A Mind is a Terrible Thing

Hey there–

Consider this a kind of ‘public service announcement’:
Ever have a day when things just go wrong?  In one area in particular, a little bit of forethought and taking-care type of maintenance can keep a "bad day" from turning into a total, irreparable disaster.  (No, I’m fine; nothing bad happened.  Just bear with me.)

I cannot begin to tell you how many times during my business career I was either told or received an email going something like this:  "My computer crashed this morning.  Wiped out everything.  Please re-send any important messages or emails, as I lost it all."

It’s the nature of things to break.  That little whirly hard disk in your computer is bound to fail someday.  it just will.  There is no 100% failure-proof computer memory system out there.  To borrow an aphorism and bowdlerize it shamelessly, a single computer is too fragile a basket in which to keep all your eggs.

Ideally, it’s best to copy all critical data (multiple times, even) and store it offsite, as many businesses do.  We don’t all have that option — but one option most of us do have is we could get an external hard drive, plug it into a USB or firewire port, and back up to that.  Or back up to writeable DVDs or CDs.  Or, heck, buy a handful of USB flashdrives and copy the critical stuff to that — at about $20/gb, it’s not hard to back up what’s usually not more than perhaps 2 or 3 GB of personal data — provided you ignore the big stuff, like music or video collections.

On the other hand, if you’ve bought a whole bunch of iTunes and other music downloads, spent days (cumulatively) ripping your entire CD collection, and have photos and videos and whatnot — it absolutely pays to get an external drive and do regular backups.

For instance, now that I’ve got my music and TV shows nicely organized in iTunes, I am — as I write this — copying the entire "My Music" directory to the 750GB Maxtor ‘OneTouch III’ firewire/USB drive I bought in Singapore a few weeks ago.

In case you were wondering — no, my computers and their hard drives are fine.  But I am a fiend about doing regular backups.  For me, a computer or hard disk dying is merely an inconvenience and a goodly amount of time later on rebuilding a system from backups.  The difference is I usually HAVE those backups, whereas most of the people I know simply hope nothing goes wrong.

By way of a product review?  Well, these drives are all pretty much the same.  Supposedly the OneTouch has special backup software that automates the process.  I honestly don’t care about that, nor do I want still another program and still more system services clogging my computer.  But as an external drive with lots of storage, the OneTouch III is still a great product line, despite Maxtor’s purchase by Seagate (which, I have to say, I’ve not had a lot of confidence regarding in the last 5 years).  Seagate used to be one of the top names in hard drives, but as is often the case, overall quality and reliability seems to be a coming and going thing for many of these technology companies.  For a time, for instance, Iomega was the name in removable storage…then came the ZIP drive debacle.  (Great idea — but their drives had this tendency to crash catastrophically and totally without warning.  There was this thing called "The Click of Death" — which meant not only was the drive dead forever, you also lost the ZIP disk inside.  The breakdown apparently also resulted in a head-crash, ruining the drive media.)

Anyway, Seagate in the early 2000s went through a time when I personally had not much respect for their drives.  I would always get Western Digital, Hitachi, or Maxtor — never a Seagate or, heaven forbid, a drive from IBM.  That said, it does look like much of the product in the inventory pipeline — at least in Singapore — is still Maxtor-branded.  What I can’t speak for is whether Seagate will keep the Maxtor quality.  Hope so.

Back to what I started with though:  Got email files?  Back ‘em up!  Music collection?  You’re crazy not to.  Critical letters, correspondence, tax files, and so forth?  C’mon, it’s not that hard.

The day your computer goes down in fiery flames, you’ll be much happier if you can say, "Thank god I had everything backed up" — as opposed to, "I lost everything."

Get a hard drive or a stack of burnable DVDs/CDs.  Do the right thing — and do it at least once a month.  You’ll thank yourself later.

Figured out how to get more control over which TV episodes are put on my G5 iPod, via the iTunes’ sync feature.

Yes — I know I could put the whole thing on full manual operation, and just drag what I want over to the iPod.  But I actually rather like the automatic synchronization feature, so i wanted to find a way around the problem.

