT&T willing)

I could break my MBP tomorrow and other than the expense of a new one, I’d be ok.

(Awww, I’d have to buy a new MBP… SO sad.)

ADVICE: Even if you keep your data in the “cloud” make sure it’s on at least two separate, independent systems. You can get locked out of an account at any time for a variety of reasons and it would really suck to have all your eggs in one basket you can’t get to any more.

Now I need to find where that 5% snuck in and kill it.

Moved over to a new hosting service.

I think everything is straight but there may be some hiccups here and there.

I’ve used a C-TAC for years and I like it a lot, but it’s not easy (for me) to put on/take off. It’s a put it on and wear it all day holster. That’s great when I can carry all day.

I also use an Infidel. It’s not as comfortable as the C-TAC but it has one huge advantage. It’s easy to remove and replace. When I have to go somewhere I can’t carry I remove the holster with the gun still in it and skip the unholster/reholster steps I’d have to do with the C-TAC.

It’s a lot harder to make an ND happen if the gun never leaves the holster.

I like that.

Driving to the Texas Hill Country!

Fun, Right?

Except it’s for work and it’s there and back in one day.

From south of Houston.

Thank goodness for 3G and tethering. Gonna be a LONG day.

Via Say Uncle:

I scored a 90% on the Libertarian Purity Test.

I’m sure I lost points on that border and military thing. Open borders and no military is a nice fantasy, but like Communism it will never work with humans.

While I couldn’t sleep last night I started playing with the apache logs for VC. I’ve never really looked at the total DL numbers for Vicious Circle. Between direct downloads, iTunes and RSS it’s hard to keep track of them all. Fortunately the web server itself logs all the downloads. I ran the logs since the start of this year through a script that pulled out just the DL counts of each .mp3 file and threw it into a spreadsheet.

According to the server logs:

Since Jan 1st 2010, Vicious Circle has been downloaded 36,698 times. (All episodes)

Downloads by episode (Since 1/1/10) after the break.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m off to the convention center. If you’re here I’ll probably see you there.

… I can be an ass sometimes.