The link describes the type of burns, but I didn't see anything about the temperature range quoted in the briefs having the ability to cause a third degree burn. (Also, i didnt see anything about exposed muscle being one of the symptoms.) Something appears to be wrong here.
This is where either hyperbole is occurring or the facts of the case are wrong. The temperature range quoted in the legal briefs was 180 to 190 degrees farenheit, which is not hot enough to expose muscle.
I remember the facts of the case being something like this:
Woman gets coffee and additions (sweet stuff, white stuff) in a McDonald's drive-through. Woman parks. Woman holds cup in her lap and opens it to add sweet stuff and white stuff. Cup collapses when the lid is removed, and spills scalding hot coffee over a lot of her skin. Woman has something like $20K in medical bills, asks McDonald's to reimburse her, they refuse, case winds up in court.
What struck me was not so much the temperature of the coffee as the way the cup failed. If I were to get some sort of liquid in a cup, I'd expect the cup to be able to hold the liquid, and that was not true for McDonald's coffee cups. The coffee temperature may have weakened the cup, and it certainly caused a lot of damage, but if McDonald's had provided a halfway decent cup there would have been no injury and no lawsuit.
Now *that* is a reasonable point. And it doesn't even require a conspiracy theory. The problem seems to be, (and here we circle back to the battery "exploding") that when something like this happens, the real, true facts of the case are almost immediately replaced by something much more dramatic, and both the plantiff's lawyers and the media are usually complacent in this. Just on the face of it, I personally doubt that any of the phones are "exploding". Maybe getting really hot, enough perhaps for combustion to occur in some circumstances, but detonation seems really unlikely.
Testing for myself isn't going to tell me much. I'd get a measurement of what the current temperature is, at that particular store, on that particular day. It wouldn't tell me what the temperature was for the plaintiff.
The temperature range of the coffee at that particular McDonald's is mentioned in the court proceedings, so apparently someone had the data at some point. It was stated as being between 180 and 190 degrees. This is in the wiki for the lawsuit, and (if you want to be bored to death) is in the court proceedings, also online.
Shortly after the trial, I personally tested several local coffee houses (five, if I remember right -- I probably still have the spreadsheet somewhere), and every single one of them served, and (discounting the local that was bought out by Starbucks) still today serves coffee at between 180 and 190 degrees. I'd argue that this is relevant. I think a defense lawyer could argue in court that this is relevant, but indications are, the McDee suits were so confident of success that they didn't put up much of a defense.
The inside word is that this was largely botched on the government side, with too high expectations, too many changes, and huge feature creep. I would argue that Oracle's mistake was not getting out when they plainly saw that this was a dysfunctional working relationship.
So what you're saying is that Oracle didn't get out of a typical government contract... It was a contract involving government, insurance, medicine, and a very political situation highly likely to change multiple times.
"mistake" may have been too strong of a word. Indications are, Oracle made significant money on the deal. The project was not successful, but that was not Oracle's objective.
... this was a dysfunctional working relationship.
That would require Oracle to put limits on the level of service offered by the end-product, the change process, the requirements and design process. IOW, all the things Oracle can charge more money for, because it was done twice or thrice.
About half of ERP implementations fail, yet both vendor and (new) customer go through the same flawed process one more time; why? Because the vendor wants to screw the customer; as its first, second and third priority. Because, despite the endless horror stories about open-ended contracts, the customer still says "fix this" without implementing it own change review/control/analysis processes. Because the customer uses a management psychopath instead of its own IT department for project management. Because the customer is too busy saying "gimme, gimme" instead marching the project towards completion.
Absolutely true. But any customer with an ounce of experience goes into the process *knowing* that the vendor (especially ORACLE) intends to screw them. A savvy customer, realizing they really do need to do business with some collection of vendors to meet their objectives, puts checks and balances in place, and has an exit plan, to prevent something like this from happening. Oregon was not savvy.
But I would submit that this is entirely different from tinfoil-hat arguments that McDonald's was somehow saving buttloads of money by serving their coffee litigiously hot, which would be more fitting as an item in the Evil Overlord manual.
They were saving a little bit of money at the risk of giving customers serious burns. It's from the Stupid Overlord manual.
Again, what I'm saying is that if you can set aside for a moment your obvious...
...intense dislike for McDonald's, (which I don't necessarily fault) and actually look objectively at what you've written, you could see that it doesn't pass the bullshit test. It reads just exactly like those memes that exist solely because people who dislike the target *want* to believe them.
