Category Archives: Technology

Technology

Geeking Out over a Hard Drive Bay

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I held on to various SATA hard drives because I geek out over always protecting my data. I backup to the cloud, but I also keep at least two copies of all data on separate hard drives at home (as well as one in the cloud with Carbonite), regularly backing them up to each other, sort of as a manual “RAID.” While looking for a USB hub for the large number of external drives that I’ve amassed, I came across this 10-bay hard drive hub. This thing will pay for itself!

Instead of TEN separate external hard drive powers and USB drives, I only need one USB port and one power station (a standard one as opposed to ten proprietary ones). I literally broke open all of the remaining large denomination hard drives I have (except for one that is a logical 16TB drive made up of two 8TB drives). There is individual power for each drive, so I can actually turn some of them off for MONTHS if I want to, saving even more energy and having them at the ready for synchronizing (with BeyondCompare software) at my convenience.

Pictured here next to a printer that I usually leave covered in a corner of my home office in part to keep it from being in the sun, is the “Big Kahuna” 16TB drive on top of the ten-drive bay.

Bike, Health, Outdoors, Scooter, Technology

My first EV!

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My first electric vehicle was a very affordable scooter. It’s powerful (enough) and very convenient. I’m already thinking of creative ways to use it. I can go to doctor and dentist appointments nearby, down to the marina to row, and maybe even concoct a way to transport dogs in their fully enclosed wagon! It might be a stretch, but I could even transport my kayak on its cart down to the waterfront with this!

My new GoPro is going to go well with this as well!

Put put!

Test driving with the dog cart (no dogs were hurt in the making of this video). Notice it’s empty because I did not want to risk it with the dogs even in this situation, but at least I know there’s enough power to do this.

First ride with Polar in a makeshift front poncho. I will soon order a comfortable dog poncho for the front for him and a few other of the more adventurous dogs that like to travel.

Technology, Television

Faster than the Speed of Light (literally)

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My friend in NYC just sent me an article today about neutrinos (subatomic particles) that travel have tested repeated to be able to travel faster than the speed of light (which physically is impossible for matter to do), at Gran Sasso’s underground laboratories in Europe.

I’ve been watching a lot of  science fiction and a series about the universe with Stephen Hawking, in which I learned that he too is a Star Trek fan.  Some of the episodes have dealt with the ramifications of speed and time in different parts of the universe, such as close to a super black hole, like at the center of our galaxy (and presumably most).

So if matter cannot travel faster than the speed of light, my question, is:  Could we theoretically cover a spaceship with (fast-moving) neutrinos and then launch it to go ten times the speed of light (warp 10), for example?  I realize it would affect the time of the people inside, unless some kind of chronometer was able to adjust for that, but that would certainly alleviate the problem of our short lifespans in getting us to other solar systems, where there is bound to be other intelligent life.

Technology

Hot Tub Woes

So I love looking for inexpensive bargains, especially to spruce up the backyard.  Mostly I find things at the thrift store that are weather-resistant that I can hang up or display from my kitchen nook to make me feel happy when I see them, and also to entertain my niece and nephew when they come around.  At Big Lots I found these really cute floating flowers for a buck each, so I bought a half dozen.  Within the first few minutes, Bobby asked me where the red one had gone, and I wasn’t sure if it had been one that we put back or not.  We then noticed a bunch of the other ones start to fall apart as the glue that adhered the lily pads to the flowers and leaves were weakened by the water and chemicals, so it didn’t seem to work all that well.  Added to this mixture was my probably not-so-brilliant idea of putting bath OILS in the hot tub. They had a nice vanilla cupcake scent, but the side effect was a virtual bubble bath that went out of control when we turned on the jets, even though this was decidedly not a bubble-bath product.

So after having replaced the most expensive part of the hot tub in recent months ($500 not including labor!), I called the repair guy again.  He doesn’t give free estimates, but I had to bit the bullet.  I was terrified that the similar symptoms of “low flow” (which is LF on the display) meant I was in big trouble, and that perhaps something had burned out and wasn’t working correctly because the displacement of water when a few big people leave the hot tub can cause the water level to drop dramatically.  That may have contributed to the problem the last time, although the hot tub was manufactured seven years ago (even if five of those years it sat in a warehouse).

