• Testing???

    So I made the jump to WordPress 5.0 and am trying out the Gutenberg editor. So far I’m not a fan, but then again I didn’t care for the old editor, so maybe it was time for an upgrade. Gutenberg seems to have a little big of a learning curve though. I was totally lost at first and had to look up how to use it on YouTube. I had the visual editor disabled so nothing was working at first. It took me an hour to figure that out. Now that things seem to be working I’ll try to stick with it. It does seem to be kind of cool.

  • Shiny Shiny

    Is it bad that I just put in for vacation for November’s Pokemon Go Community Day? It’s the first community day that I’ve been scheduled to work. I don’t want to miss my chance at getting a shiny Cyndaquil!

  • Cloud Backups

    I have data on every cloud storage site you can imagine, but to use any of them to back up ALL my data is just too damn expensive.

    I had everything on OneDrive and was paying for an Office 365 account back with it came with unlimited data. Then they quit the unlimited data plan, so I canceled my subscription. Then Amazon offered an unlimited plan option, so I uploaded everything there. After they quit their unlimited data plan I gave up finding an online backup for my data. I’ve been taking hard drives to work for my off site backup. While cheaper, it’s kind of a pain in the ass.

    A couple weeks ago SpiderOak opened up an unlimited plan for $150 a year, but signups were limited to a couple weeks. I’ve always been a fan of SpiderOak because of their security. $150 is only $12.50 a month. That’s a pretty good deal for unlimited storage, so I signed up. Hopefully they don’t change their mind on the unlimited storage.

    Back when I first uploaded all my data to OneDrive it took me six month. Now with faster internet and more data, it’s probably only going to take me four weeks to get everything up to SpiderOak. Faster internet is so great.

    SpiderOak also has a nice iOS app. It’ll be my new Dropbox once my backups are done. It’s just a nice piece of mind knowing all my backups are encrypted and safe online.

  • Things 3 is My Favorite To-Do Manager

    I’ve tried every to-do manager out there until three years ago when I tried Things. Things works perfect for me, and I haven’t had to look elsewhere for to-do management. I now live in things. Everything I need to do gets out of my head and into Things. From there it gets scheduled and done. I don’t have to be be constantly thinking of what needs to be done. Everything gets out of my head, but never forgotten about. Everybody works differently, and not all to-do managers work for everybody. It’s glorious when you find one that works though.

    Things 3 was recently released. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to upgrade or not. Things 2 was working so well for me. Well, today I but the bullet and bought Things 3 since it’s on sale until May 26th. I’m so glad I did. The new version is much nicer looking. It also now can see your calendar events, and you can add items with Siri. The one downside of Things is the price, but it’s so worth it if it’s the type of to-do manager you need.

  • Do people still pirate software?

    Today I was thinking, I don’t have any pirated or cracked software on any of my computers. Back when I was a poor college student, I pirated or cracked everything. You name it, I could get it for free. I was the go to guy for free software among my group of friends. It was almost a game. Most of the software I didn’t even use, I just wanted it for free. Nowadays I am so out of the loop, I’m not even sure where to go for it.

    Ok, I just went to one of my favorite sites for cracks, astalavista.box.sk, and it looks like it still works. It’s crazy that it’s still around, it’s probably been 20 years since I last used it.

    I don’t think people use the amount of software now that they did back then. You can do so much with just a web browser these days, and operating systems are so much more advanced too. About the only piece of software I pay for now is Photoshop. At $10 a month for Photoshop and Lightroom it seems like a great deal. Over time it’s probably not that great of deal, but I don’t really notice it and there isn’t really a comparable free alternate. Everything else I use is either free or low cost, but honestly, I don’t use that much software these days.

  • New Drobo

    A couple weeks ago I found a great deal on a used Drobo on Amazon. I got it for $350, when they normal go for $500 or so new. I also had a $250 in gift cards, so it only costed me $100. It was the Drobo 5N because I believe networked attached is the way to go. It was the main reason I stayed away from Drobos when they first came out. It took them a little bit to release network attached versions.

    I bought two 4 TB drives, which after the redundancy, gives me 3.5 TBs of backup. With three open drive bays, my backup needs should be covered for years to come.

    I still have my Synology NAS, and in most ways, it’s probably better than a Drobo. Synology has tons a great software that it can run, the Drobo is pretty limited. My Synology is only a 2 drive bay version, and it was running low on space, so I needed to do something. So now I have the best of both worlds. I has access to all the Synology servers and apps, and still have massive storage available on my Drobo.

