nothing edifying

We were awoken early in the morning (4:42 evidently) by an earthquake. It didn’t last long — felt like mere seconds, but strong. Too short (and I was too groggy) for me to think about pants, ’til after the shaking stopped.

bildungsroman – [bil-doongz-roh-mahn; Ger. beel-doongks-raw-mahn] n. a type of novel concerned with the education, development, and maturing of a young protagonist.

Basically, a bildungsroman is a coming-of-age novel. But dood, it’s like a word I’d maybe seen before, but now that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is coming out, bildungsroman is everywhere! Sheesh. Also, don’t read the reviews for it until after you’ve finished the book, cos them reviewers give plot details which while they aren’t much, is still sorta unnecessary. And anyhows, I can’t imagine that a positive or negative review is going to make much of a difference as to whether or not anyone reads the book.

I didn’t want to post about it ’til it was waaaay over, so this is days old news, but dooooood, Friday (the 13th, naturally) was just awful! At work, I had a hard drive failure, multiple random Blue Screens of Death, and a couple of servers crashed. OMG, how does all of that happen on one day?! So stressed.

The dude whose hard drive died lost photos and other stuffs which he hadn’t backed up in a while. I have no idea why the only copy he had of his personal photos (primarily of his kids) was on his work laptop (well ok it was probably his primary computer), but dooood, no backup?! Yeah, don’t do that. I felt pretty bad cos I know how I’d feel if I lost photos and music and whatever else.

Which leads me to Mozy (available for Windows and Mac OS X), which I’ve been using it to do backups at home. Basically, they give you 2 GB of space for free, or if you want to back up more than 2 GB you get unlimited backup space for 1 computer for $5 a month. If you use my referral link https://mozy.com/?code=HZ534I to sign up we both get 256 MB extra space, so 2.25 GB for free to start, but that’s up to you, and no big deal if you don’t of course. It’s only good on a broadband connection cos I mean, you’re backing up to some server in Utah which even on broadband will take a while. Mozy isn’t the only online backup service around, but I liked that they encrypt the data on its way to the server and while it’s on their server, both. And I can use my own password as the encryption key. But it’s no good as a file sharing thing, there are others that can serve as both I think, but not Mozy. I haven’t extensively tried another service, I picked Mozy cos of the free 2 GB trial and relatively cheap price for the amount of space I think I’m going to need (a lot). But it’s been really good so far.

I also signed up my main computer for the unlimited service, so it’s backing up 40+ GB right now, which took like a bunch of days leaving it on day and night. Yut and I actually try to back up a lot of the important stuff on each other’s computers, but I dunno, if there was a fire or something that destroyed both of our hard drives at the same time or if one of our computers got messed up before we got around to syncing up our computers, well this gives me peace of mind. I think maybe my job has made me more paranoid about data loss. :p But also one of my hard drives randomly told me it had no data on it a while back when I knew it was full of photos! So yeah, backup = good in my book.

Wow I went on a bit there. I guess I’m a little fanatical about backup, I’ll admit it. Also, I’m supposed to be working on a paper right now, so I am majorly procrastinating. :p

Some interesting articles about backup and other file storing solutions: Online Backup’s Inflection Point on A VC and The Online Storage Gang on TechCrunch, but with these services popping up all over the place, it’s impossible to list everything.

Edited to add: Mashable just did an online storage listing.

I was blithely walking home while talking to Yut on the phone when this utility box attached to a traffic light pole came up outta nowhere and BANG! hit me on the forehead. Really hard too. And cos I was in the middle of talking, my teeth slammed together really hard and my tongue didn’t quite make it to safety. It was pretty jarring and my tongue was all bleedy for a while.

I’m like a poster child for the no talking and driving laws only I don’t drive much anymore. Also I don’t look around enough when I walk, but you know the thing is, I don’t hardly ever expect to not be able to walk under things. Now my teeth are kinda sore and tender; I hope I didn’t knock anything loose. :P

Last night I climbed into bed after Yut fell asleep. I was sooo cold, so I put my feet on him cos I figured he was asleep and wouldn’t notice, but he actually flinched away from me! All of a sudden, he was sleeping diagonal, with his feet (and legs) as far away as possible from me. And he did it without waking up — I guess it was self-preservation. :)