85F at midnight, so I expect it is hot this am. [added – 83F and 93%RH, so not horrible at 7:30am]
I’m trying to sleep in today, I want to be fully rested for my trip. Still have a lot to do to get ready though. [freaking backup noisemakers on big trucks, woke me up. Neighbors are getting a new roof today. They can’t start with the nail guns until 8 but they can get deliveries and shout at each other.]
One thing I’d like to do is get a couple of audio books transferred onto an ipod so I can get them into the truck with me. Long drives are perfect for audio books, and I’ve got Guns Germs and Steel, and ALL of the Chronicles of Narnia waiting for a listen.
I guess I’ll have my wife do it since she has the i- management stuff on her pc. I did find a free way to get stuff onto a pod, but not off, so I guess I’ll just have to do it the apple way.
Good thing I picked up 3 or 4 ipods… [or just take the CDs with]
n
I guess I’ll have my wife do it since she has the i- management stuff on her pc. I did find a free way to get stuff onto a pod, but not off, so I guess I’ll just have to do it the apple way.
Once you put a media track onto the iPod, copying the file off to another machine is not officially allowed.
Early on, Apple bought out the company who managed to reverse engineer enough of the transfer protocol to make the first iPod work with a PC, back when even that was officially verboten.
Remember, the iPod was originally designed to sell Macs.
Yeah, I can’t even figure out how to wipe the existing content off them. I guess that is because someone needs to check those rights back into a library some where… not gonna happen though. I don’t even want to save the content (audio books I don’t have interest in on two devices, and 16 gig of pop music on the other.) The display died on my ipod I use in the expedition, and I’d like to get all of that music over to a replacement. Windows it would be easy… mount the player as a drive, copy back and forth.
Bah, I guess I can take the CDs with me and just listen to them if I have to.
n
In the former Great Britain —
Hmmm, wonder what else trebled from 2012 to 2018? Could there be a clue in the disguises used in the attack?
Naw, just my racist intolerance showing…
n
Bah, I guess I can take the CDs with me and just listen to them if I have to.
New cars eliminate the CD option for the most part. Everybody gets a backup camera instead. Progress.
The tradeoff in Toyota is that even the vehicles without Car Play understand the AAC format. Still, it can be inconvenient. And the Toyota system requires a specific format USB drive using a strict naming system (fortunately the default for EAC). Did I mention relearning how to sort FAT32 drives under Linux?
And people wonder why the 20 year old Ram Classic design is outselling new GM pickups.
My 2018 Subie still has a CD slot. I think the 2019s also have them.
I haven’t used an iPod since the capability showed up in the iPhone. iTunes on Mac works well. The new macOS will cashier iTunes for a TV, Music, and pod cast trio of apps. I’ve had no problems moving audio books or anything else on and off with iTunes.
My 2018 Subie still has a CD slot. I think the 2019s also have them.
My 2019 Forester has a CD Player. I am not sure all the trim levels have it though.
Personally, I think they need to bring back the 8-track. Love/hate relationship, but oh the memories (and bruised shins).
Just your average ‘Murcan:
Shocking moment Houston mom, 26, ‘runs over and kills her three-year-old son during a game of CHICKEN after driving forward as her three children tried to run away from her SUV’
My 2018 Subie still has a CD slot. I think the 2019s also have them.
New Toyotas sold to rental fleets have a smaller touch screen and the CD player. Our 2018 Camry LE rental last summer had the slot, but my same year/trim/model car does not.
The new macOS will cashier iTunes for a TV, Music, and pod cast trio of apps.
I wonder what they will do with the Windows iTunes. With Cocoa, porting OS X to Windows is a recompile. Though, I imagine a multimedia application is tougher.
Personally, I think they need to bring back the 8-track. Love/hate relationship, but oh the memories (and bruised shins).
I was one of those 80s kids whose pre-Boomer mother (again, watch “I, Tonya”) thought that the last commercial 8 track/phono player sold by Penny’s would suffice when her child asked for a stereo for Christmas. Of course all the other kids got cassette stereos.
Once Bill Lear died, the development of the 8 track pretty much stopped whereas the cassette tape format went on to get Dolby noise reduction and high quality tape formulations. The format was done by Christmas 1980.
The only upside to the 8 track was that my father’s Redd Foxx “Greatest Hits” collection, SWAG from his days as a Ford exec, was the only tape we had in the house that morning, and anyone familiar with Foxx’s standup knows that he isn’t the guy you want a 12 year old listening to on Christmas Day.
Redd Foxx profanity made George Carlin look like an amateur in that area. And my parents were worried about me listening to “Baseball vs. Football”.
