-
Smell Ya Later 2008
This is a pretty cool year in review video.
-
Spit Goes Clink
I so love XKCD.
-
Saving Money
It was a pretty expensive December for us, with Christmas, my truck breaking down, and record snowfalls requiring a snowblower. Thankfully we have a nice chunk of cash is savings.
I think saving money is just as addictive as spending it. Back in my college years I had the problem of spending too much. I got into a little credit card debt. It wasn’t too bad, but bad enough that I learned my lesson. When we wanted to move into a house we couldn’t because of my credit cards. We settled for a mobile home and vowed to knock out the credit cards.
They have been paid off for quite a few years now, and we have been in our house for a year and a half. Now, every payday, I look forward to added more to our savings. It’s a great feeling to know that if something disastrous were to happen, we would probably be ok money wise.
I am not much for New Year’s resolutions, but I do plan of trying to put more money into our savings. I calculated that we put about 15% of our income into savings last year. My goal it to try and put 20-25% into savings this year.
-
Backup Day
It’s the beginning of a new year, which means today is major backup day. I am kind of a backup nut. Mostly what I worry about are my photos, they aren’t replaceable. All my photos are automatically backed up to my NAS every night, so I have two copies of everything at home. I also back up the full quality photos on my webserver, and lower quality versions that I share with family on PicasaWeb and Shutterfly. Around the first of the year I burn all my photos to DVD and bring it to work. I have a stack of DVDs at work. One from each year and each containing all my digital photos at that time. It leaves me plenty of copies should a disc go bad.
Everybody needs a backup plan if for nothing else there photos. Every hard drive is going to die someday. With photos all going digital, they aren’t going to last as long as those old prints and negatives. My backup strategy my seem a bit extreme, but it really takes no time on my part.
I use Cobian Backup on my Windows Machine to backup my photos and other things to my NAS and then to my webserver. There are a ton of free online storage sites, but I just use my webserver since I have it anyway. It gives me more control and don’t have as many limitations. I use ChronoSync to do the backups on my Macs.
I use Google’s Picasa to manage my photos on my PC. I use it to upload photos to PicasaWeb and Shutterfly. I also use it to burn my backup DVDs.
If you don’t have a backup strategy, it should be your New Year’s resolution. You wouldn’t want to lose all your photos when your hard drive fails.
-
Back Listening to the Daily Source Code
Ok, I had second thoughts about unsubscribing from the Daily Source Code. While I disagree on a lot of things Adam says, I still think it’s important to hear both sides of topics. It’s not good to only listen to people you agree with. I am not going to go as far as to listen to idiots like Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, or Rush Limbaugh, but Adam Curry I can easily handle.
I started listening to his show near the beginning of podcasting back in October of 2004, I haven’t missed an episode since. I shouldn’t let one issue change that.
Adam just hit a sore spot playing that Jenny McCarthy clip. Most of the time I couldn’t care less what crazy stuff you believe in. There are a few sad stories of people that die because they choose some “Alternative” form of medicine instead of some real medicine that actually works. Those stories are sad, but it was that persons choice. When it’s your child, you are messing with someone else’s life.
Childhood vaccines are very important. Like always there is some risk, but it’s very little, and there is no chance at getting Autism. Vaccines have been proven time and time not to cause Autism. Adam for the most part is against Gardasil. I personally don’t know much about that one, so I am not sure where I stand on that one. I am not big of putting drugs in my body unless then are needed. I don’t get a flu shot. I am healthy enough that the flu isn’t going to kill me, but childhood vaccines fall into that needed category for me.
One thing that helped changed my mind was that Adam Curry actually spent the time to leave a comment on my blog. My little blog that almost nobody reads, and he took a few seconds out of his life to read and comment. That meant something to me. I will continue to listen to his show, but I will probably still fast forward the music. Just not my type of music for the most part Adam.
-
No More Daily Source Code For Me
I have been listening to Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code since October 2004. Back then when podcasting was new and fresh, his show was pretty good. It was a good place to lean about new podcasts and new things going on in the space.
Ever since he started Podshow the show has gone downhill. The only reason I kept on listening was because half the show was some crap music that I could fast forward through, so it wasn’t wasting much of my time.
Now, his shows are getting longer and longer, and all he ever talks about are his crazy conspiracy theories. People that believe in crazy conspiracies drive me crazy. He is convinced that since we still have winter, global warming doesn’t exist. He thing our government blew up the World Trade Center. He is also a crazy antivaxxer.
The last episode I listened to was episode 812, I unsubscribed after that. I can’t take his crap anymore. He played a clip of Jenny McCarthy spewing nonsense about how Vaccinations cause Autism. He believed all the crap she said. I will not support anybody that is against vaccines.