If you've worked for food service (I don't really want to think about that part of my life -- Pre-IT-career, I rose to manager of a fast food joint during a time I would soon forget.) you'd know that considering end-to-end cost, coffee is the third cheapest beverage to serve, right behind (2) iced tea, and (1) non-bottled water. Serving an inexpensive (most of the cost is labor, and most of *that* is borne by employees who'd otherwise be standing around waiting for customers) beverage at an unwantedly-high, (which I dispute, more in a moment) accident prone and ultimately litiguous temperature merely to reduce the cost of refills is *pragmatically* idiotic. Never mind the moral implications, it just doesn't make sense from a business standpoint to risk litigation just to save on COFFEE REFILLS.
And again, regarding the temperature, check by: Observe that shops that are in the *business* of selling coffee serve that beverage in *demonstrably* the same temperature range as was claimed in the litigation. (Feel free to measure it yourself. I have.)
The other guy had a point about the cheapness of the cups. I had not considered that. But the mere temperature and tinfoil-hat legal arguments just don't fly.
Ok, look. I remember you, and respect your opinion for other things you've written. You may have a good point about the crappiness of the cups -- I had not considered that. Peets or Dutch Brothers use thick(er), undeniably sturdier paper cups and always (in my experience) include one of those brown insulator rings.
180 - 190 vs 160 - 185 is, I would submit, somewhat of a quibble. I was going by the tests I did myself, where in every case regular coffee was in the mid-180's, (which is the top of your range) and an Americano (expresso plus hot water) could often be over 190 degrees. (Which in my opinion *is* too hot.) If you have some information that 160 - 185 is the proper range, one could argue that this matches my own tests (albeit at the high end). The fact remains that hot beverages, for any reasonable definition of "hot" have the potential to injure. But so do a lot of things in life, if not handled carefully. Like putting gas in your car.
I guess one could make the reasonable argument that if the cups (being of cheap construction) were not up to the job of containing a hot beverage the establishment was serving, this would indicate an issue with the establishment. And having been in jobs that require site visits at odd hours when McDogFood is practically the only damned place open, I do remember the flimsy, styrofoam cups. But I would submit that this is entirely different from tinfoil-hat arguments that McDonald's was somehow saving buttloads of money by serving their coffee litigiously hot, which would be more fitting as an item in the Evil Overlord manual.
Caveat: I'm no friend of Oracle, and as much as both sides in this were odious, I was actually voting for the state.
I live here, and have connections in government IT. The inside word is that this was largely botched on the government side, with too high expectations, too many changes, and huge feature creep. I would argue that Oracle's mistake was not getting out when they plainly saw that this was a dysfunctional working relationship.
But look what Oracle offered -- a paltry (by their standards) sum, amounting to a roughly 15% discount on the original price tag, plus licenses that lock Oregon into more dependence on Oracle, which are guaranteed to make money for Oracle down the road.
One can paint this as a victory for Oregon with inflammatory headlines, but it looks to me like Oracle won in the end. (And since this is Oracle, "the end" is exactly what you imagine it to be.)
Ok, so explain to me. Heat takes money to produce. How can serving a beverage at a hotter temperature be cheaper?
I'll explain it to you. As slowly as required.
Oh yes, please talk down to me.
At the time, McDonald's offered free coffee refills in the USA. So if you sit in the restaurant and drink your coffee, and finish it, you go to the counter and get another one for free. Which costs about twice as much as one coffee.
To avoid this, McDonald's served the coffee so that it was undrinkable hot. So now you eat your food waiting for your coffee to cool down, wait a bit because it is still too hot, then you drink it and now you have spend so much time in a "fast food" restaurant that you don't have time to get another coffee and repeat the waiting game. No free second coffee = money saved for McDonalds.
Ok, so, listen to what you just wrote. It has all the earmarks of a "made by live steam to save money"-grade urban legend -- overly complicated, unlikely, and flying in the face of common sense. It's even possible that a lawyer said this in a closing argument at some time, when they're not required to tell the truth, and can say anything they think will win their case. That doesn't make it true. That actually makes it less likely to be true.
About the temperature: A woman suffered instant third degree burns by pouring coffee on her trousers. If you drank that coffee, you would suffer instant third degree burns in your mouth. If I walked through the restaurant with a coffee and by accident stumbled over my own feet and dropped the coffee on a child, the child would suffer third degree burns. McDonald's was aware of this because they had settled over 700 cases out of court. But they told their staff to make the coffee so hot, so they could claim to offer free refills without anyone taking them up on that offer.
I'm sorry, this doesn't pass the bullshit test. Again, overly complicated explanation demonstrating a galactic-overloard-grade evil mindset that defies either common sense or direct observation. The fact remains that every "premium" coffee franchise serves regular coffee in this temperature range (and americano even higher) today. (Again, you can test this for yourself.) And their *business* is selling coffee.