In case you’re wondering, of course, I got the “Laser Sword” toy for Christmas 1978 when all the other kids got licensed “Light Sabres”. It was almost a spit take moment in “The Last Jedi” when I heard Hamill as Luke call it a “laser sword” — yet another way that flick sh*t on the fans in a really cynical way to which Disney was oblivious until after the film hit theaters.
Bob Iger and Kathleen Kennedy weren’t 80s kids scarred by receiving 8 track stereos and “laser swords” for Christmas.
xkcd: The Modern Tech Stack
xkcd: The Modern Tech Stack
We currently have a customer working on that top level category, I’m guessing a reverse engineering effort, but they still haven’t signed off on accepting the product.
No one else has our speed or reliability in correlating the data from sensors into records appropriate for the database engine.
I’m currently visiting a very nice but densely laid out community. The trash trucks are very quiet, but I’ll bet the drivers should be required to use hearing protection for the backup alarms. On trash day, I can hear these alarms blocks away.
As an old 🙂 biker, I have seen tough enforcement on noise emissions, but I’ll bet those backup alarms far exceed those specs. Whether or not, they are ANNOYING!!
But, it’s for the children XXX XXXXXXXX safety.
As an old biker, I have seen tough enforcement on noise emissions, but I’ll bet those backup alarms far exceed those specs. Whether or not, they are ANNOYING!!
I had an MRI yesterday (hand issue, nothing serious … I hope), and they issued ear plugs. I always figured those things were fairly silent, but I had it wrong.
To me, the machine was louder than the inside of Hoover Dam’s generator room, the last place I wore earplugs. Maybe it was just the proximity of the machinery, however.
Bah, I guess I can take the CDs with me and just listen to them if I have to.
My 2005 Ford Expedition factory radio CD player has problems with CD mp3 audios when they go over an hour of content. I believe that your expedition is newer and hopefully does not have this problem.
My 2005 Ford Expedition factory radio CD player has problems with CD mp3 audios when they go over an hour of content. I believe that your expedition is newer and hopefully does not have this problem.
If you did the encoding yourself, try turning off VBR and encoding again. I don’t think the CD-MP3 units ever got VBR right, probably because the bits coming off the player can be innacurate — okay when playing PCM CD audio or even CBR MP3, but fatal for VBR, which depends on accurate transmission of data.
Wrt MRI noise, it’s loud! Get your head inside one for an hour…
Doesn’t bother me. I tell them to brace my head with blocks because I’ll fall asleep. They never believe me and I always do.
Currently getting a rock chip fixed. I don’t want t to drive 40 hours thru a dozen states with a chipped windshield. Then oil change and tire pressure check. Then clear out my tools and put in the stuff to keep us entertained on the trip.
N
I play CDs with MP3 formatted songs, dozens of them. I do not have a one hour time issue on my 2006 Jeep Grand Cherokee CD player.
“Never Give Ransomware Scammers Your Money”
https://www.pcmag.com/commentary/369143/never-give-ransomware-scammers-your-money
“A Florida city made the difficult decision to fork over the cash after ransomware hijacked city computers. Everyone needs to make their own choice, but I firmly believe you should never pay the ransom.”
Easy to say if your staff has already restored your systems. Otherwise, you are baltimore…
N
My 2005 Ford Expedition factory radio CD player has problems with CD mp3 audios when they go over an hour of content. I believe that your expedition is newer and hopefully does not have this problem.
If you did the encoding yourself, try turning off VBR and encoding again. I don’t think the CD-MP3 units ever got VBR right, probably because the bits coming off the player can be innacurate — okay when playing PCM CD audio or even CBR MP3, but fatal for VBR.
Nope, these are audio MP3 CDs that I bought from Amazon. The problem appears to be a software problem in the player. When the display rolls over to one hour, the display goes wonky and you do not know where the CD is at.
Of course, this a 2005 Expedition with 208K miles and the original Alpine unit. I am amazed that CD player still works. I do have to play a CD cleaner every ten hours of usage or so to keep it working.
That’s interesting about VBR mp3 files. Not interesting enough that I’m going to re-rip any CDs. I’ll just take a dozen CDs, they play fine. The door pockets can hold 30 or 40 CDs in standard cases. 2002 Dodge Ram.
The factory CD changer I put in the 2004 Ford Freestar does play mp3s. Same disc in the Dodge says invalid or something.
I’ll look at the one hour limit. I’ve never heard of that until today. The disc I have has about 13 hours of playtime.
A Florida city made the difficult decision to fork over the cash after ransomware hijacked city computers.
