Are you done yet in there, Grandpa?

Cheers,
Matt

There is a reason we fly over you, TWiTfan.

Cheers,
Mat

Just about every morning on my way to work, I see two of the Tesla Model S on the road. I commute between Palm Beach Gardens and Jupiter, Florida. That's less than a 20-minute commute.

If you're looking for a conversation starter at the country club or marina, a BMW, Mercedes or even a Bentley isn't going to work nearly as well as a Tesla.

While $65,000 to $75,000 seems like a lot for a car (I cringe at paying half that), there are just as many cars in that price range rolling in Palm Beach County that aren't nearly as exotic or as head-turning as the Tesla. I pass dozens of $65k+ cars on the way to work and it isn't unusual to see $100k+ cars either. Those are mostly background noise because they are so common.

Cheers,
Matt

His current wife may not be getting any younger but his next wife is already half her age.

Cheers,
Matt

When you say 'Any suggestions (beyond develop hobbies, spend time with family) on how to deal with all the new free time?', you're missing the point. Free time is all about hobbies and spending time with the family. It isn't about finding more work.

When I was, more or less, unemployed for ten months, I rode my bicycle. A lot: sometimes more than 200 miles a week. Lost 30 pounds. Felt great. By the time I had to go back to real work, I was in the best shape of my life, was relaxed and had spent wonderful amounts of time with my wife and kid. (Now I'm a fat slob again. But I'm making money. So, I've got that.)

Whatever you do, don't feel guilty about having free time. Don't try to fill your free time with more day-job-type work. You've done day-job-type work for 25 years and are, apparently, valuable enough that you don't have to do that 40 hours a week anymore.

Cheers,
Matt

AC: There were recent, reliable backups and the RS/6000 system was under an (expensive) IBM maintenance contract. While we had one or two spare drives on the shelf, we didn't have the six that locked-up.

We were paying IBM for its knowledge through the service contract and we got our money's worth there. Where we were in line to get screwed was in the hardware replacement cost.

At a time when the going rate for hard drives was about two cents per megabyte, IBM wanted more than 13 cents per megabyte. We would have gladly paid double but six times more was off the table for a system that was already in the budget for replacement.

Cheers,
Matt

In preparation for Y2K, we had to turn off our text archive server (at a newspaper) for the first time in, literally, years. The machine itself has been in production for six years, the last two or so of which without a reboot.

It was an IBM AIX machine with an array of 4.5GB SCSI drives. After sitting with its power off for a couple hours, we turned it back on and Nothing Happened. No drives were spinning. Crap.

Called IBM tech support. Got the run-around. Finally got to a guy who said something along the lines of "you're going to think this is crazy but do what I say in this order" followed by...

* turn machine off
* remove drives
* turn the machine on
* bang the drives on their edge a few times on the floor - don't go crazy but harder than you think is a good idea
* spin the drives flat on the ground as though they were tops
* immediately, put the drives in the enclosure
* reboot the machine but do not power it off

Damn if the guy wasn't right.

His guess was that the drives had been powered for eight or so years and the lubricant had either broken down or the heads were simply stuck to the platters. The thumping dislodged the heads and the spin gave the grease a fighting chance. {shrug}

In any case, we dared not turn it off for another year and a half until at such time it was replaced. We thought about buying replacement drives but IBM wanted something along the lines of $600 for a 4.5GB drive. Even on eBay, they were three times what we felt was reasonable.

Cheers,
Matt

1. Throw away everything that isn't a standard-sized SATA drive.
2. Buy a Drobo (http://www.drobo.com/products/professionals/drobo-fs/index.php).
3. Put the five (or eight) largest drives in the Drobo.
4. Throw away the rest of the drives.
5. When you get a drive that is larger than the smallest drive in your Drobo, pull the smaller drive out and insert the larger drive.
6. Find peace in the universe.

When I was young and foolish, I tried to keep every drive spinning, even long after its time had passed. I had *nix boxes stuffed with drives and SCSI-attached arrays. I learned a lot about drive management and system administration but, mostly, I learned that there is a value to my time and my time isn't best utilized playing disk administrator.

Drobo doesn't pay me a dime and I am still more excited about Drobo than any technology product since TiVo.

Cheers,
Matt

Instagram was nifty the first time I saw it... Oh, the halcyon days of photography. Now it is just played-out. Let it go, folks.

Cheers,
Matt

My father was a college student and newspaper photographer in Ohio circa May 1970. His photos of student protest and civil disobedience remind me of what I'm seeing with the Occupy movement.

A year or more ago, I commented that I didn't think the Tea Party would have a long-term affect because they weren't motivated enough to burn down an ROTC building nor were the police scared enough of them to hit them with tear gas.

Agree with them or not. Understand them or not. The Occupy movement is going to leave a mark upon this country because they are willing to have skin in the game.

Cheers, Matt

I'm entirely, completely in love with Drobo as a NAS device.

The ability to pop out a smaller drive and replace it with a larger drive is amazing - that is simply how technology is supposed to work. I have the Drobo FS at home and the DroboPro FS at work. Having used them for about a year and having tried to make them fail before I moved them into production, I'm very happy with their reliability and performance. (More on performance in a second.)

At the high end, I have used EMC and IBM solutions. At the low end, I've used every home-built and crappy RAID NAS solution you can name. Having used three of the five products reviewed by InfoWorld, I can say the Drobo is easily better than most of the units reviewed.

Performance on both the Drobo units I own isn't mind-blowing compared to some of the solutions that cost four or five times more. Ease of management, reliability, price point, expandability and overall functionality far offset the less than awesome performance. Still, as Lifix noted, there is more than enough performance to meet the needs of a home or small office. The only time I really notice the DroboPro FS slowing down is when we're running multiple rsync backups to it.

I have not been this excited and evangelical about a piece of technology since I got my TiVo.

Cheers,
Matt

(I'm not in any way compensated by Drobo but would be willing to entertain offers. Drobo? Are you listening? Send me free stuff.)

I don't see anything wrong with Verizon offering content that is so irrestable that they end up making more money. In fact, I'm pretty sure that is their sworn duty.

Grandmother's chocholate chip cookies make be deliciously irresistable but it is still my fault if I fall off my diet.

Cheers,
Matt

Points are awarded based on the wrong algorithm. For example, NSA.gov is only worth 2,497 points but HomeDepot.com is worth 219,941? The Department of Homeland Security (dhs.gov) is worth 17,068 while facebook.com is 75,000,000? Really? Until the rankings better reflect the underlying difficulty and associated risk, I refuse to participate in this sham. Cheers, Matt

Point of order, at least in the United States, horse-drawn vehicles and cyclists are allowed to use public roads the same way they did before the invention of the automobile. Roads are very good about being backward compatible.

Cheers,
Matt