• 2016 Was the Year of Health Issues

    January 5, 2017 / No Comments

    2016 was the year of health problems for me. Nothing really major, but I saw more doctors in 2016 than any other single year in my life.

    It all started last January with a toothache. Toothaches have to be one of the most painful things. I went to my dentist and he couldn’t find anything wrong and gave me some pain pills. The pain never went away so I went to another dentist because mine was on vacation and she couldn’t see anything wrong. The pain never went away, so I thought maybe it was in my jaw, so I went to a doctor. There didn’t seem to be anything wrong with my jaw, but my blood pressure was high.

    My toothache finally went away, but then I started dealing with my blood pressure. I had an EKG done and something was off, so then I had a stress test done. Everything seemed fine then, but I was put on blood pressure medication. After a few visits the medication was doing it job and my blood pressure was great.

    Then I came down with gout. The cause was most likely my blood pressure meds. They took me off the blood pressure meds, and my lifestyle changes must have worked because my blood pressure was fine and I no longer need to be on blood pressure meds. Yay!

    So then during my next teeth cleaning, my dentist discovered an abscessed tooth. So the year ended with me getting a root canal to fix the problem that started in January.

    2017 starts with a clean bill of health for me. No pain and I’m on no meds. I have a dentist appointment next week. lets hope this year is better than the last.

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  • New Drobo

    December 31, 2016 / No Comments

    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.

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  • Why do Christmas Songs Suck?

    December 25, 2016 / No Comments

    I’m not a big fan of Christmas songs. I’m actually not a big Christmas fan at all. I find this time of year to be pretty depressing. All weekend I’ve had one Christmas song stuck in my head though. It’s probably one you don’t know. It’s this one:

    It’s from Tiny Stills. If you don’t know them you should. Kailynn West is basically Tiny Stills. She is the drummer of Motion City Soundtrack’s fiancé. Not only does she write great music, she is a great person.

    When Motion City Soundtrack announced their final tour I was so hoping that she would open for them. Sadly she didn’t, but she did open on Motion City Soundtrack’s very last show because of a cancellation. She wrote all about it here.

    When Motion City Soundtrack played their final Minnesota shows she did fly up to visit. I saw her just chilling out during the pre show vip activities. I wanted to say hi, but I was too shy and didn’t want to bother her. I did spot her in the picture that the band took during the show though.

    I wasn’t sure at first, so I asked her if that was her. She asked me if I was playing where’s Waldo with her.

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  • More Than Toast

    December 22, 2016 / No Comments

    In the early to mid 90s I was into almost every band On Lookout! Records. The Mr. T Experience were one of my favorites. Recently they stopped by Live from The Rock Room to play a few songs. The first one released was “More Than Toast”. This song sure brings back some memories for me.

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  • I’m Still an Evernote User

    December 22, 2016 / No Comments

    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.

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