And what was the city’s IT department doing? Other than NOT making back-ups?
A Florida city made the difficult decision to fork over the cash after ransomware hijacked city computers.
And what was the city’s IT department doing? Other than NOT making back-ups?
It does appear that way, does it not ? I get the feeling that we are not getting the entire story.
Several articles said that they haven’t had any effective leadership, budget, or purchasing for years.
When you have a city full of gibmedatz you don’t have money left over for luxuries like current licenses, or staff….
n
I cannot imagine having backups. With one of those backups disconnected from the world. Something else happened, backups no good as they were never tested etc.
The credit union I was fired from, Summit Information Systems software had an issue, had a hardware issue. Disk drive failed. No problem, use the backups to restore. Nope. The backup the vender setup failed to backup a couple of critical files. System was down for three days while a weeks worth of transactions from paper trails were manually reentered. Well most of them. Several transactions from electronic transactions were missed. Several of the teller accounts did not balance and were adjusted by their supervisor.
This was one example of the stupid stuff the vendor did that I argued against, sometimes loudly and forcibly. Did no good and led to my demise. But karma is good sometimes. Six months later the CEO, who fired me, was terminated by board over the multiple issues with the vendor.
I used to be in governmental IT, a large city in CA, and a county in Utah. Both had large IT staffs. I’m glad I am not there now.
The first job was departmental IT support. I was mostly in charge of the dept’s servers. Backups every night, combination of incremental and full. And I installed the WSUS (Windows update system) that forced updates on all connected computers and servers. And installed AV (McAfee at the time) on all systems. Along with web access filtering processes. All managed by client management software (from Novell, forget what it was called) that allowed me to ‘push’ settings to all systems.
Went from there to system-wide InfoSec. Took a lot of SANS classes. Got the anti-virus, auto-update, web filtering system-wide. Mostly. Lots of push-back on doing it.
I recall a bit malware problem in mid-2000’s. Was hitting sites world-wide. Not all systems were protected with AV. Wrote a white paper for management detailing the need to get system-wide on AV and web filtering and updates, citing the risk of the malware getting into the system. Two days later, we got hit with that virus (not my system). Had to shut down every computer to prevent further spread of the malware. Spent about three days with lots of hours and lots of IT staff time (IT support was mostly decentralized, each division had their own crew, and they didn’t have system-wide standards). Thought it was humorous that I was in the middle of warning everyone when it happened.
But, every time I see a ransomware story, I am glad that I don’t work at IT anymore (except for my own little home systems). I suspect that I would still be trying to alert people of the risks, and pushing for better protection.
Backups are good. Knowing how to restore backups is better. Keeping systems up to date is good. Forcing systems to keep up to date is better. Prevention rather than reaction.
I think a lack of backups is the norm rather than the exception.
At my current employer, backups were supposedly being done on both networks. When I came in, I found some backup jobs configured, but no viable backups anywhere, 15 years worth of data sitting on 7 – 10 year old servers, original drives, and no backups.
We are in better shape now. I still handle backups. I eyeball the results daily and do a test restore weekly.
I thought I was well covered by my raid, and then the raid hardware failed. Still have the drives haven’t pursued getting it back. Had everything needed in other places.
N
Several articles said that they haven’t had any effective leadership, budget, or purchasing for years.
When you have a city full of gibmedatz you don’t have money left over for luxuries like current licenses, or staff….
Riviera Beach isn’t exactly a wealthy community, despite its location. I don’t know the current situation, but it was predominantly African American through my college years (86-91). Trivia — Burt Reynolds father was Chief of Police in the … 50s?
The big kahuna in town is the familiy who owns the water park. They make sure that competition stays out of South Florida, and even Schlitterbahn gave up after a decade of fighting them.
It does appear that way, does it not ? I get the feeling that we are not getting the entire story.
Pr0n in city offices during business hours.
Even if they IT guys weren’t into it, they’re keeping their jobs by having a list of officials who are watching on the clock.
Florida.
Backups; One former employer was proud that they did nightly backups and off-site storage for long term. Until someone needed a file from the backup. We discovered that the backup software license had expired 8 months before so it simply spun the tapes and terminated the job. No one thought that a 15 minute backup of what used to take 6 hours was anything to report. Sigh. Lessons learned the hard way.
I just backed up my home systems to one of my external backup drives since I was inspired by this talk. First time since Nov 21, 2018. I am getting lazy.
I backup my home systems to an internal drive as least weekly.
When I was at TBP the prior IT person lacked backups. All the information was lost on the member records and had to be manually entered into the system. The guy was an idiot.
