You never believe it’ll ever happen until it does, and it happened last night (I think): My Mac is fried. There I was, stealing a moment to examine photos of the Great Game Robbery when the screen froze and would not unfreeze, and a hard restart only produced a status bar that resets twice, then quits again. Tried this approximately 10 times with the same result every time.
I’m thinking it’s a motherboard or something similarly vital. Given the age of all involved, I’m also thinking I’ll be shopping for a new laptop in a few hours. I did a backup recently, all my reallyreallyreally important data — writing projects in progress, etc. — is doubly backed up in the Cloud, but I’ll probably lose a few passwords or snapshots here and there.
Let that be a lesson to you. Back up your data. Twice.
So this will be it for me today. Maybe a little bloggage:
Over the years in Indiana, I was aware of what happens at graduation time in Fort Wayne high schools — commencement ceremonies tend to be protracted, testy affairs for all involved. No matter how often principals plead from the stage to hold applause until all graduates have crossed the stage, the reading of names is marked by screeching, air horn-blowing knots of bonehead parents and relatives in the audience, who pride themselves on mini-filibusters of noise as their kid’s name is called, which necessitates long pauses, so the next kid’s name doesn’t get drowned out and/or his own jerkwad parents deprived of their own celebration. The hooliganism has gotten so bad that diplomas aren’t actually physically transferred until the crowd files out, so that any kid who isn’t wearing a mortar board — i.e., the hat-throwers — has to schedule a conference with principal and parents, one last stern lecture, before taking possession.
Like I said, I guess I was aware of this, via the annual letters to the editor and the annual statements by principals, but I hadn’t realized just how bad it was until I stumbled across a guest column in my old newspaper — which, I recently learned, now has one-third the circulation of the other paper in town — by one of the school district’s PR warhorses, floating a trial balloon that, because of the thoughtlessness of the few, maybe they won’t hold any commencement ceremonies at all, and I hope you get that this sentence is a weak attempt to capture the voice the school disciplinarian. But let her do it herself:
Although state law determines who is eligible for a diploma, there are no laws governing how that diploma is to be presented. Indeed, “Pomp and Circumstance” is not required music. Caps and gowns are not legislated attire. There is no requirement for schools to rent at their expense a facility for the event or hire security for crowd control. There is no legal requirement for schools to pay for embossed diploma covers in school colors. There is no requirement for schools to have a graduation ceremony. Has the time come to drop commencement exercises and mail diplomas home or hand them out in home room?
Such a move would be so unpopular I’m taking this as another empty threat from the stage. Still, there’s some good detail there, including this — that Bobby Knight recently received an honorary doctorate from Trine University, and showed up in an open-neck shirt and a sweater. Why? Because he’s Bobby Knight, and you’re not. And what is Trine University? You say you’ve never heard of it? Well, it used to be called Tri-State University, and changed its name two years ago. Trying to class up the joint, I’d imagine. I wasn’t aware they granted doctorates, period, but I guess when the degree is honorary, it doesn’t matter. In that part of Indiana — hey, Pilot Joe, Jen and many others here — they could have named him Philosopher-King and gotten away with it.
Off to the Genius Bar, there to weep and/or spend money.
coozledad said on June 3, 2010 at 8:29 am
The young woman seated behind me at my high-school graduation vomited into her cap, and when it was time for the procession to begin, she placed it back on her head (Rum). If it had been a different person, I would have suspected performance art.
We lost two computers to lightning, and the new ones dislike talking to the router. Some problem with Windows 7.
360 chars
Deborah said on June 3, 2010 at 8:34 am
Nancy, so sorry for your loss. My current Mac laptop is about 7 years old, hoping to get a bit more out of it. I never back up, now that I’ve written that I’m probably in for it. I do have some old data on a portable hard drive but that’s it. I would really miss my photos of Finland. I know what I’ll be doing this evening.
324 chars
Julie Robinson said on June 3, 2010 at 8:53 am
Computers are wonderful, until they’re not.
It’d be fine by me to cancel graduation ceremonies. I’ve never yet been to one I enjoyed and that didn’t run twice as long as it should. They are less about the graduates and more about the egos of everyone else up on the platform. Bad speakers who yadda, yadda, yadda. It’s universal. At IU they had the right idea–the graduation ceremony was optional, so I opted out.
