Did you vote? I did. Say yes if you have…

I know this is a long post, but I truly encourage you to read through this and ask questions since this can be a severe problem. Just trying to bring some computer literacy to the masses.

It’s Halloween, but not much is scarier than going to your computer hitting the switch and getting one of a set of outcomes…you hear an unnatural clicking coming from your computer, nothing is coming on, or maybe sparks!!  I hear over and over about people who weren’t prepared for their computers to go down, and years of data is lost. Just to get you to understand the magnitude of backing up your data, here’s some stats that can help you to understand:

• 43% of computer users loose valuable data due to accidental deletion, and that is with the use of a Recycle Bin
• Only 3 out of every 100 stolen laptops are ever recovered
• Up to 13% of hard drives fail in their first year of use
• The average lifespan of a “non-server grade” hard drive is approximately 5 years
• CD-Rs have historically had problems with lifespan. The cheapest CD-Rs have been seen to only have a 2 year lifespan, DVD-R are lasting longer but have yet to be fully studied. This is due to dye fading, commercial DVD and CD don’t have this problem.
• Flash drive (or Thumb Drives) have a 10,000 to 100,000 flash limit before the old data can possibly corrupt. This means data that hasn’t been touch in a while could be corrupted (or un-remembered). This limits a flash drive to approximately 4-5 years with light to medium usage.

So there you have it. Think about all those precious pictures you’ve placed on a CD-R or DVD-R and haven’t touched.  Is it 2 years old? You might want to re-burn it.  Think about all the natural disasters? Dallas had an earthquake today, wildfires in that West Texas wind, Houston and flooding/hurricanes.  Are you going to be able to reclaim your data if something happens?  You hotel room gets broken into?  Call be paranoid but here’s my personal story:

In the past 3 years I’ve had three laptops fail on me. Four laptops in the past 5 years (well 1 laptop failed twice). I’ve also had a hard drive that was only 4 years old fail on me to the point where I had to pull out a Linux drive recovery tool and could get my data off right before it completely died.  That’s 4 possible serious data losses in 3 years.

So now that I’ve typed over 350 words on why, here’s the how. Read the rest of this entry »

There have been a few concerns lately about the privacy of the website.  Although I try to stifle what I can, but it is true that anything you post here can be seen by anyone checking it out.  So there are concerns about posting items that are perfect for the website, but the poster would be a little concerned about people outside of our family reading things.

That brings me to my question.  Would you be willing to have the site run in a “Member’s Only” mode?

This mode could take many forms, the few I can think of off hand are these:

1. Completely block site without a login.  This would mean that everything posted would be block from people that don’t log in.  That way Dad and I can control who has access and who doesn’t.  No post would be seen by people that haven’t logged in.
2. Partially blocked site.  (If possible)  This would allow for all regular posts to be posted “Member’s Only”.  But you can flag it if you want it accessible to people that are not logged in.  This one I prefer, I’m just unsure if I’d be able to do it.
3. Completely Open, but private posts.  This is kind of the opposite of before. This would allow all regular posts available for the world, but you could mark it specially at only for private viewing.  I’m not a big fan of this.  But it’s probably the easiest to implement, but absolutely terrible to administrate.  Plus I don’t think it’s as intuitive for you guys (the end users).

So that’s my thoughts.  Let me know what you think.  I really want the site to be a place where you don’t have to be concerned about the privacy of what you post.  I think we can get there, just not sure if you all will be up for it.  I’d like to hear your thoughts not only if it’s a decent idea but also thoughts of how to make it happen.  Thanks!

The stealthiest cat alive…

Thought it would make some people laugh, God knows some of us need to right now.

Hey everyone, I have a quick prayer request to ask.  Kimberly and I are going on vacation, and things looked good then Hurricane Ike has seemed to pick up some steam.  Please pray that it turns up the coast instead of entering the Gulf.  Thanks all.  Love ya.

Hurricane Ike

It never fails, around this time of year I get a call from Mom asking me what I want for Christmas.  I never am able to respond that second, I don’t think about those things to the extent of having it directly on my mind.  Email it is hard because you have to take the time to think about what you want all in a compressed period of time, and I get distracted to easily.

I know many of you don’t use web tools, but I’m here to say you should.  There is a real easy way to create “Wish Lists” using very common web tools.  And this can be shared with everyone you want to see.  Here’s how… Read the rest of this entry »