Technical Difficulties

Since I ran out of disk space, I've not posted any photos. My main hard disk with all my photos on it also started to make some strange noises, so I've turned off the computer and am waiting for the next paycheque before I can start scanning photos again.

This time around I'm buying two identical hard drives. Hard drives are only reliable for 2 years, beyond that your precious memories could vanish without warning. I never again want to risk losing data to a dead hard disk.

That risk can be handled simply; mirror drives. You buy two drives and an inexpensive piece of hardware to link them, and the two disks just become perfect mirrors of each other. When one of them dies, you unplug the bad one, copy data off the good one, and throw them both away. This doesn't solve any backup problems, but it does mean I'll never have to worry about photos being lost due to a mechanical hard disk failure. The sound of a disk failure is very much like fingers on a chalkboard, and the sickening feeling when you realize what's happened is just like getting beaten to a pulp by a gang of bikers.

Pending

Pending: Photos of the TWU protesters in front of Telus. Crossing is getting pretty tiring, but frankly I feel good about the work I do. There's an army of people inside Telus who do give a damn, and they're trying to make things work better.