My backups consisted of nightly backups to another server. All servers backed up to a USB drive connected to one server. Another backup was done to an auxiliary sever running proprietary software that could create VM’s of each, or all, of the servers.
Each week copies of all the data including web scripts were copied to a desktop. Those files were then copied to a cloud backup service and to a USB drive that was kept offsite. Thus multiple copies of all needed data in multiple locations.
The backup disaster plan that I had written was tested once a year at my home. A spare machine was configured from scratch with all the software and data files. That machine’s IP address was exposed to the world so staff could access from work using a specific port. An hour of checking by the staff and then the machine was shut down and wiped clean.
I don’t think my replacement has tested in the 34 months I have been gone. But you know what, I no longer care. Not my problem.
Bah, I guess I can take the CDs with me and just listen to them if I have to.
Is it still possible to install an aftermarket stereo?
I put a Scosche dash bezel and wire adapter in my ’06 for under $20,
for the decent $100 FM/CD/MP3 unit.
Looking for a common newer vehicle just now, I found that it’s $350
for the kit for an F-150, though.
Backups… before retirement, I transferred into a group that had a very smart guy who was responsible for backups. We had no formal IT services. I reviewed his scheme, and it seemed very good. However, he became more than a little resentful when I asked when was the last time he had run tests. I let it slide, but it worried me. Further asking just raised the resentment, so I went excitedly to him to ask that he restore a single file I had accidently “lost.”
He spent a lot of time, and then sheepishly admitted he couldn’t. He added regular tests. We are still friends many years later.
I still make my own backups – and mistakes 🙂
He spent a lot of time, and then sheepishly admitted he couldn’t. He added regular tests. We are still friends many years later.
Excellent !
I still make my own backups – and mistakes
Me too, every day.
BTW, I only believe in mirror backups using robocopy. And the entire backup should be to as few as devices as possible, preferably one device.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robocopy
My home backup is about 0.5 TB and the office backup is about 4 TB.
I backup at home using Acronis True Image. Works well and I have used it twice to recover machines that needed rebuilding. I have never lost a file using that software and I am able to easily recover a single file if necessary.
The only thing I don’t do is an offsite backup from home. Critical files are held in Dropbox and Onedrive. The others no. If I lose the house I have more important issues than the loss of photographs that my son will toss when I die and he gets my stuff.
One of the signs of ongoing collapse is a breakdown in civility and rule of law…
“Sen. Brian Boquist (R) didn’t take too kindly to Brown’s threat – telling a reporter he was prepared for a bloody standoff if state troopers show up for him. Boquist had previously told Brown that “hell is coming to visit you personally” if she went forward with the threat.
“Send bachelors, and come heavily armed; I’m not going to be a political prisoner in the state of Oregon, it’s just that simple,””
Elsewhere they listed the guy’s CV and he’s been working in many foreign places on elections and kidnapping… he’s got the chops to back up his threat.
n
Over the years, I have used many backup tools, but the one I like best is a batch file that uses xcopy to copy files whose archive bits are set. I also do more, but the point is I back up frequently, and keep all files as individuals rather than a blob. I glanced at Robocopy, and will take a deeper look next time I update my scheme.
On Linux, I have been using rsync to do something similar to xcopy, but it only seems able to compare file contents, which is slow, and requires read access to the target directory, which doesn’t work well for me. At least, that has been my experience. I am not much of a guru.
One advantage of commercial backup software is the ease of preserving file versions. I like that, but effectively do that wilh my scheme. Besides, I have never needed an older version. Maybe if I were a developer or programmer.
My biggest weakness is infrequent transfers to off site. A solution is cloud storage, but that scares me. Privacy, ya know.
Maybe if I were a developer or programmer.
I occasionally write some C code. In lieu of a store-bought backup program I’ve written a short Lua script that creates a time-stamped copy of the contents of the directory in which a shortcut to the script resides, along with all subdirectories, to the drive of my choice. It’s easier to use than describe. 😉
One advantage of commercial backup software is the ease of preserving file versions. I like that, but effectively do that wilh my scheme. Besides, I have never needed an older version. Maybe if I were a developer or programmer.
I archive an external backup drive every six months. I now buy 8 TB WD external USB hard drives for my weekly seven drive rotation.
https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Desktop-Hard-Drive-WDBWLG0080HBK-NESN/dp/B07D5V2ZXD/?tag=ttgnet-20
For archiving software source file versions, we use cvsnt for our 10,000+ source code files. Some day when we grow up, we will move to a private git.
https://git-scm.com/
Just backed up my laptop. Used to use SyncToy.
