adam @ 404

My ipod pooped out on me a couple months back. I’ve been worried about losing my mp3 collection if I ever had a hard drive failure on my mac. Scary stuff. I need to figure out a backup solution. I’m thinking about trying out one user’s solution that utilizes one of Amazon’s web services, Simple Storage Service or S3. Let me get on that one.

Addendum: It took me minutes to setup my Amazon web services account for S3 (it’s quick if you already have an Amazon account), downloaded JungleDisk, put in my S3 info and away I went copying my mp3s into the jungledisk directory. The easiest way to get the files backed up is to run a periodic backup (like once a day). If you notice the backups are causing your network speeds to lag, there’s an option to throttle the backup speeds down so they don’t consume all your throughput. (I’m getting 80Kb/sec upload speeds on a line that is rated at 96Kb/sec, which is pretty damn good considering some of that is taken up by network overhead.) Doing periodic backups is nice since you don’t have to run JungleDisk as a foreground application. A++ I lied about it running in the background. You still have to run JungleDisk to get the automatic backup to start. Kinda lame.

One thing to note is that if you reorganize files around by changing file info, or moving files within the directory, it will delete anything changed and re-backup the files which incurs transfer costs (.20$/Gbyte/month). Luckily, iTunes does a good job of organizing files the first time if you’re downloading from iTunes or importing from CD. With about 16Gb (168 hours of music) of storage and traffic in the first month, I’m looking to spend $5.60 and somewhere around $2.60 every month thereafter if I keep my library relatively static. It’d be nicer if it was half that price, but it’s good enough for peace of mind.

If anyone wants help setting this up, let me know.

“You will rock forevahhhhhh!”

No words could ever rock harder. During the college years, I downloaded thousands upon thousands of illegally (and legally) traded mp3s. Yes, please sue me now. I wish I was still good at that. I spent altogether too much time on #mp3indie on IRC.

There was one song that stands out now. It was a mystery single, standing alone in its remote directory. One which I have never discovered the true source. It was a band that truly rocked me to the core. I found it again recently in my collection, and it still rocks, evoking images of maidens in distress and the coolest greenest fire-breathing, electric-guitar-wielding dragons ever imagined in the history of dragons.

Who was this song performed by? The filename of the mp3 was “Port - Rock Eternal.” Port? There is no record of this band on the Internet? Rock Eternal? What is this song you speaketh ofeth?

I submit to you “Rock Eternal” performed by Port. If you know who this mystery band is, please help me illuminate.

Walking up the hill to my apartment on the way home from work, I saw a huge racoon walk out onto the sidewalk. Strangely, this is in the middle of the city, downtown during rush hour. We saw each other and stopped in our tracks. Some people in their cars found this amusing, so I flipped them and the racoon off. But not really. We managed to creep by one another on opposite sides of the sidewalk - me going up, ricky going down.

The other highlight of my day was seeing a coworker put on a beret and light up a cigarette… at the same time! Without any sense of irony!

Saturday evening, in preparation for Sunday’s ski trip, I decided to stay-in and prepare some haute mexicana. Yes, I’m fancy and classy. This was my best creation to date. I call it Enchiladas Kramer. Enchiladas! E-N-C-H-I-L-A-L-A-D-A-S! Baked steak and cheese, corn tortilla enchiladas! E-N-C-H-I-L-A-L-A-D-A-S!

After the fish disaster it wasn’t hard to recover, but damn they were good. And anyway it’s generally hard to screw up mexican.

Naked Enchiladas
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Clothed Enchiladas
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Baked Enchiladas
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Angular Enchiladas
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Have to link it. Its Paula Abdul wasted on local television. Fox knows how to keep it fair and tipsy.

This entry into the cooking series comes directly from reader comments. Thanks Chenny and Amychka. The meal consists of baked maple-glazed salmon, steamed asparagus and shvekla. Due to my own inexperience, I couldn’t figure out how to ’shred’ something for the life of me, although the answer was right in front of my face. The peeler shreds, Adam, the peeler shreds. So I ended up cutting the beets, and nothing can beat that for hard things to do. Budumchahh! I’m ashamed, to say the least - I ended up cutting myself. Next time I’ll shred and I won’t end up gnawing on beets and bleeding.

The salmon looks better than it tasted. I think I either overbaked, didn’t marinate long enough or the salmon sucked to begin with. I’ll guess it was the salmon that sucked. Atleast the asparagus was good.

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I couldn’t tell if I had blood or beet juice on me
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The cooking series begins with a special treat. This evening’s preparation is a pancooked ribeye steak with bleu cheese and roasted rosemary red potatoes. Ok, I forgot the rosemary, but made up with garlic. How inhumane, you say? What about the cow? In that case, it’s free range.

Step 1: Clear the table
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Step 2: Set the table
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Step 3: Bring the food out (apologies for seriously amateur photos)
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Step 4: Eat
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It’s the fancy life for me.

I keep finding reasons to not go skiing. Well, my primary reason is I don’t really have anyone with whom I can go skiing. Did you see the lengths I went to in that last sentence to ensure it didn’t end in a preposition? “With whom”, I don’t even know if thats grammatically correct. You see, for one, I can go skiing alone, that’s all good, but any time I tell myself I’m going to go skiing the next day, I inevitably sleep-in. Like today, I went to bed at midnight and got up at 11:30am, talk about loving sleep and being lame. Ultimately, it didn’t matter because I couldn’t have driven up to Snoqualmie without chains on my tires today (time to get some chains).

I’ve convinced myself that if I had someone to ski with (this implies they’re a relatively good skier, *toot toot*) then I’d get up in the morning because I’d have someone waiting for me. Nonetheless, I’ve promised myself, ski buddy or no ski buddy, ski car pool or no car pool, I’m going to ski next weekend. No back country yet, don’t have the equipment or the people to do that yet, but some nice steep or bumpy terrain. “We shall overcome,” as one player on the Seahawks put it in his post-game interview. I like that complete misuse of a civil rights rallying cry.

In other news, I had a great Christmas break. I managed to get a week off (took one day to work from home) and went to Michigan. I flew into Chicago on one of the most wild flights I’ve ever been on. I sat next to a girl that insisted our row have a drinking contest with the row in front of us (she was already drunk), so that’s what we did. We even had competing male flight attendants, very chichi. The lady behind us even stood up and told us to “please be quiet, you’re not the only people on this plane you know!” That set some fireworks off, but we managed to be a bit more quiet, but the drunk girl didn’t like that at all, and even got the lady to stand up one more time as a result of semi-hushed insults thrown her way. Dang!

In Chicago, I got to see Mr. Jd Ryznar and Miles Raymer at the Empty Bottle for JDs showing of the Yacht Rock series. Good stuff. In Spring Lake/GH it was a good family time, hanging out much with the Sis, parents, grandparents, and getting my ass handed to me in Guitar Hero by my stepbrother Lukas. Saw other friends in GR and Ann Arbor as well. It was a whirlwind trip that ended back in Seattle where I went out to a couple house parties for NYE 2006. Now I’ve been back a week and finally settling back into this wildly urban lifestyle I lead, grocery shopping, sleeping-in, drinking beer and surfing the veritable Web.

Speaking of, if anyone can answer my question, please do. I’m dying to find a real bagel.

No resolutions this year, none other than keep enjoying sleep a lot.

I get my toilet paper delivered 2nd day in bulk. I’ve got to get to work using it now.

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