• Flashback Friday: Veruca Salt–“Seether”

    October 7, 2011 / No Comments

    Veruca Salt were one of my favorite 90s bands. They are still around, but really haven’t been the same since Nina Gordon left. American Thighs, and Eight Arms to Hold You are amazing albums, too bad their newer stuff isn’t quite as great. I was lucky enough to see them twice in concert in the 90s. Seeing Nina Gordon crowd surf and almost losing her pants remains one of my great memories from the many great shows I have seen at First Ave.

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  • So long, and thanks for all the Gadgets Steve 

    October 6, 2011 / No Comments

    Yesterday is a day I will remember forever. Like many people, I heard of Steve Jobs death on an Apple device. I was shocked, but not surprised when the news alert popped up on my iPhone. I went straight to Twitter. The Tweets were non-stop all night, and everybody had great things to say about Jobs. We knew he was in bad shape to have to step down from CEO of Apple, but I don’t think anybody expected him to go so soon.

    I always have mixed feelings when everybody praises celebrities when they die. On one had, thousands of other great people that nobody knows about died yesterday too, but Steve Jobs was more than just a celebrity. He was our generations Thomas Edison. He may have just created gadgets, but his gadgets changed the world.

    I don’t really consider my self an Apple fanboy, but I am surround by Apple products. I am typing this up on my iMac, with my MacBook and iPad next to me, my iPhone in my pocket, and several iPods in my drawer. I don’t buy Apple products to be part of some cult, but because they are great products. Even if you have never owned an Apple products though, your products are still influenced by Apple. Who knows what Windows would be like today without being influenced by Apple. What would smart phones be like without the iPhone? Are there any other MP3 players than the iPod? Chances are we wouldn’t have tablets. Microsoft tried to make tablets, but failed. I’ve had an iPad since day 3, and couldn’t imagine not having one.

    One thing that isn’t being mentioned much, and is something we all should learn from Steve Jobs is his use of “alternative medicine” early on in his diagnosis. Steve had a rare form of pancreatic cancer that is actually quite treatable if caught soon enough, which he had. He chose to treat it with a special diet, and other alternative therapies prescribed by a naturopath. Once it was learned that that wasn’t working, he started using conventional medicines, but by then his chanced of beating it were slim to none. Would he have beat it if he used conventional medicine right away? We will never know, but his chances would have been better. Alternative medicine kills folks. If alternative medicine worked, it would be called medicine. Steve Jobs taught us all to “think different”, but when it comes to medicine, you don’t want different, you want the stuff that works.

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  • Anybody else notice Jupiter in the sky?

    October 3, 2011 / No Comments

    Now that the days are getting shorter, it’s always dark when I’m going to work in the morning. Our house faces south, so all winter long I will be greeted by Orion every morning when I walk out the door.

    About a week or so ago I noticed a really bright star just a bit to the west of Orion. It looked like it was close to the ecliptic, so there was a good chance that it was a planet. I just wasn’t sure which one. So like anything, when I’m curious about it I look it up. I have many star map apps on my phone, so when I got to work I looked it up, and it was Jupiter. So for the past week, every morning when I have been greeted by Orion, I have also said hello to Jupiter.

    Today on Universe Today, they have an article about that very bright star in the sky that is Jupiter. So if you’re up early every day like I am, look up and try to find Jupiter.

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  • Friday Flashback: Matthew Sweet–“Girlfriend”

    September 30, 2011 / No Comments

    Matthew Sweet released the Girlfriend album in 1991. I didn’t discover it until 1993 when my college roommate introduced him to me. I fell in love instantly, and then that year Matthew Sweet released another great album, Altered Beast. I’ve been a fan ever since despite his last few albums not being as strong, but all his 90s stuff is great. To this day, Girlfriend is my favorite road tripping album.

    His latest album, Modern Art, was just released this past Tuesday. I haven’t listened to is much yet, but it will be in my rotation for the next few weeks.

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  • My online backups

    September 29, 2011 / No Comments

    CrashPlanIn January I made a New Year’s resolution to get my computers backed up online. I’ve always been good about backups, but they were always kept local except for my pictures, which I burn to DVD and take a copy to work. There are many different online backup options these days, from Carbonite, Mozy, DropBox, and CrashPlan.

    I chose CrashPlan for four reasons. They have unlimited storage, I can backup multiple computers, they are affordable, and I can use their software to backup to multiple locations. That last reason is probably my favorite. All I need is the CrashPlan software running, and it will keep my systems backed up to both my NAS, and the CrashPlan servers. No need to run other backup software for my multiple backups.

    I started my backups in January and they were finally finished this week. It took nine months of continuously backing up to get everything up there, but now they are there, so it’s only incremental backups from here on. They also just recently released an iPhone app too. So now I have access to all my files from my phone too. It’s pretty sweet. I’m sure I will find many uses for it.

    I’m pretty anal about my backups, and for that reason I have never lost a file. I’ve had a few hard drives die, and it’s never been much of a problem because of my backups. I hate it when I hear my family and friends losing stuff because they don’t have proper backups. Storage is so cheap these days. There is no reason you shouldn’t have multiple backups of all your important files.

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