Omar’s been futzing with different backup strategies lately, so I’ll share mine. My solution is based around a few requirements:

• Not a subscription – no more monthly/annual fees.
• Distributed geographically – California has earthquakes.
• Provides incremental backups.
• I don’t have to do anything. It just works.

I’ve been using my solution since November 2004 and it’s worked out pretty well. This is basically how it works:

1. My important documents, photos, and music files are synced via FolderShare (P2P) between my desktop computer at work, my laptop, my desktop computer at home, and a $150 machine I bought from ebay in my parent’s basement in Long Island, NY. FolderShare is frickin’ awesome – whenever you add/change/delete a file, it automatically replicates it to all the other machines.
2. The PC in my parent’s basement performs an incremental backup to itself 4 days a day using an old copy of Retrospect that I bought.

That’s it!

Here’s a gratuitous diagram that shows FolderShare at work (red dotted lines):

Why the PC in NY? Well, obviously there’s the geo-thing: what are the chances of an earthquake leveling California and a hurricane that destroys NY in the same week? Also, FolderShare is so efficient that if you make some changes to a file that you didn’t intend – it replicates the those changes to all your other machines. With the PC in NY, I can revert to a version of the file from earlier in the day.

My fiancee and I share a FolderShare library as well, and that’s also shared to the PC in NY so it also gets backed up. Basically, anything that I want backed up is shared with this PC.

Aside from backups, the PC in NY is actually useful for work purposes from time to time as it’s not behind any proxies. Earlier this year, I needed to check a file that was on our website, but we weren’t sure if our proxies were caching it – so I RDP’ed into my PC in NY and checked it out. (And sure enough, it was a proxy problem.)

Finally, I get free monitoring – the other day my dad called me because the PC in NY’s hard drive didn’t make any noise at 11pm like it usually does. It turns out that it had gotten stuck rebooting due to some automatic update. One hard reset later, it was back to normal.

Well, there you have it – my backup strategy.

MercuryNews.com | 07/27/2006 | Intel unveils powerful new computer chip
Intel kicked its corporate turnaround plan into high gear Thursday with the launch of its long-awaited Core 2 Duo, a line of computer chips that boast up to 40 percent more processing power while using 40 percent less electricity than the company’s previous chips.

The Core 2 Duo, so named because it squeezes two computing brains onto a single microprocessor, allows the world’s largest chip maker to leapfrog past its archrival, Advanced Micro Devices, in the race to give customers better chips to run computer servers, desktop and laptop computers.

Ah, no wonder Dell was having all those crazy sales on their current desktops. In retrospect, buying one last week probably wasn’t the best idea! Oops! Guess I should’ve kept a closer eye to Intel’s product roadmap instead of looking at discount codes.

Finally, 2 weeks after my Audiovox 5600 was stolen, I received a new SIM card from Cingular. While I take my time to figure out why my next phone strategy will be, I reverted to using an old SE T616 that I had bought from Omar almost 2.5 years ago.

It’s kind of sad ironically – I actually miss using this phone!

Why?

1. It’s smaller than the 5600 that I was using.
2. It has far better battery life than the 5600.
3. It’s far more reliable for certain tasks than my 5600 – like placing and receiving phone calls. (All the Smartphones I’ve ever used seem to have problems doing that with 99.999% reliability.)
4. Being able to take pictures reliably – my 5600 often reports that it is out of memory. I don’t understand why.
5. Being able to turn off the phone in under 2 minutes.

But there are definitely things I miss about my 5600 – Smartphone:

1. Being able to automatically sync with near perfection to my Outlook calendar – and thus, being able to turn on/off the audible ringer based on whether I’m in a meeting or not.
2. Far nicer screen.
3. USB based charging.
4. Web browing – PocketIE isn’t great… but it’s better than nothing!