My own high school graduation featured large men who escorted out anyone who made noise. I suppose that would get you a lawsuit these days.
565 chars
Mark P. said on June 3, 2010 at 8:56 am
For the Mac: Time Machine.
One or two gig hard drives are cheap. Keep a constant backup going and the inevitable disaster can be mitigated.
142 chars
Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 3, 2010 at 9:40 am
One of the reasons my wife left classroom teaching was responsibility (non-optional) of “earning” an “extra” $400 for being senior class advisor (well, it was decades ago, wonder what that offers today). Along with homecoming float building and prom supervision, graduation oversight was part of the responsibility, from a senior dinner to baccalaureate (voluntary) at a large local church to the event itself in the gymnasium. I can assure you that air-horn cranial proctology was in full blossom in 1986 & 87.
Our local high school here has managed to keep things to a dull roar and the occasional outburst of non-dignity over the last ten years, and I was under the impression that this trend was easing a bit, but it may just be local. And for her sins, my wife now has on her plate supervision of commencement at Denison, but after the amounts the families have shelled out to get to graduation here, they are happy to let the string quartet on the Victorian balcony overlooking the Fine Arts Quad do the shouting for them. Still very “classy” but they have trouble getting a commencement speaker who can really swing for the fences. (Dorothy, they’re still jealous of the David Foster Wallace speech Kenyon got a decade ago.)
No doctorates here and never have been, but Denison still gives “honoris causa” Doctor of Philosophy degrees. It’s a convention that means, as far as I know, nothing other than that you don’t get paid $30K to come speak, so it has a value all its own to the institution.
1518 chars
Peter said on June 3, 2010 at 9:42 am
My niece graduated yesterday, and while there were only a few air horn moments, what really got on my nerves were the opening remarks. Not once, but three times, we were reminded that the school’s test scores were in the top 3.4% of the state. What’s with the 3.4? You sure it wasn’t 3.33387? Top five percent sounds classy; 3.4 sounds kind of whiny.
Then, not once, but twice we were asked to applaud the fine teachers, because they were attending voluntarily, and were not being compensated for the time spent at graduation. How selfless, that you have to put in a couple of hours wearing your stole, getting applause and adulation, but not getting a little something extra in the envelope.
700 chars
Jeff Borden said on June 3, 2010 at 9:55 am
There’s really no excuse not to invest in a backup hard drive. I bought a 1TB at Microcenter in Chicago for a little over $100. It’s programmed to back up everything including my iTunes twice per 24 hour period.
I was encouraged to purchase this by a project manager for whom I did some freelance work last summer. She had lost hundreds of hours of work when her PC died years earlier, so she is an evangelist on the topic. It does bring a lot of peace of mind. And, what’s cool about this particular backup, it works for both Mac and PC.
MY H-P Pavilion laptop is getting on in years. Like our car, I pray it keeps running because I don’t currently have the moolah to afford replacements.
695 chars
Dorothy said on June 3, 2010 at 10:26 am
I’d heard a rumor that Kenyon was trying to get President Obama this year for commencement. We all know that didn’t happen. Maybe next year or the year after? I’ve not attended one yet, but I will three years from now when the two students we are host parents for will graduate. I wish like mad their parents could come from Nepal and Ukraine, but I’m sure they can’t afford it.
381 chars
Dave said on June 3, 2010 at 10:26 am
Nancy, forgive me, but it seems like it wasn’t all that long ago that you were buying that Mac. Has it been that long already? I thought they regularly gave eight or ten years of service. Our son has one that’s two years old now, he’s got another year of college, his buddy’s 3 1/2 year old Dell played out just the day after finals ended.
Carroll escorted anyone out who made noise, loud cheers, anyone who brought an airhorn and let it rip. While we’d hear stories about other graduations in the area, Carroll’s were very quiet, respectful affairs. We had three of them, last one three years ago now, I assume they’re still like that.
Tri-State was renamed Trine for the Trine family, who gave them some megabucks. Of course, the alums were upset, but who are the alums when you can get some megabucks.
Yes, and your old employer continues to get thinner and thinner, I wonder how much longer it can last. Actually, the JG isn’t all that hefty anymore, not even the Sunday paper some Sundays.
