02.15.2003

Hello, Again

Blackwood's got a temporary blog here. He mentioned something about Tom Ridge backpedalling about the plastic over the windows thing. Here's a full story. I hadn't seen this - I'm not kidding when I say I'm pretty reliant on the Blackwood Channel to get me some damned news. All I've heard about for the past couple of days around here is about this fucking huge-ass storm that's supposed to knock us on our asses. We got about an inch of snow today. Good thing I don't need this plastic sheeting anymore - I need something to make a quick sled out of so I can get myself to the convenience store and get some food. The cars just won't budge over that inch.

My wife did the taxes today. This "married filing jointly" thing is the BEST. We're getting a refund. I had to pay 666 bucks last year. I might have written about it, but I doubt it. 666.

In the spirit of celebration I decided to splurge on some software that'll backup some of my vulnerable data on CDs. Without software I can't backup files larger than a blank CD. And the most important data I've got is such. So I've been keeping my fingers crossed for years. I downloaded two pieces of a trialware that didn't cut it (something called Backup NOW! from NTI just hung my machine when I tried to run it - after I'd done a windows update to get the install to work at all. Another thing called Handy Backup turned two blank CDs into coasters after 20 minutes (each time) of backing up, and reported nothing but "write error" or some similar thing.) So I checked my CDR vendor's page, which said Veritas Backup My PC supported the drive. Veritas directed me to someone called Sonic, which directed me to Stomp, a piece of software called Simple Backup. It spanned my file across three CDs, verified 'em, and was done. It's all wizard driven, which isn't something I like. The Handy Backup thing actually seemed like a nice GUI; if I'd been able to find ANY online troubleshooting I might've stuck with that.

.link.