Here it is:  In the section for the iPod synchronization options, the TV Shows tab, the second drop down box lets you select between choosing whether to sync individual TV series — or individual playlists.  It’s a little bit of a kludgey either-or operation here, but it works.  Switch it to playlists.  Then, go create a playlist — either normal or ’smart’, doesn’t matter which, as far as I know — and put the show episodes into it.

Example:  Using Battlestar Galactica as a trial, I picked the last episode of season 2 and the first three episodes of season 3 — comprising what I called "The New Caprica" story arc.  I actually labeled them as such using the ‘Grouping’ function (under ‘Get Info’).  Then I created a smart playlist to select episodes so labeled.  Finally, in the Devices section for my iPod, I selected the "BSG – New Caprica Saga" playlist as what I wanted to sync.  Voila, done.  (Well, after about 5 minutes…).

I likely could’ve just created a plain playlist, dragged the episodes into it, and been done.

The only drawback is I have to choose between syncing playlists OR "most recent or all episodes of some or all series".  Or no TV shows at all.  Can’t have both.

Well, in a way, you can — but it involves setting up more playlists, and finding ways to select the last X-number of shows added to your collection, or whole series (easier, this last, as you need only create a smart playlist with the series name as the selector).

Cheers,
Becca

Hey there–

Some of you come this way drawn Googleward whilst hunting for information about my teacher, Sri Kaleshwar.  More, however, seem to show up for my Dijonaise Chicken recipe.  And still others happen to stumble here for a product review.  In the past, I’ve posted reviews about full spectrum reading lamps (my lovely BlueMax is sitting back in California, in storage…and boy do I miss it here), laptops (still crazy for my VAIO), digital cameras, and other techno-gadgetry.

Those of you who happen to read regularly may have seen that earlier this month, we took a brief trip to Singapore.  (Visa rules in India are such that we can stay a maximum of 180 days, then have to leave — even if just overnight.)  While there, we took advantage of both needs and availability to load up on technology that is sometimes hard or expensive to come by over here.  Seriously, Singapore is a Technowitch’s paradise, with stuff that’s even more advanced than what’s available in the US. 

For instance, think you’ve got spiffy cell phones?  Pfft!  They’re nothing compared to what you can get here and in Singapore (and Japan…and most of Europe, come to think of it).  Why?  Because the cellular service provider monopolies Stateside only want you to buy phones from them.  I know of at least a dozen small stores within a few blocks of the Ballal Residency Hotel in Bangalore, all offering the latest — or nearly the latest — in GPRS/GSM world phones.  If I take my phone anywhere else in the world — EXCEPT for the US — I can pop in a local prepaid SIM card and start using it immediately.  No contracts, no ridiculous fees.  Just sayin’.

Okay, reviews after the break… (more…)

Greetings friends and Imaginary Readers,

I just spent a not-fun weekend feeling decidedly ill.  Some virus or other that I picked up, and I would add that Stephanie caught the worse version.  Bit of a fever, nausea, and general soreness and run-down feelings.  Once again, I have to commend the medical profession here in India.  We got a house-call from the local doctor AND some medicines to help with the fever and immune system — for both of us, for 150 rupees.

That’s less than $4 US.  Plus the doctor offered to come by and check us again in a day or so.

Um…hello?  Do you poor misinformed saps in America still think you have "the finest medical care system in the world"?

Think about that, the next time you’re sitting interminably in your doctor’s waiting room.  The fifth medical practice in as many years because your employer-provided insurance keeps switching your plan providers.  And you’ve just emptied your wallet because you found out you now have a $100 deductable per visit, and have no idea if there’s enough room on your credit card to buy the prescriptions you’ll likely get during your 5 minute examining room visit — because your new plan also has a huge deductable on the ’scrips — assuming they’ll pay for any prescriptions at all.  And think also about being trapped in a job you hate, because you dare not leave it because you’ll lose your insurance coverage — and thereby have all your ‘pre-existing conditions’ basically disqualify you for anything but your state’s "high risk" pool — which means abominably lousy insurance for a few large per month.  Then you get to imagine all the hours you will spend on the phone trying to get your lousy insurance to cough up the money they supposedly owe you and/or the doctor — who meanwhile has turned your case over to a collection agency and a mean guy named Pete keeps calling and telling your kids that their parents are deadbeats.

