The Blarg

Hmmm, I started writing a post, apparently closed the firefox window, but I can’t find the auto-saved draft of the post. Arg. That means second time around it will be shorter and completely void of the wit I had included originally.

Went to doctor. Doctor hear heart beat. Doctor say good. Think 6.5-7 lbs. Head down, that good. Say “go walk, make baby come soon.”

Tuesday, new baseball videogame, me excited. I know baby coming, but baby understand. He like baseball too. I play other people on the internet, I try to beat them with Dodgers. Me hope baby sleep lots so daddy has time to play sometimes.

I beat Fred in tower game. You go play.

I caveman apparently.

Today I was thinking about the phrase “pass the buck.” The NEA likes to send out their magazine where they complain and complain about poor kids and minorities and how it’s the school’s job to fix everything. For example it’s not the parent’s fault that they live in the ghetto, it’s the man’s fault, and they pass the buck…

But then I started to think, how does that phrase make any sense? Pass a dollar? Huh? I looked it up, and it actually has a very interesting origin. Back in the day when people cheated at poker in saloons, they would take turns dealing. That responsibility was designated by a marker, often a knife, whose handle was made of “buck” horn. When they would change they would “pass the buck” indicating they had passed the responsibility of dealing on to the next person.

I’m sure there are more on that site, but what other phrases can you think of that have interesting origins?

Paddy gave me the idea today to start a pool for the birth of our child, and the wheels started turning. At first I thought I’d start a thread, and people could start guessing…but that seemed boring.

Instead, what if there is a wager!? My initial thoughts are as follows. Everyone can get in the pool for $5. The winning guess gets half, and the baby gets the other half (breast pumps are expensive! haha). Here’s how the guessing would work: Everyone would guess both a DATE and TIME on the hour. So for example, you could guess March 21st (the due date) at 5 pm. No 5:12 pm and 14 seconds nonsense. Then whoever is closest to the actual time of birth wins.

So who is interested? Five bucks seems reasonable. We could do paypal, you could hand me five dollars, or you could send me a $5 bill wrapped in a piece of paper through the mail (seems safe enough). How many takers before I make this official?

Edit: I suppose it could also be that the winner gets everything. I’ve never done a pool, so whatever people say goes. And yes Trent, the doctor says the due date is March 21st. They haven’t given us an update, and I think at this point, if they do, we’ll have to keep that a secret so the game stays fair.

Do you have a bunch of precious digital photos sitting on your hard drive? Maybe some important school papers that you might need in the future? If they are all sitting on a single hard drive, you’re putting yourself in SERIOUS danger. Hard drives can die in an instant, and everything you have can be lost. That means you need to constantly back-up your data. Here are a few ways to do that from cheap to more expensive, each with some pros and cons.

1) Burn to DVD

This is a really cheap method. You can buy excellent Taiyo-Yuden DVD+Rs for about $0.36 a piece. They hold a ton of data if you’re talking pictures, mp3s, or document files. If you want to get serious about your backing up, I’d also make sure you buy a good burner, like this samsung burner. After you’ve burned all your precious data, I would also make sure that you actually burned a good DVD. Sometimes because of either the media, the burner, or software, not every burn is a quality burn. For this I would use Nero Disc Speed. It’s a little more complicated for the average person, so if you’re using a program like Nero to burn things, check the “verify” button while it’s burning, then when it’s done it will read the DVD and make sure everything burned successfuly. Disc Speed does the same thing basically, but much more in-depth.

The problem with backing up to disc is that it’s not automatic. If you only back up to disc once a month, that means there is a chance you could lose an entire month of data/pictures/etc. And while DVDs are fairly reliable, they can become unreadable over time (hopefully if you take the steps I said above, good burner, good media, good verification, then this shouldn’t be a problem). To address these downfalls we have method 2.

2) Back-up to an External Hard Drive

This is a really easy method for the average person. Instead of backing up your information to a disc, now we’re going to back-up to a second hard drive. The key of course is something called “redundancy.” You want your valuable data to always exist in at least 2 places. Then if one place dies, you have your data somewhere else. Storing you stuff on 2 hard drives means that if one dies, you’ll have a chance to back-up before the 2nd one dies (which of course would be unlikely).

This can be done on the cheap with something like this. All you have to do is plug it in, and it should show up as a USB device, ready for all your files. Of course make sure you copy your files over, don’t move them. We want everything in two places. If you’re feeling adventureous you can make your own external hard drive. I love this AMS Venus external enclosure, and you can couple that with a good SATA hard drive. This gives you a little more flexibility that some of the pre-made external hard drives don’t. If you don’t want to go external of course you can just put another hard drive in your computer.