Fortunately the hot tub repairman advised us never to use those damn dollar flowers anymore, because that damn red flower that disappeared almost instantly had brought our hot tub to a screeching halt for weeks.  Lesson learned!

We were also advised that bath oils are not the same as hot tub scents, so I won’t try to go cheap on that again, either!

Politics, Technology

Wieners in DC

I definitely respect Wiener for exposing (sorry) the ugly side of politics over the many years he was in Washington.

Democrats take the position of resigning when they are caught with their pants off (even if there is no insinuation of physical contact with women on the other side of the country), but there is something that precious few talk show pundits have been discussing in recent weeks.  The difference between the Wiener scandal and all of the other, ignoble, far more egregious and often criminal cases of salacious sexual impropriety among Repubs, is solely that the Repubs have not been caught engaging in their exploits on camera.  The pictures went viral because they could go viral.  It was far too easy for Wiener to have accidentally mixed his public photo cache with his very private cache.  He doesn’t sound like the most tech-savvy guy in the world to begin with.

In principle, I’m not surprised how many people have x-rated photos of themselves online, even headless ones and even among heterosexuals, although I would wager that far fewer women are asking to see body parts before taking someone in the ether very seriously.  I’m not surprised that the exchange of pictures is not dominated by teenagers, as some reports have recently shown, but let’s remember that Anthony Wiener was not in Congress lecturing others about sexual morality and he was certainly not preaching his views to the public about what people should do in their private lives.

I wish Wiener luck on his new marriage and prospective fatherhood.  I don’t think they should try to make him to go rehab.  No no no.

Technology

My Droid can’t spell “Droid”.

Further to my rants about the auto-correction on my new Android phone, I’m surprised that every single time I type in the word “Droid” I get “agreed”.  I realize that this technology is improving, and that this new phone probably needs to get used to some of the colloquialisms I use, but I can’t believe this is forcing me to remember some of the alternatives when I don’t notice the changes until later.

It’s also amazing to me how curse words are never in the dictionary, even when they are REAL words, like “shit”.  It seems a bit paternalistic to me.

Technology

How Nerdy Am I?

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I am kind of embarrassed that I literally carry around five devices at the moment:

  1. Droid is my main phone.
  2. Torch blackberry for work.
  3. Iphone 3G which I’m using as an Itouch.
  4. 80G Ipod with well over 10,000 songs.
  5. Fancy Nikon digital camera.

I don’t see how I can really consolidate these things in the near future, and because no one but the Ipad really seems to give a rat’s ass about increasing battery life, I don’t know if I would want one device to carry that burden.  Plus, if my data was not synched or lost on all of them, I’d be lost if one device was truly stolen.

Bears, Gay, Technology

Anyone using Scruff/Grindr?

I’m finding them interesting.  I’ve been using my friend’s old Iphone 3G as an Itouch and remember some of the cool things about the iphone that I used to enjoy when I was provided one for free at work.  My Droid has a couple of programs which try to do the same kind of GPS-gay-locating thing like Encountr and Purpll, but neither of them really have any critical mass, even in this gay Mecca of the Bay Area.

Celebrities, Photos, Technology, Television

Bye-bye Cable Television

Most of what I watch is Hulu, CNN Video, NYTimes video, ComedyCentral.com, LogoOnline and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show.  So, inspired by a friend who has Netflix (like I used to ) and Hulu “premium” (I only use Hulu for many fewer dollars per month than what Comcast and other cable companies charge for television, I discontinued my cable tv service and I’m saving $100/month. I literally watch all of my shows on one pc or another (usually a laptop I bring around the house with me, even when I’m cooking and doing other chores).  I watch everything online anyway and now I have a spare monitor my daughter can use on her laptop to use as an extra television, although she’s a little upset that we no longer have television in the living room.  I’ve found playing dvd’s on laptops is far more reliable than the cheap dvd players I’ve bought in stores anyway, so there was no point in letting my flat screen TV languish.  Therefore, it is main PC monitor now!  As per this picture, it dominates my desk.  I don’t have it all worked out yet, as I still need to fix the resolution with drivers.  However, the manufacture web site “Element Electronics” doesn’t seem to have Windows 7 drivers for their television, probably because they didn’t expect a geek like me to use it as a main monitor on a daily basis.