Think about it.  $4 for a housecall and meds.  No paperwork, no muss.  AFFORDABLE QUALITY HEALTH-CARE.

Okay, sure, sure — I’d expect it to run higher in the US, given the cost of living there and all.  Plus I do happen to think that the doctors here are rather underpaid.  But STILL — isn’t this ridiculous?

Anyway, enough ranting about that.  As noted in this post’s heading, it’s crazy-noisy here in Casa du Morn today, as it’s been the last couple of days, our recent illnesses notwithstanding.  Those contractors about whom I was grousing in a post the other day have FINALLY showed up, more or less, to get going on our kitchen construction.

With honkin’ big slabs of raw polished granite, which they are cutting, grinding, and re-polishing right outside our front door.  Which has to stay open so the workers don’t go thinking they can’t come-and-go (they have this tendency to wander off to do other tasks…).

I mention all this because I know there are a lot of folks who think that meditation is hard.  The room and atmosphere have to be just right.  Quiet, calm.  Nice music.  Maybe a candle lit, incense burning.  Kids away.  No loud noise.

Well, my teacher, Swami Kaleshwar — and the teachers in our spiritual lineage — including Ramakrishna Paramahamsa — have often remarked that the true expert meditator can meditate (even go into trance) while in a fish market.

Think about it:  When is it we could really use the calmness and serenity of meditation?  Say, when in a long line at the DMV.  Or sitting in that overbooked doctor’s office waiting room.  Or in an economy seat on a plane, with a screaming baby a few rows ahead and a kid kicking your seat from behind.  (Yeah, just try to meditate with THAT!)

But seriously, this is when we really should close our eyes for a few minutes.  Visualize a peaceful place.  Shut out the noises — just pretend they are not real, that they have no significance.  True, we can’t do this while, say, in rush hour traffic.  However, suppose you’re stuck, stopped dead, and nothing’s moving on the road ahead.  Go ahead.  Close your eyes.  Think of your favorite place on Earth.  Imagine you’ve nothing to do, no stress, nothing happening.  Concentrate on your breathing, in and out at a steady, slow and deep pace.  When you’ve calmed down, instead of listening to jackhammers and stone saws, try to remember a piece of beautiful music.

If you know some mantras or prayers — say them, in your mind.  Concentrate on those.

I promise you, the so-called ‘real world’ will disappear — or more to the point, it will come to matter much, much less.  Your heart rate will come down.  Your stress levels will come down.

And remember the immortal wisdom of Bill Murray in the movie "Meatballs":  "It just doesn’t matter!  It just doesn’t matter!  It just doesn’t matter!"

There, see?  I’ll bet you feel better already.

toodles,
Becca

I’ll be damned — Airtel Internet has finally been fixed here in Penukonda.  I don’t know if it’s been my repeated email pleas to their ‘nodal authority’ (means ‘regional supervisor’ for this State, meaning Andra Pradesh).  Or perhaps the phone call from a friend of mine here at the ashram, who says she ran into someone while in Bangalore who said he could get it taken care of, that for the service to be down for five straight months was "unacceptable."

I ain’t about to make a visual periodontal exam for this particular equine quadruped, believe me.  I’m just glad finally to be off the shared connection.  For a single person, sure the other dial-up would’ve been faster than the Airtel connection.  But it was never just one person, but more like several, sometimes 8 or 9 at once.  And when that many people were all trying to get stuff, that poor phone had a tendency to crash.

So anyway, here I am.  My computer’s busily checking the Microsoft website for needed updates.  I was able at times to keep it updated on the shared line, but it always cost, plus was subject to the availability of bandwidth.

