I recently went to Disney with my girlfriend Amanda.  In Epcot, they have a minature train set setup I think near Germany.  I took this picture from the ground level view of the miniatures on that set (you can see a Godzilla like tourist roaming in the background). If you click the below picture, you’ll be able to see a 1920×1200 resolution version.

I recently implemented a triple redundant backup system to back up over 500 gigs of data.  After some reflection, I realized if I ever lost the data stored on my machine, I would be quite livid.  I ended up buying 2x Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5″ Internal Hard Drives – OEMWD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5″ Internal Hard Drives – OEM and 1x Western Digital Element 1TB 3.5″ Black External Hard Drive – Retail.  The two Caviar’s are mirroring one another via Raid 1 while the external drive is backing up the entire raid about once a week.  My motivation for implementing triple redundancy is as follows.  Raiding the drives was because I wanted to have a live, real time backup in case one of the 1TB internal drives dies.  The problem with having an internal drive is if a power surge or lightning strike fries your computer, you lose both hard drives.  Given the fact that I have my entire dissertation, all of my research, thousands of pictures, and all sorts of other awesome data on these drives, losing both drives simultaneously would be unacceptable.  So, I stepped up my backup game and upped the ante to triple redundancy.  The pros of having the external drive are to overcome lightning strikes, power surges, or the computer being hacked and all the data deleted, etc.  The external drive is only connected once a week for a period of about 8 hours for the backup, and then it is disconnected the rest of the week.

Question:  So how do we sync the data onto an external drive?  Answer:  <Cobian!>

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Ok, so one of the primary objectives of this blog is to report particular, awesome internet tidbits to the rest of the community. After my hiatus, it is time to resume this blog’s function in that role.

I’m really excited to report that Mike and Jerry (aka Gabe and Tycho with PA), Scot Kurtz (@ PVP) and Wil Wheaton have again recorded another Podcast with noneother than Chris Perkins serving as their DM (dungeon master)!
I really enjoy these podcasts, Chris does an amazing job bringing his characters and encounters to life while tolerating the other four’s crazy antics.  Even if you don’t understand the mechanics of Dungeons and Dragons (which I didn’t for the longest time), the podcast is still a blast.

So far, the <first> and <second>  episodes have already been released.

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This will be a giant catch up post on the life of Nick.  I have grossly neglected this blog for about 90 days and am finally making a return to the blogosphere.  Of course, my returning to the blogosphere is none other than to continue to document random aspects of the internet with an occasional blip about me.

Speaking of me, if you haven’t heard already, I finally did graduate with my Doctorate of Philosophy in Electrical Engineering (PhD EE)!  I moved from the Orlando area out to Rockledge (small town in Florida south of Cocoa and north of Melbourne/Palm Bay) this past June and started my new job!

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