A scribble pad

Really, I have!

A client of mine has been having a problem with their monthly backup of their Time Machine volume taking too long. They’ve got a large external drive attached by USB and it’s backing up just about 1Tb each month. Problem is, it’s taking more than a full work day. Which makes everybody nervous because it means that all the company’s technological eggs are in one bucket for a day.

So, I ran some comparisons backing up just over 10Gb of data to a drive connected via USB, FireWire 400 and FireWire 800 (and for interested over my LAN to a NAS).

As predicted, the FireWire 800 interface was quickest but not by much. Which is what surprised me. And the LAN copy was the slowest of all.

Now, I’m certain that over the time needed to copy 1Tb we would see improvements in performance so that FireWire was noticeably faster than USB but I found it interesting that FireWire was not by any means significantly faster when copying just over 10Gb.

Oh and in other news. As of this moment, I have no dandelions in my front lawn. Well, none that you can see. I’ve been out there for weeks, every day, digging them up. It looks great. Now if it would stop raining for long enough so that I can cut it, that would be great, thanks. It looks like a farmers pasture right now. Swaying in the breeze.

That’s it for now.

At tonight’s meeting, we are breaking with our usual tradition, which is to present tips and tricks and useful software for the Mac and we’re featuring an evening all about earthquakes.

With the recent unfortunate events in Japan, we thought it was time to give our members (and whoever else wants to come and learn) some information on earthquakes. What causes them, what causes the resultant tsunami’s and what individuals can do to be prepared for earthquakes.

We live in Vancouver, and the West Coast has suffered earthquakes before, mostly small ones, but we’ve had a few big ones too. Experts say that we’re in fact overdue for a big one so we felt it was a good idea that we learn how to be prepared before we need to know.

It starts at 7PM tonight (Tuesday, May 3) and is at the Vancouver Maritime Museum.

Tremble tremble…

And that I was born in May, therefore Birthday month has begun.

I like to celebrate birthday month but I actually don’t. I wish everyone celebrated my birthday month but they don’t either. Which is why I don’t.

Celebrating by yourself is just sad and pathetic.

So. There.

But hopefully it will be most of the time for some of us.

It might just be fun and interesting for me, and that’s ok. I might be the only one that will ever come here anyway.

There you go. No promises, no commitments, no surprises, well, maybe some surprises, we never know do we?