Oh, in terms of product reviewing?  This is regarding the iPod.  If you are using some software other than iTunes to manage the iPod, make sure you go into iTunes and DISABLE its ‘automatic sync’ functions, including even the bit that has iTunes start up whenever your iPod is connected.  This is because iTunes saw all those tracks I downloaded the other day (something like 3000 songs), didn’t think they belonged on the device, and deleted them all.

Thank god I didn’t spend a lot of time working on playlists, because those would’ve been wiped too.

That said though, I do find I really like my old friend, the MP3 player management application from Red Chair Software.  They have packages for many of the player types out there — and I first became familiar with their product when I got my first Creative Jukebox Zen.  Well, they have one that’ll run iPods, too, and Racer?  I think that’s where I get the ability to import the MP3s without converting them to AAC or whatever proprietary mode Apple tries to impose on people.

Anapod Explorer is a MUCH friendlier way to manage one’s portable music.

Anyway, if the Airtel service holds up, you folks might just be hearing more regularly from me again.  I know I owe you all waaay more frequent updates and more content besides my latest shopping ventures.  Been a lot of changes, a lot of growth (I hope anyway), and a number of insights to share.

Until next post…
Becca

Just sayin’.

Oh, and a political comment, regarding that whole US attorneys scandal?  It’s my considered opinion that all roads lead to Karl Rove.  His vaunted ‘Math’ that he claimed would, against all polling data, propel the GOP into continued majority status consisted of:

- A totally compromised judiciary that selectively prosecuted Democrats and ignored Republican corruption
- Deliberate attempts to suppress Democratic party voting
- Rigged voting machines provided by GOP-supporting corporate friends
- Zero oversight from the GOP-controlled Congress

Lucky for us, his ‘math’ wasn’t enough to overcome the voters’ will (although I rather suspect that the Dems would’ve won even bigger, had the election been totally without taint).  Plus, as we are finding out, there were a few honorable Republicans in there — the ones Rove and Crew sought to have fired both before and in the aftermath of the ‘06 mid-terms.

Now if the Dems would just grow a spine…  (Very unhappy about the funding bill ‘compromise’ — which I call a total capitulation to the Codpiece-in-Chief’s demands for unending war.)

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall May 13, 2007 09:31 PM

Another edition of our series: Great moments in poor judgment. In this episode, on the final night of a school field trip, teachers stage a mock school shooting rampage as a ‘learning experience’ for the sixth graders on the trip.

Um, yeah.  Reeeeeally bad idea.  Hope those teachers can find themselves a new career.  Hopefully one not involving children to terrorize.

I also pity the taxpayers of that school district, as they’re gonna be paying for these bozos’ foolishness for a good many years to come…

Heya IRs (Imaginary Readers) — yes, we’re safely back in Bangalore.  Yesterday actually wasn’t that bad a day, despite the need to check out of our hotel room a full 8 hours before our actual flight time.

We ended up blowing some time wandering through Mustafa’s, bought a few things, and also hit the 7/11 store to buy up most of their supply of Doritos and Cheetos — all of which went into the $20 set of luggage (20" and 24" bags) we also got at Mustafa the previous day.

This got us to 2:30pm, and we decided to head to the airport, arriving about 45 minutes later.  Wandered a bit, at which point I discovered the joys of Duty Free Shopping.  Especially as regards a certain victual from bonny Scotland.  What would cost easily $100-150 in the US can be had for as little as $35…  Joy.  Lovely Islay joy.

Had us a light late lunch/early-dinner, then just waited to board.  Took a while to leave though, because some dink decided not to take the flight — and so his bags had to be retrieved from under the plane before we could depart.  Idjit.  Wonder if he knows that he held up an entire plane of people?

Anyway, uneventful flight.  As usual, our bags were about the last unloaded, but they were both there — some of the Doritos slightly crushed, but otherwise okay.  Unfortunately, one of the coffee bags did leak, and so everything in there smells of fine Columbian.

Got to the hotel late, slept in late, and just did some local shopping today.