Personally, I’d like to switch to Sprint. The free phone they’ve given me has had an awesome data transfer rate on their EV-DO network. I hope they start offering more Smartphones in the near future!

gizmag Article: The Yelpie portable outdoor lightweight personal safe

The US$75 Yelpie is a Portable Outdoor Security Device that allows users the secure their belongings at the beach, camping, fishing, swimming pool, sporting fields, gymnasiums etc – all those places where someone can target your belongings while your back is momentarily turned. The Yelpie is a portable personal, lightweight, electronic safe about the size of a shoebox. Users place their valuables inside, and enter a PIN number to lock and arm it, then Motion sensors inside detect unauthorized movement and emit a continuous 90 decibel alarm if it is moved.

Sadly, I don’t think this would’ve prevented the theft of my phone and camera. Where we were at, even if we had heard the alarm, it would’ve been pretty tricky to get back to the spot due to the rock hazard. Nonetheless… I might just buy it

Yesterday I had to reboot my work pc at least 3 times because explorer.exe was getting slow, or generally weird things were happening.

So this morning, the first thing I did when I got to work was reformat my computer.

WOW.

I feel like I just got a new machine. It’s so much faster now. Amazing.

I sure hope this kind of scenario is fixed in Vista.

Update: I tried the same trick on my pokey Toshiba M200. No such luck. Doh.

I want to create a short (embeddable) video to show off a feature I’m working on.

Would anyone care to share what tools they recommend for doing something like that? Free would be a great price point.

Dear Cingular,

As I informed you on Friday 6/23, my cell phone was stolen while I was at the beach in Maui. At that time I asked you to terminate service to the SIM card in question. On Saturday and Sunday, your customer service was unavailable.

On Monday 6/26, I asked that you send me a new SIM card so that I could use the service that I’m paying for already. The agent gave me a hard sell to switch my account to a Cingular account from my current AT&T Wireless era plan. Being that I’d prefer not to lose unlimited incoming SMS messages, I declined. At that point, I was told that I would have to wait more than 10 business days to get my SIM card – and that signing a new contract would eliminate this. Needless to say, I declined. The agent then offered me “priority shipping” for $14.95.

Now… “priority” at the local USPS is only $4.05 – and I’m pretty sure a SIM card can fit in an envelope. (In fact, I know because you guys sent me one when mine was damaged earlier in February!) After I paid, I inquired how that would speed up shipping – and the agent could not answer the question. I guess that’s my fault for expecting something for my money.

Today, I received an email saying that my SIM card would be backordered with no ETA. Of course, it is now the weekend and customer service won’t be available until Monday morning. At which point I probably won’t get an answer anyway. And of course, I’ve now paid for a week without service or use of my phone number.

Fortunately, I have this free cell phone from Sprint. If it weren’t for the fact that Sprint has no good Windows-powered Smartphones, I’d switch to them in a heartbeat. At this point – I might very well.

Cingular, I’ve been a customer since October 2002. Why do you make it easier for me to switch to another carrier than to get a SIM card so that I can use my phone?

My semi-mandatory spring break is winding to close. Why was it semi-mandatory? In part because I had accrued too many hours of vacation time (other Softies would do a spit take when they found out how much I had) and in part because my family was here this week.

In some ways, I’m glad to be going back to work. Playing chauffeur for your parents for a week isn’t exactly a vacation either. In fact, I was actually in the office on Thursday to perform a critical time sensitive task, and to restore some balance in my work/life balance – there was too much life.

That said, I got a whole bunch of personal chores done this week, including retinting some of my car windows, cleaning up my personal email account, cleaning up my apartment, buying some new shirts (non-Polo), and working on my written defense on a traffic ticket I got earlier this year.

I also reached 60,000 miles on my car:

That’s not a lot of miles considering I got my car on 5.7 years ago. That’s only about 10.5k miles a year. In California. I guess that shows how close I live to work – as opposed to this guy who drives 370 miles to work and back everyday!

I hope to update this blog more regularly moving forwards – let’s see if I find the time!