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Music to my Ears

JayCooper — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 03:09:55 +0000

I am a self professed MP3 snob. I love music. Almost all kinds. I believe that somewhere in my 120 GB collection I have every genre and every style of tunes one can possibly imagine. I love collecting music.

Recently I had a pretty dramatic hard disk failure and it put my collection in serious jeopardy. Luckily I have triple redundant backups of ALL my important computer files, music included.

The last few days I have been spending some time gently loving and massaging my music by cleaning up and adding missing ID3 tags and making sure that the album art is embedded into the files. Its a loooooong, tedious process. I have made it through the letter N in my FULL ALBUMS folder. I will probably be working on it all throughout the week. It will pay off though because it will look and sound great on my music player of choice.

I noticed during this love fest that I was also really picky about the quality of music I have collected. There was a time when I didn’t have a clue what a “bit-rate” was or why it mattered. Now, I don’t care for the sound of any bit-rate lower than 192 kbps. The ubiquitous 128 kbps is just too scratchy and tinny for me. I actually prefer my tunes be at 320 kbps and a constant bit-rate not variable. Look it up if you are reading this with a perplexed look on your face.

What this all really means is that I have a lot of great music. My kids enjoy it, I enjoy it and its worth the snobbishness and effort. Now, go love on your music collection. Nuff’ said.

Backing up is Hard to Do for Some

JayCooper — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 17:13:04 +0000

Data loss is something we all have to deal with in the digital age. Cheap computers mean that equipment failures are a part of life. PC component are not meant to last forever. Who wants that anyway? Backing up your precious data is very important and a process that should never be overlooked. “Backing up Your Data” is a statement that is interpreted very differently by different people, often with humorous effect. Having said that, I thought it would be funny to put together a list of the kinds of backups that users perform. See if you spot anyone you know.

The “Confused” Backup

This is usually someone not all that familiar with backing up data and software. It may be their very first time backing up anything and they really have no idea what they are backing up exactly. They just know they need to do it.

Case in point:

I had a friend who right clicked on their local C drive chose the COPY option, right clicked their 1GB jump drive and tried to PASTE.

The “Quick” Backup

This is often a person that is familiar with how to use a PC but not familiar with its intricate inner workings. These folks will usually have a firm idea of what they WANT to backup but no clue what they NEED to back up. These are the people that call you on the weekend or in the middle of the night after a power or equipment failure and have restored their backup only to find they didn’t back up their most important data.

Case in point:

Having many web customers it’s a foregone conclusion that I will get these kinds of calls. One in particular sticks out in my mind because the user had implicitly bought an external hard drive which contained software to backup their data. They let the software choose what to back up and didn’t review what it was backing up at all. When the time came to restore their SQL database they were running locally. What they DID have were all their snapshots and music files.

The “IN-Differential” Backup

This is a back run usually by a pretty knowledgeable computer user or a junior IT pro. These kinds of backups are meant to make backing up speedy by backing everything needed complete, then from then on only backing up things that have “changed”. It is my opinion that these are great for home users but in a business environment this can lead to a lot of heartbreak as you are letting an algorithm determine what has “changed” or not. Let’s face it; even the smartest programs are dumb.

Case in point:

I deal with databases all day long. One instance had a furniture dealership that thought they had a complete backup but instead had a mix of about three different data sets due to a differential backup.
Be very careful with these.

The “Online” Backup

A very popular choice these days is the infamous online backup. Slow, lethargic, unreliable and dangerous are good words to describe this method.

Case in point:

Several customer have asked me is online backups are safe and reliable. I ALWAYS refer them to a situation I ran into a while back where a small company I consulted for used an online backup only to find that the company they trusted with their data went bankrupt and closed. The customer did not find out until they had a massive hardware failure and needed the data. Oh yes the online backup servers were still running and accepting data BUT you could not reach them on the phone to get it.

The “Other Machine” Backup

It takes a skilled PC Pro or A thorough Network Admin to set up a recurring copy and paste through a batch file or windows task. Any time you copy thousands of files from one place to another across a even a very stable network you chance data loss.

Case in point:

I knew a fellow once that used this backup method pretty successfully until one day he ran out of disk space on one of the two hard drives and lost all his data and crashed one of his PCs.

The “Software” Backup

IT / MIS Administrators will all most assuredly use a software package to process and monitor their mission critical backup jobs. This is the De facto industry standard for backups.

Case in point:

I won’t mention any brand names, sufficed to say, there are many solutions out there that are tried and true and trusted. I have RARELY ever seen one of these backups fail.

The bottom line when it comes to backups, and this cannot be stressed enough to folks is to Follow up. Monitor your backups and test them periodically to be sure they are complete and current. Have fun!

The Computer Geeks Most Valuable Tools

JayCooper — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 17:18:31 +0000

Ah the doldrums of late winter. I sit writing this while my mind pines away for the sunshine and warmth of spring. I am sure many of you reading this feel the same way. Thinking of what to write has been tough lately, but today I had a fun thought and in a flash knew what this post would be about.