Once you have the 2nd hard drive though, you need to make back-ups automated. If you simply copy stuff to another hard drive once a month like you did with the DVD method, you still run the risk of losing something. Some of the external drives come with their own backup software, but personally I like one called Backup4all. The standard version will suit most people’s needs. You can easily setup which folders and files you want backed up and to what 2nd hard drive. You can tell it to back-up every single day at a time you’re not using the computer. If you leave it on all night, it can do it at 2 am. If you leave it on during the day, it can back-up at noon. The best part is that once you put new pictures or files on your computer, within 24 hours it will be safely in two places.

3) Raid Configuration

This is super geeky, but I thought I’d mention it since I just delved into this myself. Raid comes in many different varieties, but for what we’re talking about I’ll only mention Raid 1: Mirrored. What it does is take two hard drives, and it puts the exact same stuff on both. Right now in Windows I have a drive F: called Raid that is 500gb big, but in reality it is TWO 500gb drives inside my machine. Everything on that drive is instantly redundant. If one of them dies, I don’t lose all the data because it is backed up on the second drive. This is by far the most expensive and nerdy of the three methods, but just wanted you to know it exists.

So there you go. Get that data backed up and stop worrying about losing all your precious data!

I’m supposed to be working on the book, but I’m watching Yellowcard in HD from Letterman from over a year ago instead. The violin is so cool. I want more music in HD.

It’s been almost a week since my last post, which is pretty bad for the blarg. I apologize. Not a ton has happened since the last post. Went to Turlock over the weekend for Grandma’s 89th birthday. It was fun going up there. Got to see three of her brothers that I’ve never really met before. Got some good video of them and the almond orchards. Haven’t gotten around to editing it, but I just need to make time.

I finished my second league in The Show ‘07. I went 11-3 this season, same as the last, but once I again I lost in the World Series! As someone else accurately said, I am the Buffalo Bills. The new game comes out in less than two weeks. I’m not sure how, but I promise to myself to make time to play. One game a week!

Now I’m watching the “Brothers Forever” guy from American Idol this season. It’s so hilarious, I love it. Not only is the song catchy and gets stuck in your head, but he says a bunch of funny stuff.

Funny Part 1

Paula: “Why is Simon’s name on your hat?”
Guy with funny hat: “As long as there is free media, television, radio, people will speak the name of Simon.”

Funny Part 2

Guy with funny hat: “You are heaven’s chosen, to give chance to any talent…for free of charge.”

I love that this guy is such a supporter of capitalism, it’s great. OK, off to write the book now. Go Dodgers.

We took these over a month ago and I’m finally getting around to posting them. Overall we enjoyed the 3D ultrasound experience. It definitely lets you see the baby in a way that 2D ultrasounds can’t. As long as you don’t go in expecting to see what your baby will look like the day it is born, it’s a lot of fun. Both grandmothers to be went with us, and this was the first baby ultrasound they had ever seen, so that alone was worth it. I’ve got a DVD also, but for now pictures will have to suffice.

It was hard getting a picture of his face because of the way he was turned. The umbilical cord kept getting in the way too. This is probably the best shot of his face that we got.

One of my favorite pictures was this one of his foot. He’s got 5 toes on at least one foot!

During the last couple days I was able to finish converting my jury duty writings into a digital format on the laptop. In two weeks of jury duty I was able to scribble out almost 15,000 words. Currently that puts the book at:

Total Words: 86,500
Estimated Words Remaining: 20k-25k

Even when I finish, I have a feeling there will be some heavy editing. It seems silly to pour a year of your life into something like this and then not put some finishing touches on it. I don’t want to finish this, get it printed, and then find a silly mistake I could have fixed. Will it get done before the baby is born? I doubt it, but I’m certainly going to try.

There’s a raging abortion debate over at Trent’s website. Don’t miss out!

Sometime last week I got sick, and since then I’ve gotten worse. For the most part it’s just worn me out, but yesterday something happened that I’ve never experienced before. I go to blow my nose and expel some nasty green boogers, but instead of coming out my noise, they enter my right ear instead. INSTANT nausea. The room begins to spin and I have to sit down. The room continues moving as I get sweaty and begin to feel like I’m going to throw up. I swallow, and Stacie can hear the fluids suck back out of my ear from across the room. The spinning stops instantly. The rest of the night I felt like crap, but I am very careful when I blow my nose now!

I upgraded the computer in the arcade with my old “main” computer. All of the programs that run the arcade have since been updated, so it required a little researching and refreshing on the subject. I’m glad to report the arcade is back up and running with a little more horsepower than before. I’m also hoping it’s more stable to get through years and years of arcade playing.

We’re heading to Turlock next weekend for my grandmother’s 89th birthday. I have pretty much everything I need to take the new camera and get in some good test shots. I still need a good carrying case and a tripod, though I could survive without the latter. I bought a wideangle lens, which you can see in action here. I promise to post video that is non-technical soon.

That’s all for now.