Month: February 2011

  • Why I don't Trust the Cloud

    Engadget alerted me today to a little whoopsie with Google Mail

    If you’ve got a working Gmail account, you might want to back it up every so often — as many as 500,000 Gmail users lost access to their inboxes this morn, and some of them are reporting (via Twitter and support forums) that years worth of messages, attachments and Google Chat logs had vanished by the time they were finally able to log on

    Not good. Not good at all. However, my very first thought was “what the heck did you guys expect?”

    If you trust your data to a third party, that third party will inevitably corrupt, trade, tittilate, lose, sell, abuse, arouse, and/or reject it. This is the natural scheme of things. You disbelieve me at your peril.

    I contend that while you may read my last paragraph as the rantings of a paranoid person, I’m merely applying Henleins’s Razor: “Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.” It only takes one person to gloriously screw up your internet life, and that person may be having a really bad day after discovering their partner in bed with their best friend, or something similar. How much do you want to trust your personal correspondence and data to the Google equivalent of a postalized employee?

    I’m not a cloud-luddite, however. It has wonderful uses. I’m in the midst of a three month battle with my corporate IT to allow me access to Google Documents at work. I also use Dropbox and some other cloud-based file management applications. What I don’t do is primarily store things I will want access to later on the web. This is the great failing of Google Mail, in my opinion. I access my personal email through an IMAP server, but it is downloaded to my own PC and then backed up to an external hard drive, both of which I have personal control over. If my ISP goes poof, I will at most lose a few hours worth of email (less, actually, because there will be a resident copy on my phone). I will never have to worry about the last time I backed up my Google Mail.

    So. Don’t trust the Cloud too much. You might regret it.

  • BIG EYES

    Here’s a picture I took yesterday during my annual eyeball examination.

    Dilated Irises

    I post these things because I love you.

  • I Ran and I Didn't Die

    All evidence to the contrary.

    I finished my run

    19.0 miles in 3:49. Ugh. My pacing was poor and the last mile and a half were…painful.

    One month to the race.

    14:11 Edit: Apparently I was also salty, as shown by the cat.

    I went and checked my workout log. The last time I ran this far was for the Women’s Marathon in October of 2008. The farthest I’ve run since then was a 17.5 mile training run on the lead up to the Ironman. Go me!

  • Running Time

    Off to Run; Lovely Weather

    Here’s a quick cellphone snap outside my living room window, as I prepare to go run 19 miles. This is the farthest I’ve run since a loooonnng time ago, but the training plan I’m on has be going really really slow (for me) and the long runs aren’t killing me.

    The goal for this marathon is to finish. I think I’ll be fine with that.

    Off! See you in four hours.

  • Testing a Third Time

    All this testing is to see if my WordPress pings are reaching the various update services in a timely fashion.

    Here’s an old picture of my cat.
    Psyche Cat

  • Testing Again

    You can ignore this posting, too. Unless you want to discuss the death of Sunday Sales here in Georgia? Or how about an update to this morning’s posting about the Auburn Oak Trees? There’s been an arrest.

    If not, then carry on.

  • Humans are Humans and Some aren't very Nice

    According to the AJC, a University of Alabama fan has poisoned Auburn’s famous Toomer’s Corner Live Oaks, a set of 130 year-old oak trees. Why?

    From the radio show where he made the claim:

    According to the Opelika-Auburn News, the caller said he poisoned the oaks because Auburn students rolled the trees to celebrate the death of Alabama coaching legend Paul “Bear” Bryant in 1983.

    The caller signed off with, “Roll Damn Tide.”

    Some days I’m just not happy to be a member of the same species as some other people.

    Sure, in the grand scheme of things, this isn’t murder, nor is it genocide, nor the deliberate torture of children nor the calling for the murder of doctors, but really? Killing trees because you’re angry? I don’t like you .

  • Sixteen Photos over Sixteen Years on the Sixteenth

    Sixteen years ago today, my wife and I started dating.

    We met in 1995 in college ((Actually we met in 1994 while Jenn was still in high school, but we didn’t really “meet” until 1995)). We started dating on February 16, 1995 and I knew this was the woman I wanted to marry in short order.

    To commemorate this occasion, I present sixteen photos over sixteen years, approximately one per year. Gosh did we look young back then.

    Bill & Jenn #1 of 16
    Bill & Jenn #2 of 16
    (more…)