1010 chars
Deborah said on June 3, 2010 at 10:33 am
Jeff (tmmo) glad you mentioned the David Foster Wallace commencement speech at Kenyon. Even though I’ve read just about every thing DFW has written, for some reason I missed that one until a couple of days ago. Another blog I read regularly linked to it recently. In case you have also missed it, here it is: http://moreintelligentlife.com/story/david-foster-wallace-in-his-own-words
383 chars
MichaelG said on June 3, 2010 at 10:37 am
I back my HD up regularly. I write some not so edifying fiction and back that stuff up every day to one of those little USB port memory sticks. When I was robbed late last year they went through my desk drawer and took my thumb drives along with the computer. The portable hard drive was in a file cabinet. So I lost a fair bit of stuff that I had written. No great loss to the world but, still, I was pissed. Lesson is to keep back up away from computer area when not actually transferring data.
I bought a laptop a few weeks ago and have had a devil of a time getting it linked. After hours spent talking on every help line under the sun, the laptop works fine now with internet hookups but won’t print. The desk top is having trouble loading pix. More help time coming up. Both boxes have Win 7. You might be right, Cooz. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there were some kind of flaw in 7.
913 chars
Brian Igo said on June 3, 2010 at 12:09 pm
Cheap external hard drives and online backup services have made backups a lot easier, but the pricing and features have complicated things.
Online backup services offer the most comprehensive protection and the price is great, as long as you have one computer and a fast internet connection going out of your house. All of the online backup services charge by the computer or the total storage space, and they’re not friendly to houses with multiple computers and/or big media libraries. If you have four computers in your house the $4.95 a month for Mozy unlimited turns into $20 and the cost benefit goes out the window. Mozy and Carbonite both offer business service to back up multiple computers, and Dropbox has the same pricing structure aimed at home users, but those have size limits that will easily be broken by anyone with a decent iTunes collection. You’ll also need cable internet service or a high-end DSL package to use online backups. Basic and (some) mid-level DSL service doesn’t have the upstream speed to make online backups feasible.
External hard drives have the same issues with multiple computers. A basic backup hard drive like a Seagate Free Agent or WD My Passport has software that will automatically back up one computer, but it can’t be used to back up all the computers on your home network.
There are two ways around this. The easiest but more expensive way is to buy a NAS (Network Attached Storage) external hard drive like the Western Digital My Book World. These plug into your network instead of an individual computer and the software is great at performing continuous backups of your files and system settings. They do cost a little more than a more basic drive, but it’s not outrageous ($199 for the 1TB WD World) and you do get a lot for your money.
The cheap way to go is to buy an external hard drive, plug it into one computer as a shared drive (don’t install the included backup program) and then use a free third-party backup program like FBackup on all of your computers to back up to this drive once or twice a day. It works great, but the host computer (the one the drive is plugged into) needs to be turned on when the other systems do their backup and FBackup isn’t as polished as other backup programs.
There is one last option: The best Microsoft product you’ve probably never heard of is Windows Home Server. I am in love with this program. It has very low hardware requirements so you can install it on an old PC if you have one laying around, it’s incredibly stable, they’ve done a great job of making the setup and use easy for non-geeks, and it offers a huge amount of features for the price. It will back up all of the computers in your home network automatically (including Mac’s) and unlike most external hard drives you can totally rebuild a broken (Windows) system using the Home Server backup. WHS also works as a media center for storing files to be played on any computer or device like an XBOX, and it monitors the computers on the network for problems. You can buy a pre-configured Windows Home Server box for less than $300, or if you have an old computer just buy the program and a terabyte hard drive for ~$150. Either way it’s a steal. (Good review of WHS here: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/microsoft-hits-a-home-run-with-windows-home-server/244)
One last thing for Windows users: When you’re selecting what files to back up, choose the entire Documents and Settings folder. This will get your documents and music files, but it will also grab all of your program settings and emails if you’re using an email client like Outlook or Thunderbird.