Vaccines have been proven time and time again not to cause autism. Antivaxxers like Jenny McCarthy are causing a great deal of harm by spreading misinformation and encouraging parents not to have their kids vaccinated, which is increasing the spread of Measles.
It’s often hard to find non-biased information on the Internet. Stopjenny.com is a good place to find information about the truths about vaccines and how wrong jenny McCarthy is. Antivaxxers probably think the site is nonsense, but who would you rather believe, doctors & scientists, or a Playboy Model?
-
Happy Holidays
We just got home from celebrating Christmas with my family. I am glad it’s over. I am not a huge fan of Christmas. I think it’s over commercialized, and I really don’t like buy things for people, or receiving things. I feel kinda guilty for all the food and gifts we had for Christmas. I am thankful for all we have, but there are so many less fortunate people out there. I wish I could do more to help them out.
Then there is the whole religion part of Christmas. I am not a big fan of religion. I quit believing in God around the same time that I quit believing in Santa Claus. My Mom would crap her pants if she knew. I just go along with the church thing to make her happy. I feel like I am in the closest or something. I know most Christians are good people, but something really creeps me out about church. Something about being around that many people that believe in supernatural beings.
Traveling is the other thing that kinda sucks about Christmas. You never know what the roads are going to be like. We saw eight cars in the ditch on the way to our parent’s places. One of the accidents was really bad, three dead and one critical; what a way to wreck a family’s Christmas. On the way home we saw four cars in the ditch. I am happy to be home without any travel planned until March probably.
I hope you all had a wonderful Holiday Season. Ours was all good.
-
Weekend of Shoveling and Hacking
What have I done this weekend so far? Let’s see. I shoveled, then I shoveled, after that I shoveled. Since I wont get my snowblower until Tuesday, I need to keep up with the shoveling so it doesn’t get out of hand like last weekend.
I also tried to get my truck started. Last weekend when it got buried with snow the engine got packed full of snow and it hasn’t started since. I got it into the garage and got it warmed up, but it still didn’t start. I should try changing the plugs, but man, they look are to get to, and it’s pretty damn cold out to be doing it. I think I would rather pay someone to get my truck running again. I can’t and it can’t get in until Tuesday, so I will worry about it next week. I wish I could fix cars like I can fix computers.
I did get a chance to work on other people computers last night. Not that I like to do it too often, every once it a while isn’t too bad. Her Aunt had her basement flood a few months back. The computer was up, but the whole surge protector was under water, so they were sure what was working and what wasn’t.
Turns out, everything was working fine. They also finally got cable out in the boonies where they live, so I hooked them up with one of my old wireless routers and got their network setup and running.
They also conveniently forgot their login password for their desktop PC. I never forget my passwords, so I have never really had the opportunity to crack a windows login password. It’s actually pretty easy. What stumped me a little is that it is a little different on XP Pro than it is on XP Home.
-
Blizzard of 2008
Things are starting to return to normal around here. You probably heard that we got tons of snow on Sunday.
Sunday night was crazy. I thought I would be able to make it home from work because I have four-wheel drive. The main roads in town weren’t so bad, but when I had to turn off them, that’s when I got into trouble. It was tough going, but I was making it through until I had to turn onto the street we live on. They actually had our street plowed, so there was a hugh bank blocking it. The visibility was so bad I didn’t see it until I hit it. Four-wheel drive is no good when the snow is up to the hood.
I was only a half block from our house, so I just ran home and got a shovel. I started digging the Jeep out and it wasn’t but a couple minutes and I had someone else come over and help, and then a few minutes later someone showed up with a truck to pull the Jeep out. One thing about North Dakotans is that they are pretty nice and willing to help someone out in general.
When I got home, I had to walk through waste deep snow to try and get our front door open. I opened the garage door and the drifts were chest high. I shoveled enough to get the Jeep into the garage. I was pooped and called it a night. I was going to spend all day Monday shoveling.
That evening, one of our neighbors came by with his snowblower, and blew us out. That saved me hours of backbreaking work. We will be investing in a snowblower now. We have just been spoiled. We haven’t had a snow storm like this in quite some time.
-
Snow and Cold On Its Way
Just checked the weather report and we got a near 100% chance of snow this weekend. I am not a weather geek and I don’t follow the reports all too often, but I have never seen a “near 100%” chance of anything. So I guess that means there is a good chance at some snow. Actually, they are saying we could possible get up too 16 inches of the white stuff. That should be fun to dig out of.
It’s not going to be a fun weekend, but next week looks worse. The high for Monday is suppose to be -10ยบ. lets just hope it’s not windy. I would much rather have a ton of snow over the sub-zero temps. I would also rather deal with our winters and have nice summers over having super hot summers.