The Time Sink

It wasn't scheduled that way, but the weekend became another homework weekend. With Daniel out of school three days last week there was some catchup to do. ...and then there's the castle project. Yesterday we blocked out how we wanted to proceed, and I made him a 'kit' to start on in the evenings this week. He has several scored sheets of gray cardstock ready for a ruler and a black pen to make the stone walls of the castle and the keep. ...and there are two sizes of turrets that also need mark up.

Next weekend we'll put the walls in place and start fabricating the other pieces. So far our mockup is looking okay for a couple of ham-handed guys. Hopefully Shelley has enough colored construction paper for our 'moat' and drawbridge!

Hmm... I haven't mentioned the iMac for a few days, but that's only because I haven't had a chance to work with it. The last episode was late last week when I had a brain flash about another way to backup the HDD. It more or less went something like, "Well it has USB ports. I have a spare external USB HDD. What could go wrong?"

Ummm... Apparently not much. I unplugged the USB cable that led to the Win2k box and plugged in a nice lighted USB cable. ...in iMac green, of course. When I plugged the other end into the iMac, all it had to say about things was that it really didn't think I'd hooked up a Mac drive. "Deal", I said. "Done", it said. Okay...

So I told it to just clone the internal drive. Okay, not the brightest move, but hey... 28,000 files did turn out to be a bit much, likely because of a bit of corruption here and there. I found that transferring blocks of folders went better.

Next up? Finishing the transfer and seeing if it will boot from the USB drive. ...and if that works, maybe a drive swap when I'm in playing memory games with it. ...and games it may be: this unit is right there on the edge of "Use only XXX memory" versus "Anything close will work".

Ah, the midweek break. ...and I seem to have lost a day. Let's see... Would that be due to homework, homework or homework? Hard to say, but I think I'll go with "homework".

...kind of a long day today. We attended a memorial service for a church member this afternoon and that's left me a little wrung out. Forty-five years old. Breast cancer. A wonderful husband and a nine year old...

Well now... This is slightly more than casually interesting... That's a link to 120 megs worth of NAS (Network Attached Storage) running the usual protocols (including Apple) and DHCP.

We've been using Snap Servers at the office for a while and the blasted things just run. I mean, they should, just Linux and a hard drive. ...and the price is okay. ...but this one from Tritton is designed to break into the SOHO in a big way: New Egg has it for $263US. Ummm.... Anyone want to tackle that from the parts box? Oh, and take a look at the second item on that page (likely current to this day only): for another few bucks you're talking a router/NAT/VPN setup.

Now I'm not all that sure I'd want my storage all that close to the Net, but the base unit is less that double the cost of a similar sized USB external HDD. ...and you have to hang that off a machine! Throw a couple of these things on a bookshelf and your home entertainment storage needs are a done deal...

Well, when it's a "homework weekend" you're learning not to expect much from me on this side of the domains...

Hey! There's a good "old fashioned" virus/worm/injection out, the kind that does really bad things to computers (like trash hard drives). ...and better yet, it's targeting firewalls! If you're using BlackIce Defender or RealSecure, consider yourself in the crosshairs!

Slashdot covers it well enough here and has links to source code and such. ...and for a change, a level "1" threshold seems to allow for a decent level of interchange. The Sans Storm Center has a nicely distilled version...

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"Any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic."
Arthur C. Clarke, "Technology and the Future"

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