3639 chars
paddyo' said on June 3, 2010 at 12:31 pm
Not being a parent, I tread on quicksand to bring this up, but I wonder if the creeping, worsening loud-louts-at-graduation thing is an inevitable offshoot of the my-child’s-an-honor-student-at-so-and-so-academy-and-yours-is-not syndrome, the let’s-reward-everyone-I-mean-EVERYONE-with-awards-just-for-showing-up phenomenon, and OK, I’ll-quit-with-the-annoying-hyphenated-phrases-now, but maybe you get my point.
Whatever the reason, it’s selfish, sophomoric, boorish behavior by grownups who are supposed to know better. But then, I guess if they don’t know better, they’re not really grownups, are they?
Oh God, did I just turn into Andy Rooney? (blanch)
662 chars
Colleen said on June 3, 2010 at 12:40 pm
My high school graduation was HORRID. The graduating students actually did that whole “tastes great” “less filling” bit from the beer commercial. We all had our diplomas by then, so they couldn’t do anything. Oh yea, Homestead’s Class of ’85 was something to be proud of. Stay Klassy, Spartans…
300 chars
kayak woman said on June 3, 2010 at 12:41 pm
I keep procrastinating about buying a few little memory cards with lots of space on them, backing up some of the more important stuff on those and throwing them into the safe deposit. We also have time machine and a terabyte drive. I’d be stretching it to get more than four years out an Apple laptop. I beat them up. My husband took my last castoff apart (12″ G4 powerbook, loved that machine), replaced the hard drive and added memory and uses it. Of course, he also has a 3G iPad… I don’t think my current MacBook will be worth fixing up because the plastic cover is held together with mailing tape.
I have a love/hate relationship with the A2 Apple Store, depending on how ditzy my salesperson is. Good luck at the Genius Bar!
736 chars
Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 3, 2010 at 12:44 pm
Did you ever wonder why . . . [/end Rooney voice]
Deborah, thanks for the link I was too lazy to hunt and paste — worth anyone’s time to pause and read. Wish it had been enough to help *him* make it a little further down the road, without stepping off it into the forest. But that’s part of what finished nudging me into seminary, realizing that even great literature doesn’t have redemptive power in and of itself. (Of course, neither does the church, large or small C, but that’s another post for another venue.)
521 chars
beb said on June 3, 2010 at 12:53 pm
The best $60 I ever spent was getting the hinges on my current laptop replaced. Now the lid doesn’t slam shut at unexpected moments, sending the computer into hibernation while I’m trying to download email.
206 chars
JC said on June 3, 2010 at 1:00 pm
Thanks for the timely reminder about back-ups. I bought a new Mac in December and have yet to get Time Machine up and running. I have all my old Mac files on an external hard drive, just need to transfer them to the new computer, then put the drive to work as the back-up.
My high school graduation was a disaster, but what do you expect with 360 hungover teenagers? The row behind me chanted “We get stoned, we’re in heaven, we’re the class of ’87.” Fast forward many years to my law school graduation – more pomp and circumstance, but it was venue that also hosts basketball games, so there were air horns galore. When I finally found my family after the ceremony, my brothers were sharing a paper basket of nachos.
721 chars
LAMary said on June 3, 2010 at 1:26 pm
I’m old. I was almost not allowed to participate in my high school graduation because a friend and I had distributed draft counseling information. We were told we had to get every pamphlet and peace sign sticker back or we would not graduate. We didn’t get them all back and we still graduated. Class of 71.
307 chars
Julie Robinson said on June 3, 2010 at 1:30 pm
Sad to say our daughter’s seminary graduation featured both the classy string quartet and the klassy hollerers. As well as lots of yadda, yadda, yadda. There was one great speaker, though, out of the 10 or so featured. With any luck, this will be her last degree.
265 chars
Deborah said on June 3, 2010 at 2:08 pm
Off topic, but check out this diagram of the oil spill: http://www.ifitwasmyhome.com/
85 chars
crinoidgirl said on June 3, 2010 at 2:32 pm
Thank you for that link, Deborah. Makes it much easier to get a handle on what’s going on.
90 chars
prospero said on June 3, 2010 at 2:37 pm
Bobby Knight once held a gun to a parking attendant’s head and fired the pistol. He got away with it. He’s not Israel, but he’s close. What in the world do the people that run that country think? Blow up Gaza and Lebanon for good measure with no good reason. Commit actual (legally) piracy? What the hell. We’ve got $4mil daily to attempt to obliterate Arabs from the Holy Land and if you don’t believe us, just ask Jerry Falwell.
