Technically its a bit more complicated. You have to both have the drive plugged in for several hours (I recommend at least 12) *AND* the data needs to have changed on the drive within the past 30 days. If the drive contains your family's photos from 2004-2012 (for example) - they will delete the drive and you will have to re-push (which WILL push you over your data caps on most ISPs/plans). To prevent this, you have to do something like create a small text file on the drive and edit it each time you re-connect. Still, I recommend them, but they could make life easier by either not requiring this or better documenting. Source: Backblaze customer for many years.

Here's what I do, I use Firefox with NoScript installed for all browsing & I block all Javascript from Facebook (and their cdn domain). I use Safari or the iPhone app when I (rarely) use Facebook. (and no cookies since I don't login using this browser -- plus I blow away all cookies regularly). Trends to paranoid side, sure, but the tracking thing creeps me out. I don't care if its just for aggregation -- that's the intent, but there is far more power there.

Am I the only one who does this kind of thing?

I use the m-audio Transit, from looking at their site it hasn't changed in the 5 or so years since I purchased it. Its worked fine, I used it while converting some old vinyl 80s music that never made it big enough to enter the digital era. Hardest problem was post-processing the audio, but that was more due to my turntable & needle. Kids, I'll tell you a story about shopping for turntable needles someday when I have time.

Be sure to check out Amrita2 at http://amrita2.rubyforge.org/>. To quote their page: "Amrita2 is a a xml/xhtml template library for Ruby. It makes html documents from a template and a model data." I like the very clean separation of code from the HTML. You can prototype view the HTML, and you're not sticking bits of logic that will baffle your designers.