Tried a new free thing called “FreeFileSync” . Seems to work well, and fast. Use it to copy my data drive to an external 5TB USB drive. Makes both target and source the same, getting rid of files I’ve deleted, and updating only those that changed.
Makes both target and source the same, getting rid of files I’ve deleted, and updating only those that changed.
I do not delete files from the backup drive that have been deleted from the source drives. You never know when a file has been deleted accidentally. When the backup device get full, I reformat it and start over fresh with a new backup immediately.
+1000
You win the prize for today!
We have a complicated backup system that involves d2d over the network, then mirror the backups to another server in the other building.
Hours for days, days for weeks, weeks for months, and months for years. Our oldest backups online are 2012. Monthly, an image from all our servers is pushed out to an external (USB) HDD. We have dozens of these drives.
We test backups every week as part of weekly maintenance. At least 4x/year, I do the backups & testing instead of the helpdesk. Our part-timer does it at least once/year.
Even so, we’re missing something. I know it. One of the times we got hit with ransomware our backups on one of the servers were not working correctly. (This was before we implemented checks as a part of weekly maintenance). We considered paying, but the FBI took down the site before we could pay the ransom. 6 months later we were notified they had broken the hash. We sent a sample file and they sent us the key. We had to manually decrypt the files, but we got them back.
Backups are a pain in the tuchus. NOT having the backups is worse.
I feel for the folks that don’t have good backups. Despair is a sin. Despair is also fairly common.
For archiving software source file versions, we use cvsnt for our 10,000+ source code files. Some day when we grow up, we will move to a private git.
https://git-scm.com/
You didn’t have the intern finish that project last summer?
Once you are in Git, you can arrange for a private repository with GitHub or another vendor to provide an offsite remote target to push your master branch via SSH, secured with a key you generate.
Our corporate Git repository just went behind a VPN which is a redundant pain. I trust SSH crypto a *lot* more than AnyConnect, and authentication to the tunnel server requires a token number from an app on our phones.
The “Pro Git” book available from the website is an excellent resource.
Elsewhere they listed the guy’s CV and he’s been working in many foreign places on elections and kidnapping… he’s got the chops to back up his threat.
Oregon is a fairly red state away from the I-5 corridor from Portland to Corvallis. Unfortunately, like WA State, a small piece of geography, filled with people who never venture beyond the suburbs, has the population centers and the political influence.
Kate Brown is extreme, even by OR standards. Her ascendancy to Governor came via a trick pulled by the last occupant of the mansion, John Kitzhaber. She’s used the power of incumbency to win subsequent elections.
I get asked about the region by prepper types frequently, but I’ve written before that the transportation infrastructure and political leanings N-S from Corvallis to Seattle and E-W from Astoria out at least as far as The Dalles are solid enough that the Valleys will be Prog central in a SHTF situation … at least until the hungry masses descend down from Vancouver BC.
You didn’t have the intern finish that project last summer?
What intern ? Things are tough around here, no interns. I would have to pay them out of my pocket.
Once you are in Git, you can arrange for a private repository with GitHub or another vendor to provide an offsite remote target to push your master branch via SSH, secured with a key you generate.
No offsite repositories. I have security issues. And our code repository is 20+ GB with almost 20,000 files. It takes over a minute for cvsnt to go through the repository, I can only imagine what an offsite repository would take.
The “Pro Git” book available from the website is an excellent resource.
https://www.amazon.com/Pro-Git-Scott-Chacon/dp/1484200772?tag=ttgnet-20
$48 for a paperback. Wow, not cheap.
Backups at home are simple. Everything is on the NAS box at home – mirrored 2TB drives. Every once in a while, I hook up an external USB drive to the NAS box and run copy jobs. The USB drive goes into the trunk of my car and then (sometimes) to my desk drawer at work until needed again. In spite of that, my rule for exiting the house in case of fire includes unplugging the NAS and walking out with it. Keeping files you need on the individual PCs is silly and complicates backup and recovery. I admit to not trying a recovery so that’s on my TO-DO list.
$48 for a paperback. Wow, not cheap.
Paperback or hard cover? I’ve never seen a printed copy in paperback.
Download an ebook version for free. I keep the MOBI on an old Kindle that goes with me everywhere.
I used to tell my students that the first three chapters were essential reading and that they should avoid the “rebase” command unless they completely understood the implications.
A big downside of Git compared to Subversion and other popular revision control is that the end user can create an awful mess in the central repository. I learned that the hard way during my brief experience in Seattle.
The book has a lot of good advice about how to arrange workflows. A half dozen developers or so should get along fine with SSH, but all the cool kids get a GitLab server going eventually.