I suppose I must be anti-semitic, even though the term itself is incredibly stupid, since all of those Palestinians are semites. Seems to me the Israeli government is rogue and more threatening to world peace than Iran, and US funding for invasions are more threatening and more of a threat than the homegtown movememts they generate.
If you claim to be a player in world affairs, you really shoudn’t use $4mil daily in US aid to practice a form of apartheid so extreme it denies hospital care to children. You really shouldn’t get away with a Holocaust because you were victims of one decades ago. Exactly what’s happening.
And, that refuge of scoundrels? That’s no longeer Patriotism. It’s actually deciding there’s no atrocity Israel can’t commit and claiming that criticism of their anti-world behavior must be anti-Semitic. Bullshit, you morons. Palestinians are Semites too, and Hamas was an Israeli creation, but shit, best intentions. It’s 1.5mil people denied hospitals and normal trade because Israeli government doesn’t think they’re actually human.
It’s apartheid for sure. Jimma was right about everything and Raygun was a whackjob Messiah that convinced normal people they were on the taxcut bus. What trickles down is piss’/
I know this isn’t Nancy fare. But what the hell. Israel committed piracy and they’re blaming it on the victims. Fairly simple, fairly obvios. I don’t think Buchenwald provided license to act like Nazis.
I defy anybody to contradict this. In the long run, it’s a pogrom. I defy anybody to contradict that.
The fact is that an actual government committed an act of piracy. When does arrogance become stupidity? The sticks and stones vs. the Uzis doesn’t really work. Is Israel the permanent paranoid state?
Is there a Teabagger around that wants to cut off that money in the interest of smallifying government? I thought not. Blowing up other countries with no reason, using exclusively US money to do it, committing murderous piracy on high seas and trying to blame it on the victims, rogue state. Dimaona? Axis of evil. Israeli government would nuke the US if it seemed politically pertinent.
2590 chars
basset said on June 3, 2010 at 2:44 pm
I ran across my 1973 rural southwestern Indiana public high school diploma while digging through flood debris recently. Graduation night was pretty much like the rest of my time there; parents made me go and only one of them showed up, I walked across the stage and got my paper to essentially no response from the crowd in the gym, stood in the receiving line for the least time possible and was first graduate out the door.
Wasn’t invited to anything afterward so I went home and watched “In Concert” on channel 38 from Terre Haute. Slade was on, Noddy Holder was wearing his mirrored top hat. My mother did make a cake, or maybe bought one, I don’t remember.
Never even considered going to IU commencement, was out and working by then. At the same tv station I was watching on high school graduation night, actually.
Backing up: if you don’t have two copies of your digital data, you don’t really have one.
922 chars
Mark P. said on June 3, 2010 at 2:56 pm
I showed my incredible age when I mentioned 1GB drives. TB, of course. Next up, petabyte.
89 chars
Dorothy said on June 3, 2010 at 3:28 pm
basset how goes the flood recovery effort at your house?
56 chars
basset said on June 3, 2010 at 3:40 pm
Thanks for asking… we’re looking at, and maybe signing, the repair contract tonight… house is stripped to the bare studs and floor joists inside and has been sprayed with mold treatment three times… and the insurance company has finally come back with an estimate, our negotiator is going back and forth with them. Hoping to get some money in the next week or so and start work, builder says it’ll take three months.
We’ll be in our apartment through the summer, but the pool opened last weekend, could be worse.
522 chars
Jeff Borden said on June 3, 2010 at 4:15 pm
Prospero,
The Israeli lobby in America is so powerful it is indeed risky to raise the points you make. I’m not sure I agree with all of them, but Israel’s actions over the last few years echo the madness the U.S. endured when the Bush administration hijacked the tragedy of 9/11 to go rogue.
Just I sincerely hope those horrible eight years were an aberration and we do not really live in a nation where a handful of influential neoconservatives lead us to the invasion of a sovereign nation with no ties to the terror attacks, citizens can be seized and held as enemy combatants without access to counsel or habeas corpus, torture is not only allowed but celebrated, all communications can be gathered by the government without benefit of a court order, etc., so I hope that this is an ugly phase Israel is passing through and that more moderate heads will prevail.
