Having lived most of my life in Australia, I first saw actual snow about 15 years ago on the Swiss Alps. But it was summer there at the time so I did not see snow falling, and had never seen it fall until last month. We were driving up Mt Rainier (just south of Seattle), and it started to snow as we drove higher.
This was a first for me, but Candace had seen it all before!
Hey! What is all that white stuff falling here?
John
We recently visited the Seattle and Port Angeles areas in Washington. There was some fabulous scenery. We also liked Seattle. It was a good time of year to be there (not too cold yet), and the leaves on the trees were just beginning to change colours.
After Seattle, we headed to Port Angeles where we caught up with friends Sue and Arnor shown here…
It was a cool day, and we had just been to the top of a nearby mountain. In this photo, you can see a glacier in the centre of the photo. This photo was taken up at about 5200 feet in the Mt Olympia National Park.
We also visited the Boeing plant just north of Seattle. It was a great tour. Managed to see a few of the new DreamLiner 787s on the factory floor.
We recently returned from LAX to Sydney an a new Qantas A380. This was a good experience and the very large plane was great to travel on. It was perhaps quieter than the usual Boeing B747 we usually travel on when taking this route.
We were in Cattle-class and the seating was (or seemed to be) a little more spacious than the B747.
See my notes at my test Joomla site for more.
John
Being an Aussie, I grew up on Vegemite. I have been in the USA for the past six months and whilst I was away, Kraft introduced a new version of Vegemite.
Well, upon my return, I just had to try out the new product.
To me, this “new” product is nothing other than a marketing ploy to reduce production costs and thereby increase profits. CheesyBite is said to be a blend of Cream Cheese and “REAL” Vegemite. Cream Cheese is obviously cheaper to produce than Vegemite, so why not use it to dilute the original product? Similar to “New Coke” from a few years ago where Coke tried to substitute real sugar in the drink with Corn Syrup.
The new CheesyBite simply has NO bite. I get no more taste on my SAO Crackers than I do from regular Peanut Butter. Very disappointed!
I hope that the original product continues to be available. I know I have trouble finding it in Texas.
The new CheesyBite score:- 2/10 Sorry Kraft, you really need to try something else.
JohnG
After seeing Carbonite mentioned on a newsgroup, I thought I would try it. They offer a 15 day free trial. And then US$55 per year to store unlimited backup files on their servers.
I selected a few folders and let it rip. Took about 4 hours to upload my selected folders.
Then it was SUPPOSED to upload any altered files “soon” after they were altered. I had several files that were not uploaded again more that 24 hours later. This is not what they said in their spiel. It says the files will be uploaded whenever the running service detects in-activity on the PC. Well, I left it in-active for a couple of hours and still no upload.
Actually, here is what they say on their site:
When your computer is idle, Carbonite automatically backs up new and changed files. You don’t have to do anything! When you’re using your computer, Carbonite goes to sleep so it will never slow down your computer or internet connection.
I would be loathe to try it again. It is just not for me. But it may well suit someone whose files are not altered too often. If you think you may like it, go ahead. But check that your files are actually being uploaded once changed. The initial upload went very well, but not the uploads about a week into the trial.
I give it a rating of 2 out of five
John Griffiths
UPDATE: 20091005
Chasing down the problem where a changed file is not backed up automatically as advertised by Carbonite, I have found this in their FAQ area…
When Carbonite detects that a file has been modified, it checks to make sure that the file has remained unchanged for 10 minutes before the file is made eligible for backup. (By default, a modified file is backed up only once every 24 hours so that you’ll have the opportunity to restore the previous version if necessary.)
That would be why then! Carbonite goes on to say that i can manually right-click the file and select to force it to “Backup as soon as possible”. That sure conflicts with their sales pitch shown above, where they say:-
When your computer is idle, Carbonite automatically backs up new and changed files. You don’t have to do anything!
So it is not very suitable for situations where an important file (or group of files) are NOT automatically backed up!
For the past ten days, we have been travelling around U.K. with some great friends from Columbia, South Carolina. Astoundingly, the weather was just great the whole time, apart from one day when driving in the very North of England. That day we had periods of light and heavy rain.
The scenery around the Lakes District and North was fabulous. We had a fill of Castles and Churches and Ruins and Gardens.
The worst feature of the whole trip was the airport security checks. These are a farce.
Once I find and unpack my camera, I will post a few photos (or at least some links) here.
John Griffiths
A few weeks ago I ordered an external USB 1 Tb hard drive. This was to replace a 250Gb drive that I use for one of my backup regimes.
It costs less than US$90 and seems a little quicker than my older 250Gb USB drive. This is probably because it is 7,200 RPM in lieu of 5,400 RPM. And I think it has more internal cache memory.
I did not really need the extra room, but perhaps I will one day… The price was right, so why not have more free space available for backups.
Specs of the new drive are: SimpleDrive 1Tb Hitachi HDD.
Backups
Whilst on the subject of backups – I have recently trialed a few simple backup tools that let me schedule backups to remote FTP sites. Two I like are “Backup4All-Pro” and “GFI Backup 2009″
BackUp4All is about $49 and you can get it here
GFI Backup is free, and you can get it here
If you are looking for off-site backup space, you may look at DriveHQ
John
Today we had a birthday party for my 4 year old grand daughter.
We had a bouncy-castle delivered this morning and the guests had a ton of fun jumping for hours. I think they all went home worn out!
