Am-I-Dumb.com - Intelligence Test

The other 0.9% are too smart to waste their time on trivially easy online quizzes, apparently…

Friend of the Blog MauserMedic asked for advice on backing up his hard drive last week. I’ve been meaning to write up a little guide but, well, I had a pretty rigorous drinking schedule over the weekend…

You can read a dozen different articles on backup strategies and you’ll get a dozen different versions of the “best” way to do it. Here’s my highly sophisticated method:

• Buy a big external hard drive and copy your personal data to it on a regular basis.

Alright, I guess I should expand on that a bit further. You really don’t need to back up EVERYTHING on your hard drive; you only have to worry about your personal files (your MP3s, pictures, emails, Word documents, etc.). Assuming you’re running Windows and you don’t save things in random locations all over the hard drive, you can just copy the entire C:\Documents and Settings\ folder to your external hard drive and you’re all set.

What about everything else? Well, that’s why you already have (or should have) CDs or DVDs to restore your operating system and programs. Your computer probably came with a set of “System Restore” discs that you can use to reinstall Windows and get running again after a hard drive crash. Then you just need to reinstall your programs and copy your personal data over from your external hard drive.

One potential snag: some new computers are coming with the “System Restore” stuff installed on a hidden partition of the hard drive instead of on disc. This is a profoundly stupid thing for manufacturers to do, in that it (A) wastes a big chunk of hard drive space and (B) destroys your ability to fix your computer after a hard drive failure.

The good news is, you should have a program somewhere on your PC that allows you to burn a set of “System Restore” discs with your CD/DVD burner. You might have to poke around on the manufacturer’s website or (horrors!) call their tech-support drones to find out how to do this, but you REALLY, REALLY want to either burn those discs yourself or get the manufacturer to send you a set.

Finally, there’s a whole bunch of backup programs you can buy to automate the backup process for you. I can’t recommend ANY of the ones I’ve used; caveat emptor.

So… that’s my take on backups. Just plug in your external drive, copy the whole Documents and Settings folder, paste it in the external drive, and have a few drinks while you wait for your computer to copy all your dirty pictures valuable documents to your backup drive.

Take 1 pound each of ground lamb and ground veal, mix them together with minced garlic, onion, cumin, cayenne, a little soy sauce, and a pinch of salt:

These took about 5 minutes per side on the grill. I was, alas, too busy eating to take any “after” pictures.

I have to admit that this particular culinary experiment was only a qualified success. The flavor was great, the texture not quite right. I’ll mix in an egg next time to hold it together more.

Anonymous, cousin of the infamous Sumdood, commented on an old post today:

Why aren’t there any dark skinned women in your blog?

Cuz I’m a racist bastard, natch.

But aside from that, I like pale women. In fact, looking back at my alternately hilarious and disastrous dating history, I can’t think of anyone I’ve dated who WASN’T very, very pale. And there were only a precious few who weren’t flat-out batshit crazy. I’m not saying the two always go together, but the pattern is there.

And while we’re on the topic, if anyone can tell me who this particular pale redhead is I’d be severely grateful:

Via Les Jones, news that Ruger has a new pistol coming out.

What are the chances that it’ll sport an integral key lock, magazine safety, loaded chamber indicator and billboard-size warning on the slide? I’m placing the odds at 50 to 1.

Had a freelance IT project run waaaaay longer than expected today. I’ll do that post on hard drive backups sometime tomorrow.

You people are backing up your damn hard drives, right?

I ask because the 160-gig Seagate in my Power Mac went tits-up today, within a few days of its fourth birthday.

Fortunately, I do actually back up my systems. But I only back up my pr0n data files, not the entire disk. So recovering from a dead drive is a bit time-consuming. Swap in a new hard drive, reinstall the OS, update the OS, reinstall all my applications, reconfigure everything, and copy all my data over from the backup drive. [grumble] hours later, I’m up and running again.

Remember, folks, there are only two kinds of hard drives: those that have failed, and those that WILL fail.

Everyone else already blogged this today while I was busy with school:

Detroit Free Press: Gun law helping victims of crimes

It’s practically unheard-of for the Freep to publish anything even remotely pro-gun, so this was a pleasant surprise.

That’s it for today. Mondays and Wednesdays are brutal this semester.