The dustup with the flotilla is really a classic fuckup. It hurts everyone: Israel, the Palestinians, Turkey and, of course, the U.S., which once again is cast as the bigger, older brother who’ll step in to protect his aggressive, obnoxious younger brother.
The U.S. pays a steep price for its ongoing support of Israel. It would be nice if Bibi and his band of thugs could understand that fact and act accordingly.
1294 chars
judybusy said on June 3, 2010 at 4:27 pm
Basset, thanks for the update, and I hope the work goes smoothly!
Deborah, thanks for that link. It really helps to understand the scope of the spill. I can kinda guage the drive time, about five hours to drive across it!
When I got my master’s in Madison, both my parents came, from quite far distances. I remember being so happy about that that I don’t remember much about the ceremony. The next day, we loaded all my stuff in a 24′ foot trailer my dad’d hauled up from Missouri and moved to Minneapolis, where I’ve been since.
535 chars
ellen said on June 3, 2010 at 4:34 pm
As an HS teacher, I will be working at graduation tonight. 1,000-plus students. The current line is 3:45 hours, but I’m taking the over. We’re going to use handheld metal detectors to search the little angels before they enter the holding area at the conference center. Awesome fun!
282 chars
MaryO said on June 3, 2010 at 4:54 pm
When I graduated from a Catholic high school in 1979 they handed us our diploma covers, but not the diplomas themselves. We only got those after having behaved like good little Catholic girls and boys during the ceremony and after handing back our caps and gowns in good condition.
281 chars
brian stouder said on June 3, 2010 at 4:58 pm
Ellen, if the metal detector trips, then what?
Considering all the piercings that some folks have nowadays, metal detector duty sounds a LOT like work!
Basset – sounds like you’re keeping an even strain, which cannot possibly be easy to do.
Re Israel – I find all this cowboy stuff, in such a volatile region, quite literally unsettling. I would hope that some other means of controlling what comes into Gaza could be found; Israeli inspectors at the port of entry, for example. (by way of saying, I agree with the Israeli government that it is unacceptable for IEDs and rockets and the like to be come into Gaza by the pallet-load)
Unless I read something really good, indicating that Israel had some very, very good reason to simply assault those ships, then it is not possible to disagree with caliban about the word “piracy”.
What was in the ships’ holds?
879 chars
john c said on June 3, 2010 at 5:26 pm
At my high school we graduated in tuxedos (it was all-boys). It never occurred to me until now that one reason might have been to prevent the whole mortar board tossing.
169 chars
Jeff Borden said on June 3, 2010 at 5:34 pm
Brian,
The manifest for the ships includes building materials, which Israel prohibits because they can be used to construct launchers for rockets, toys, used clothing and wheelchairs.
Israel is in a tough position, as usual. Hamas has as its stated purpose the destruction of the Jewish state and it is hard truth that the Palestinians in Gaza have regularly launched rockets into Israel. Yet the policies Israel have put in place including the blockade condemn 1.5 million people to life in squalor. Remember, Gaza remains in ruins after the Israelis tore it apart when some of their soldiers had been kidnapped. Other Arab states are no help because they count on the anger over Palestine to keep their own citizens from looking at the terrible governments they live under.
That said, Netanyahu (sp??) is a belligerent screwup who’d be quite welcome in Crawford, Texas, if you know what I mean. He’s all tough talk. . .no nuance. And given the hysterical rhetoric in Congress –liberal Democratic Rep. Andrew Weiner today referred to Turkey as a “former ally”– Bibi can pretty much do whatever he wants knowing America will follow along with a mop and a broom. Already, the Wall Street Journal editorial board is pounding Turkey with ugly smears.
As usual, the big winner in the Mideast is Iran. The more belligerent and aggressive Israel acts, the more cover Iran gets as it searches for its own nuclear deterrent.
I support Israel. I would guess most Americans do. But it is not an infallible nation any more than we are. And it is pursuing some strategies that are absolutely counter to American interests. But if Obama takes a tougher stance with Israel, what will we hear? He’s a secret Muslim, natch, out to weaken America’s ties with Israel.
The next act could get really ugly and dangerous. Turkey is talking about sending along warships with the next aid flotilla. That’s just what we need. . .a shooting war between one of our rare Muslim nation allies and Israel.