    Even though both the Drobo and Synology run raid arrays and if one drive fails, I just have to put in a new drive and I’m good to go, all my data is safe; they still need to be backed up. If I ever have a fire, or some kind of hardware fail on either system, I could lose data. In the past I’ve been backing everything to the cloud on Amazon Drive, but it costs $60 a year, and in 2017 I’m going to try to limit some of my online spending. So now I’m using Carbon Copy Cloner to backup my Synology and Drobo and I’m storing the backup drives at work. It’s a little bit more work, but I’m saving $60 a year.

  • I’m Still an Evernote User

    So this past week everybody got their panties in a bunch over Evernote’s new privacy policy stating that certain Evernote employees can look into people’s notes. As soon it hit the news I knew Evernote would be backpedalling on it, and of course they did. I was never worried about this, because honestly, a rogue employee from any company could probably get access to your data if you don’t encrypt it. If you have data you want to keep 100% private, keep it off the internet; otherwise you have to put your trust in some company.

    I use and love Evernote. I store everything in it. I trust them. I’ve tried to switch to OneNote a few times. OneNote is really nice, but I just never liked it personally. I could try Google Keep, but I’ve lost trust in Google that they will keep it alive. In all of these solutions you are trusting another company with your data, either Evernote, Microsoft, or Google. I do have another option. I have a Synology NAS, so I could use the notes app on that. It looks and acts just like Evernote, but all the data stays on my servers. That sounds nice and all, but I feel safer with another company handling the backups. Sure I make backups, but there are some things I don’t want to have to worry about backing up.

    So for the time being I’m an Evernote user and love it. I hope all the bad press they have been getting lately doesn’t hurt them too bad. I’ve been a paying customer for years simply because I don’t want the company to go away.

  • Is it time to switch to Android?

    So like most people, I was pretty disappointed with the latest Apple announcements. I like Apple products, but I’m not a fanboy by far. I have Windows, and Linux machines, and even a Chromebook. I use and like everything. There are tons of things that I hate about Apple. In fact it’s been a long time since there has been a good Apple announcement. Every announcement these days seems to add limitations to their products. They just aren’t the same company without Steve Jobs.

    I’ve been an iPhone user since 2010 when the iPhone 4 finally came to Verizon. Back then the iPhone was clearly the best phone. Blackberrys sucked, and Android was in it’s infancy. Now Android has totally caught up and in many ways is better than iOS. So I went from an iPhone 4 to an iPhone 5 and now I have an iPhone 6. Every two years I’ve been getting a new iPhone. Every two years there have been enough improvements that I want the upgrade. I don’t think the technology is moving that fast anymore. All my previous upgrade my phone was feeling pretty sluggish when I was due for an upgrade. My iPhone 6 seems fine though. Plus, honestly I consider the iPhone 7 a downgrade. For some dumb reason they no longer have a 64 GB iPhone anymore. It’s either 32 GB or 128 GB. I don’t really need 128, but I would like more than 32. So an upgrade for me would be a loss of 32 GBs and a headphone jack. No thank you.

    Yeah, I’ll be keeping my iPhone 6 for a while, and maybe switching to Android if Apple quits making suitable phones. Just like their computers and laptops, Apple is seeming to make them worse and worse and only pleasing the fanboys that buy them just because they have the Apple logo on them.

  • Giving in to Facebook

    Over the weekend I realized that it’s probably my family that I hate, not Facebook. It’s not that I hate my family, I just hate the shit they post on Facebook. It’s the shit that use to get forwarded around in emails, now it just clutters up Facebook feeds.

    I’m a completionst, so I hate Facebook’s algorithms. I want to see everything. I am going to try to give up on that idea and let Facebook’s algorithms do their job. I’ve hidden a few posts I didn’t like, and my feed already seems better.

    I’ll probably no longer hear from a few friends since all they post is crap, but that’s probably better for my sanity anyway.

  • Algorithms

    This past week when Instagram introduced their new ugly logo, they also started messing with the feeds. From what I’ve read, not everybody got the new feeds, but I sure did. And I hate them. I don’t follow a ton of people on in Instagram, so it’s easy to keep up and not miss anything. With the new algorithm I have no idea where I left off. I check my Instagram in the morning and the first few pictures I already saw the day before. It’s just like Facebook now. You have to see scroll through shit you’ve already seen in hopes of finding something new. I guess it keeps people in the app longer, but it makes me not want to use it.

    I get the algorithm probably works well for people that follow lots of people and just dip in and out not caring if they miss anything. That’s not me. I suffer greatly from FOMO. I don’t like missing anything. That’s why I love RSS, and still live in my RSS reader when most people have given up on RSS.

    I just wish Facebook would give us a choice. It bugs me when companies think they know what we want. That’s one of the things I hate about Apple too. I love Apple products, but they always seem to be not quite what I want. I just want more choices and options.

    My solution for Instagram so far has been just to view it with Flipboard. My solution for Facebook has been mostly to just ignore it.