By the way, you Mac-heads out there?  The Mac is not even close to Stephy-proof.  She’s already managed to get the Black Screen of Death once.  Crashed the sucker hard.  So there.

Late now, promise to write more again soon.

Becca

Heyo friends and my ever faithful Imaginary Readers (not to be confused with the VIMH (voices in my head)),

I write today from Singapore, in the lovely Park Royal Hotel, in the NE section of this amazing island city.  My impressions from last time, back in November, still hold:  Beautiful, busy, ever-reconstructing, insanely cosmopolitan, and expensive.  I’ve seen my friends while in Bangalore complain about having to spend 100 rupees (roughly $2.25) to get from one part of town to another.  Here, a typical short cab ride will run $5 easy, often higher (that’s $7-10SIN, as the Singapore dollar is currently worth about $0.67 US).

On the other hand, it’s very, very clean here, super tidy.  And there are tons and tons of really great stores, everywhere.  Yesterday, we checked out Mustafa (right next door), a mega-big department-type store crammed full of…well, just about everything.  Groceries, jewelry, meds, clothes, electronics, toys, you name it, they got it.  (Update:  Really, really not a good idea to try to shop heavily at Mustafa on Friday night.  Especially food and other family-type items.  The place was literally packed with people, all moving and jostling and all too often, blocking the way through to anywhere.  Plus with all the merchandise crammed into that big space, it results in great labyrinths, oftimes difficult to escape.  Still, we got lots of chocolate, coffee, macaroni-and-cheese, canned tuna, and quality microwave popcorn.)

From our 1st day’s Mustafa purchases, you’ll soon get a review of the latest version video iPod (we got one each — 30GB for Stephy, and the monster 80GB for me).  Early impressions?  Apple knows how to engineer user interfaces like nobody’s business.  It’s far and away superior to any Jukebox Zen I’ve ever owned…never mind the Archos media player I now regret buying.  The iPod is a joy to operate and totally intuitive.  That said, one should be aware that a LOT of the plastic cases designed for holding iPods do NOT fit the 80GB model.  Even if they say they do!  (After one failure, we got a 2nd one that even said it fit the 30, 60, and 80GB models on the box.  Well, it don’t.  Unfortunately, we’ve got no reason to go back to the store again, and I don’t feel like paying another $16-20SIN to return it.  So Stephy’s got 3 cases now.  I finally found a case that would fit, a floppy silicon one, stretchy and all — at Mustafa.)

We also bought a MacBook Pro, the 15" model with the upgraded processor, video, and RAM — on sale, and with Mac Office for free, because I’m pretty sure they’re looking to clear out the current line, to replace it soon with an updated version.  Paid slightly more for it than we would’ve in the US, but way less than in India.  (Fortunately, we can bring this new one in legally, as part of our personal baggage allowance.  Along with our other goodies.)  Today included a return trip to the Apple retailer over on Orchard Street (Wheelock Place) to add a few needed accessories:  Parallels (lets you run virtual machines with alternate OS’s…like Windows, for instance).  Symantec Antivirus.  Final Cut Express.  And a soft case for carrying.  In addition, because I personally need tons of storage space for the work I’m doing at the ashram these days, I picked up a Maxtor OneTouch III external drive (firewire and USB), 750GB.  Could’ve gone for the 1.5TB, but it seemed a little too pricey, plus it’s clearly two drives in one case.  Actually, we also got a 300GB drive, same brand, yesterday–but realized that a friend of ours is certain to be willing to buy it from us, back in Penukonda.

Lots of stuff to review in that list, soon as I actually get time to use the laptop a bit.  For the moment though, it’s mainly Stephanie’s baby, as she really did need a new laptop after her Toshiba Satellite went belly-up last year.  But the Final Cut Express is for my own needs.