Thanks, Bibi.
2012 chars
ET said on June 3, 2010 at 8:53 pm
In the greater Charlotte area, spontaneous outbursts at graduation are rewarded with arrest. They have been threatening this for a few years and last year finally started cracking down and actually arrested a few morons. I have not seen anything in the paper about this year’s ceremonies, so maybe people have learned their lessons.
Another powerful backup tool is Acronis True Image Home 2010. Acronis will create an image of your entire hard drive–files, programs, and settings–and restore the entire system in one step. It can be automatically scheduled to create an image. Having your files backed up is nice, but with this software you can drop a new drive in the computer, restore the image, and be back up and running without re-installing your programs. Runs about $40 and is well worth it.
809 chars
Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 3, 2010 at 9:56 pm
Is it an upload to a remote site, or does it call for an external hard drive?
77 chars
Deborah said on June 3, 2010 at 10:14 pm
As I mentioned a few days ago my clients are the “bad guys” in this gulf situation. I thought long and hard about posting this. Could I get fired for this? Maybe so if somehow someone connects me to them through nn.c. But I have to say after a presentation today about totally insignificant stuff in contrast to what else they have on their plates I have to say these guys are devastated. They seemed totally horrified and in shock. I haven’t had to present to them since before this all happened so it was extremely interesting. It was like being in the presence of people who have lost a child. And we all can say that they should well feel that way, as the child they/we have lost is the amazing wildlife of the gulf. I just thought I would put this out there. These are human beings too, granted they should be experiencing grief, and I want you to know that they are.
872 chars
basset said on June 3, 2010 at 11:10 pm
“Devastated” why? No bonus this year? Maybe they just want their lives back? I have a hard time believing that BP cares in the least about the ecological disaster it has caused – a CEO at any oil company who presided over a massive spill and kept the stock price up would hold onto his job a lot longer than one who protected the environment and let the stock fall.
367 chars
Denice B. said on June 4, 2010 at 12:38 am
As a parent of an 11th grader, I would not feel bad about not having a graduation ceremony. I’ve seen some of the behavior of the kids in her school. I can only guess the parents wouldn’t play by rules either. I barely remember my graduation from high school- ancient history. I don’t think she would miss it. I never went to the Prom either. So High School was no happy time for me anyway.
390 chars
moe99 said on June 4, 2010 at 12:42 am
We had a senior skip day when I graduated from Lourdes High School in Rochester, MN (I grew up in Defiance but we moved to Rochester my senior year in high school). We were told that we had to make up the day after graduation, or we would be kicked out of National Honor Society. So, of course, I was one of those who meekly made up the day.
Prospero, I bagged a political forum earlier this week after I suggested that given the way the Israelis handled the situation, any arms that they claimed were on the vessels they boarded, would be open to question. The pro-Israel harpies said I was anti-semitic and probably read The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in my spare time. They can go fuck themselves.
712 chars
Dexter said on June 4, 2010 at 1:30 am
Great,Moe99. Here is an editorial from the Trotskyite WWP in NYC, describing Israel as a racist, settler state.
http://www.workers.org/2010/world/wwp_statement_0610/
Being against apartheid and racist violence of Israel does not make one anti-Semitic at all, and the idiots who said that to you know better, I would hope. When I blogged at the bombing of Lebanon in 2006 I too was called anti-Semitic.
In case anyone doesn’t know it, thousands of Jews are totally against the way Israel bullies and kills Palestinians. Jimmy Carter is appalled by it, has been for many years.
And Jeff Borden: Bibi has promised more attacks against anyone who penetrates the blockade.
Obama is a staunch Israel flag-waver, always has been. Don’t worry about him doing any damn thing to piss off any Israelis.
810 chars
Dexter said on June 4, 2010 at 2:22 am
http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/incident_response/STAGING/local_assets/html/Enterprise_ROV_1.html
On and on, on and on, …on and on…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lf5IP8r0gWk
222 chars
basset said on June 4, 2010 at 8:42 am
Basset Jr. got his high school diploma from a dual-enrollment program at the local community college – first thing the valedictorian said in his commencement speech was something like “While I don’t actually know many of my classmates…”
238 chars