Being a technophile means I will never be without work, thankfully. That being said here is a list of the invaluable tools that I believe every card carrying computer geek needs to do their primary job and of course al the side work we have as well.

The trusty USB Thumb Drive

Unless you just enjoy hauling a 9 pound brick of a laptop with you everywhere you go, having a small key chain, compact USB flash drive is a lifesaver. I have one that is 32 GB large. No “mine’s bigger than your’s” jokes, please. I have mine set as a bootable device with a whole cavalcade of recovery and “fixer” programs. I never leave home without it and I have everything I need to get any PC up and running with me at all times.

Dedicated Web Space

You might think this is more of a luxury than a tool, but I assure you in times of need having a virtual medium out there on the World Wide Web that you can send files to and retrieve files from ANYWHERE in the world is an INVALUABLE tool. When the old thumb drive is full or cant be used, say on a PC with no USB ports free, this tool is my “go to GUY”.

FTP Program

Well, if you have web space out there in the virtual world you have to have a way to get to it right? A good QUALITY File Transfer Protocol program is a true necessity. I won’t go into my likes and dislikes about FTP app cause I have some quirky needs. What I will say however is make sure you try out several programs before you settle on one you will stick with for a while. Lots of great freeware programs for this but beware many of the free ones are garbage.

Mini Flashlight

When peeking into the black bowels of a PC case that has not seen the light of day in years a bright, maneuverable light source is always a boon. I have a key chain LED that like my thumb drive is always at my side.

Multi Tool

When in doubt break out the screwdrivers. I Love my multi tool. Its got all the tools a growing nerd needs.

PATIENCE

When you deal with as many people as I do on a daily basis that have serious trouble understanding and using computers you begin to wonder how the world continues to spin since its based so heavily on computers now. With that in mind Tech Support specialists such as myself should all try as well as we can to have patience when encountering such situations. Its like my Wife always says, “Not everyone is as goo at everything as others”. Stop and think about that one. Think we geeks would stand a chance at the Olympics? Maybe Curling? HA!

Hardware Heroes

JayCooper — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 02:35:30 +0000

I work with computers and all their various sundry components, parts and accessories all day every day. Being a PC Jockey makes me quite attuned to the health of all these parts of a whole usually. Last week I lost a good buddy. My trusty HP 1200 Series Laser-Jet printer passed on. That little guy and I met some ten years ago when I first got the job I have currently. He was moved in with me because of space issues elsewhere in the building. We have shared an office ever since. He was always there for me, the quick print, the lengthy technical document, all those years of printing and reprinting revisions on installation instructions and email newsletters. Thick and thin we have been through it all. Last week i needed to print an invoice for a customer and the little guy let out a horrible death rattle and then with his last breath he screamed in agony as gears stripped and his functions slipped away.

It really didn’t hit me until this week that he was really gone. I needed to print out a list of files. I hit the print button before I thought about it and sat staring sadly at the small grey and white plastic derelict sitting there in his usual place. He made no sounds and didn’t wink at me with his little green light to let me know the print was on its way. I had to move him out of our office and into the computer graveyard that is our storage room. That’s where all the dead printers gadgets, consoles, and hardware goes when they have met their maker.

The next time you use a piece of trusty hardware don’t take it for granted. Work like there is no tomorrow and give the Hardware Heroes the praise and admiration they deserve, because..

…you never know when they might kick the proverbial computer bucket and wont be there to back you up anymore.

Laptopsolipsism

Floppy Seconds

JayCooper — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 21:23:41 +0000

As I shuffled through all my sundry computer components that I have collected over the years I ran into caches of floppy disks in at least three different places. This made me wonder what I could have been thinking at the time I hid them all away like a large, burley, somewhat pale hamster. I mean I seem to have bought enough “floppies” to last me a life time.

Long ago in a galaxy far, far away, ahem… I mean, long ago when I was first getting into computers it seemed like I was ALWAYS in need of a floppy. Showing my age, I can remember when they were the only way to get files from computer A to computer B without having both hooked into a network. My, how times have changed. Nowadays those of us in the tech industry never leave home without our tiny thumb drives. I count no less than 4 hanging off my key ring even now. All range in size from a massive 32 Gigabytes down to the lowly 4 Gigabytes. Lets us compare this to the humble floppy which can only hold a measly 1.5 Megabytes.

My question now is this; since I don’t have a floppy drive in any of my 4 PCs what the heck am I holding on to all these disks for? Do people still buy floppy disks? I guess I need to look into the best way to recycle them since it looks like I won’t ever need them again. I am more than a little sad to see my buddies go.

Downloads

JayCooper — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 03:05:32 +0000

These are just some files I have upped to share with folks. [page_download] Related posts: Music to my Ears Related posts:

Music to my Ears