It took me about one week to backup 23+ GB of my data to Mozy. After doing some more reading, I decided that I really was not comfortable with Mozy having the keys to decrypting my files. Mozy gives you an option to use their encryption key or to provide your own. As you can guess, they really want you to use theirs which is what I did the first time around. First time around you ask, yep, to change your mind later requires you to delete your Mozy backup and start over. Note, this makes sense as the encryption actually takes place on your local computer before the files are sent to Mozy. There is no provided method to change encryption keys on data already backed up nor should you expect them to provide one as this would require computer resources on their site to accomplish this. You’d also have to provide them with the new key. Now ask yourself, if you give them the new key, what have you really accomplished?

I deleted my backup and started over last Sunday evening. It’s taken me almost six days to get everything re-encrypted and backed up on their site. The long poll is the limit that Mozy seems to place on uploading files. They cap out your upload to 1Mbit/sec. even though I have more bandwidth. Add to this the time it takes to encrypt each file, break it apart into smaller chunks and then verify that what was sent is actually what was received and you get 6 days to backup 23GBs of data.

I think I finally see the light

Over the last two weeks, my blogs seem to be getting visited by some nasty spiders.  I’m getting spam in my blog comments.  They don’t appear as I have my comments set to moderated but it’s still a pain.  Well tonight, I hope I’ve put a dent into this problem by adding Captcha images to blog postings.  Sorry, you now have to also enter a sequence of letters/numbers into a prompt before you can submit a comment to one of my blog entries.

My Jawbone headset gave up the ghost about two months ago. It stopped holding a charge. A full charge gave me 15 minutes at best talk time. I finally got around to calling Jawbone tech support. I’ve got to say that I was surprised to not be on hold for hours. My call was answered in a minute or two. The tech asked a couple questions and wanted me to either e-mail of fax a copy of my receipt.  He sent me a support ticket to attach the receipt to.

I received the e-mail, tracked down the receipt and e-mailed them back. Within 25 minutes I got another e-mail stating they received my receipt. I had two options, wait a day or two for another e-mail with RMA instructions and send mine in or call back and talk with their order fulfillment department, provide a credit card and get a new one sent out. I opted for the quicker path. They charged me $99 and once they get my DOA one back they will credit my card.

All and all I’d say they have good customer service. My only issues were - no upgrade path to the newer model (I.E. pay the difference, etc.) and the fact that I had to repeat all my contact information, etc. that I gave to the tech support department to the fulfillment department. Come on guys, get with the information age and share one common database of customer information.

Last night I got a call around 7 p.m. asking me when I’m going to be home. Note, I normally get home around 7:15 or so. What my loving wife wanted me to do was stop somewhere on the way home and pickup dinner. We already had dinner plans, I.E. a chicken, etc. I asked about the chicken and was told that because I’m not already home, it’s burnt. ???? She said the instructions said to heat the chicken for 20 minutes and then serve. The next question I asked was when did she put it into the oven? Without loosing a breath she said 6 p.m.

If you’ve followed me this far and done your math, the chicken had been in the oven for one hour but should have only been in for 20 minutes. Lesson learned, over cooking something for 3x as long as the directions state seems to burn the food.

Any idea what’s for dessert?

Tonight’s dinner was a treat from down south. It started out as meatloaf but ended up Cajun cooked. On the positive side, I did not eat much so that should work in my favor for today’s calorie intake. On the other hand after tonight’s positive comments about her cooking prowess, I think my loving wife is going to sabotage my diet. She’s off to the grocery and if I’ll bet that she’ll buy me some potato chips, cottage cheese, and Klondike bars.

For the last eight years or so my life’s work has been done on a laptop’s hard drive. I’ve had a couple bad crashes and lost things but luckily, I’ve not lost everything. I try to do backups to an external drive but that does not happen as regularly as it should. Someone I know had their house burn down. Nobody was home at the time and nobody was hurt, but they lost everything. Insurance will replace the house, clothing, car, computers, etc. But the real loss was their electronic lives. They did backups to DVDs and an external drive but all of that was also in the house. This got me to think about my life a bit.

I finally decided to take the plunge and start backing up to an internet backup service. I did some research and most seem to offer similar features. The main requirement for me is a native Mac client. This cut down the list. I finally choose Mozy. Mozy offers an unlimited amount of storage for a fixed fee of $4.95 per month. That said, you’re limited by your internet connection and the software’s bandwidth throttling. At best, you get about 1Mbits/sec. According to their site you can backup around 9GB per day.

Most of the time you should not be backing up that much data as the software only backs up files that have changed since the last backup. The long poll is the first full backup. In my case it’s going to take a bit. I’m just backing up my user directory which has photos, iTunes, etc. I broke it down into a critical first backup, then added photos, next iTunes, and finally work stuff. After each backup completes, I add in the next grouping of files to be backed up. Once every thing’s backed up, the software runs based on a set schedule and internet access. I can travel and still have backups performed. I can grab something that was backed up via the internet and pull it down to a different computer.

Critical first backup 1.1GB

+ Photos = 10.4GB

+ iTunes = 11.2GB

+ Work = 20.9GB or 23,245 files.

My whole home directory = 53.4GB which is mostly virtual machine images, backup of my main 4GB thumb drive, German T.V. downloaded for Petra, and other misc software packages/downloads.

I guess my digital life is bigger than my real life. Petra has her basement, I have my hard drive.

I just got a voice mail from the Dermatologist office. The mole that was biopsied was determined to be a dysplastic nevus. When they did the biopsy, they cut out the whole mole. The good part is that there is nothing else to do. They asked that I keep coming back each year for a checkup and to do a monthly self exam to see if any new moles appear. They also want me to notice if the one’s I already have change, etc.

I knew they would find a reason to get me to come back to cut more chunks out of me

Today Apple announced the iPhone 3G that will be available July 11th. As you can guess, I’ve waited for a year for the second generation phone to ship and now I really want one. I’m going to probibly wait until the beginning of August to pick one up but that’s about as long as I’ll make it.

Yes, I feel like a junkie needing his next fix. Isn’t technology cool

I thought Jonathan learned a hard lesson yesterday. I also found out who got my genes for tearing things apart. Jonathan left the laptop that I gave to him and Rebecca in his room where his little brother could get it. Timothy decided to see just how many keys he could pull off. It looked like a plucked chicken when he was done.  Jonathan’s still missing a couple keys and I need to perform some surgery to fix a couple of them. I told him that until he finds all of the keys, he’ll be unable to use it.

I told both of them that this is why I have no desire to buy them a better computer. To this, Jonathan brought out a keyboard and plugged it in. I hate seeing him pulling the same stunts that I did to my parents but I’ve got to give him credit for problem solving.

So what really is tennis elbow? I ask as Friday May 29th, I finally went to the doctors office for a dull pain that’s been in my right elbow. It all started when Petra talked me into paying a game of Racketball. Note, this was the first time I picked up a racket in almost 14 years. Also note that both of us are competitive So, I won the game after almost 90 minutes of play but lost in the sense that I’ve killed my elbow.

My first thought was I caused the injury when I ran into the wall that just jumped in front of me. My doctor thinks that it was due to the random motions that I did after not playing for so long. She prescribed Nabumetone (NSAID) to get the inflammation down. I’d suggest that you don’t read the warning label on this one. It’s as if the person filling out the form decided to check every box.

All said and done, I’ve not been able to swim, lift weights, or even go to yoga class. Now understand that my lazy side is not at all hurt by this fact. The other part of me that wants to loose weight is finding it quite hard to do with limited exercise.