Another shopping trip we took earlier today was to Sim Lim Tower and Square.  The Tower is a Technowitch’s paradise, full of electronic components, as well as audio/video gear.  Not so much consumer goods, but things like test equipment, lighting, amplifiers, cables, soldering stuff, etc.  We only bought a couple of electronic thermometers there, a little one for my purse, and another larger one for back home (at the ashram), with an outdoor sensor.  The Square has more of the consumer stuff, but is still at a more…well, ‘experienced’ level than say the Funan Digital Mall.  In the Sim Lim Square I got a few odds and ends, as well as a copy of WinXP Home Edition (for use on the new MacBook), a Firewire PCI card, and a new video card for my desktop (faster, more RAM).

Doubt I’ll be able to say a lot about the external drives, except that they work nice and hold a lot.  Plus I recommend always, when possible, to use Firewire as the drive interface rather than USB because it really is faster in actual operation.  As for the video card, same thing — I’m sure it’ll be faster, but also noisier and suck down more power (hopefully the additional heat won’t be a problem for my case to deal with).

But the MacBook and its associated software, plus the iPods, will get the special Technowitch treatment for sure.

Today we’ve one more trip to make, and that’s just next door, back to Mustafa’s again–this time to load up on groceries to haul back to India.  And I might make one last stab at a carry case for my iPod.  (Found it…)

Plus a suitcase or two in which to haul all this lovely swag back to Penukonda.  (Update:  Mission accomplished.  Got two very nice suitcases outside Mustafa for $35SIN total.)

cheers,
Becca

There are many worthy causes out there.  No shortage of those in need.  In fact, it can get to be so much that we’re paralyzed, not knowing who really needs help and who doesn’t.

Here’s a clear-cut case.  I know my readership is small and haphazard — but if you’ve found your way here somehow, I’d like to ask you consider giving.

Not to me.  But to some women in the Dakotas who really need the help.  "Pretty Bird Woman House" was created by the sister of a Native American woman, "Pretty Bird Woman", who was kidnapped, raped and murdered.  Unfortunately, the tangled nature of jurisdictions and responsibility often means that these women have no allies, no help, no recourse.

The purpose of Pretty Bird Woman House is to help the many victims of domestic abuse — and they’ve been running out of money.  Please consider giving.

Pretty Bird Woman House
or sent via mail to:
Pretty Bird Woman House
P.O. Box 596
McLaughlin, SD 57642

From the website:

According to a recent Amnesty International report, more than one in three American Indian and Alaskan Native women will be raped or sexually assaulted in their lifetime. Far too often, perpetrators of these crimes go unpunished. Domestic violence is also a serious problem, inflicting physical and emotional damage on both women and children. Often victims have nowhere to turn due to poverty, remote geography and tangled legal jurisdictions. In these dire situations, local domestic violence advocates and women’s shelters can make dramatic differences in helping women cope with the after-effects of violence, and helping them escape from situations where further violence is likely. However, these shelters are chronically under-funded. One such shelter, Zintkala Waste Win Oti (“Pretty Bird Woman House”), has run out of funding and will be forced to close in May if new resources can’t be found to sustain it.

The shelter was founded by Jackie Brown Otter after the kidnapping, rape and murder of her sister (whose Lakota name means Pretty Bird Woman). It serves the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, which is on the border of North and South Dakota. The reservation covers over 2.3 million acres, and with a per capita income of only $8,615, it’s one of the most destitute regions in the United States.

From January 2005 to August 2006, 125 domestic violence cases were filed with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Court-15 cases per month. Pretty Bird Woman House was involved with most of those cases, and without that program’s help, many cases would have been ignored or withdrawn. If Pretty Bird Woman House does not receive continued funding, it is a foregone conclusion that the women and children who would have been served by the program will have to struggle along on their own. Domestic violence on the Standing Rock Reservation will not be addressed and families, who constitute the spirit of the Reservation, will be weakened and disenfranchised once again.

With adequate resources, the shelter would like to fund a director for the program, two advocates, and a children’s advocate, food and supplies for the shelter. They would also fund transportation for families to obtain related services, or to relocate completely in order to escape the violence in their lives. However, in the short-term, without a small amount of funding, the shelter will not be able to keep their phone lines open through May.

C’mon!  Spare a few bucks if ya can.  I have, all the way from here in India.