Tell you what, let's been intellectually honest here -- I challenge you to go through the nearest Starbucks drive-thru, order a black regular coffee, and then test the temperature. I have already done this. You don't even need to report back. I would like you to see for yourself.
It hides bad flavor from cheap beans. If you serve coffee at a reasonable temperature, taste dominates your senses, if you serve it boiling hot you get a nice warm feeling and no idea what it tasted like.
Ok "boiling hot" is hyperbole, you must know that. But besides that, this doesn't explain why so-called "premium" coffee houses serve coffee in the same temperature range. (From experiment.)
I think I'd be willing to bet my next paycheck that the phone "exploding" is hyperbole by either the plaintiff or the press. Moreover, didn't the initial reports stipulate that the batteries overheated during charging? It's difficult to believe that a phone not connected to anything spontaneously detonated in a pants pocket. The trial might be really entertaining, but Samsung will probably settle out of court.
> (And McDondald's got in trouble because their coffee was hotter than usual, and they had ignored the risk involved.)
This was the claim made by the plaintiff's attorney, but no, actually it was not.
First, I have no dog in this fight. I think McDonald's food is nasty and I don't go there unless I need coffee in the middle of the night and there's absolutely no other place open.
According to the court records (available many places online, plus the wiki entry) McDonald's served their coffee at 180 to 190 degrees.
In point of fact, this is the same temperature range that Starbucks, Dutch Brothers and Peets serve their coffee, both then and now. I didn't just take someone's word on this -- I happened to possess a lab thermometer at the time that I was using to diagnose server failure in a wiring closet (side note; an unventilated wiring closet is a bad place for servers. But I needed to prove this to the customer.) Buying a regular coffee at the above named shops and a couple of locals and checking with the thermometer, I found that every one was between 180 and 190 degrees.
You can test this for yourself -- buy or rent an accurate thermometer, walk into any Starbucks, order a regular coffee, and check the temperature. Be sure to do several to have a sufficient sample size. You'll find that they all serve coffee at a temperature equal to or greater than the temperature alleged in the lawsuit.
The reason for this is that 180 to 190 degrees fahrenheit is the proper serving temperature for coffee.
But don't bother testing McDonald's, because (in my experience) they all serve coffee lukewarm now. It's nasty.
There has been several urban legends from this case. The most amusing of which (told to me by a very earnest young lady) was that McDonald's was saving boatloads of money by making coffee with live steam which resulted in the coffee being too hot when served. I asked how this was supposed to save money. She didn't know.
But yes, McDonald's lost, and now they serve lukewarm coffee. But indications are, they lost because the defense team acted like arrogant assholes, and the plaintiff was sympathetic, not because of any practical reason.
Absolutely true. I pay for a professional account on the service I use, and one of the bennies is the opportunity to keep all my original images on their cloud so that I don't have to worry about storing them locally or backing them up.
No. Not only no, but Hell No. Not on your friggin' life. Ok maybe as a backup, but putting the only copy of an original photograph on *someone else's* cloud? It is to laugh.
My original images reside on a local hard disk, periodically backed up to *another* hard disk, which is then disconnected and stored on a rack in a different room. (I use one of those "hard drive toasters" so I can use raw disks and not have to pay for USB enclosures.) On a slightly longer timeframe, I do a level zero backup to a hard drive and then drive it over to a friend's house to store in his fire safe. (That's my disaster recovery copy.)
Slashdot Mirror
Warning; turn scripts off before following the link
That doesn't appear to be true. Although it does appear to be a common belief amongst apple fans.
Because, it's a fad. Like outsourcing. The people making the decisions typically aren't technologists, and tend to believe the marketing hype.
The link describes the type of burns, but I didn't see anything about the temperature range quoted in the briefs having the ability to cause a third degree burn. (Also, i didnt see anything about exposed muscle being one of the symptoms.) Something appears to be wrong here.
This is where either hyperbole is occurring or the facts of the case are wrong. The temperature range quoted in the legal briefs was 180 to 190 degrees farenheit, which is not hot enough to expose muscle.
> Other than users' phones logging into random hotpsots claiming to be xfinitywifi
Really good point.
Why bother to remodel?
We not only get to wait on hold for cable modem problems, but now wireless as well.
I remember the facts of the case being something like this:
Woman gets coffee and additions (sweet stuff, white stuff) in a McDonald's drive-through. Woman parks. Woman holds cup in her lap and opens it to add sweet stuff and white stuff. Cup collapses when the lid is removed, and spills scalding hot coffee over a lot of her skin. Woman has something like $20K in medical bills, asks McDonald's to reimburse her, they refuse, case winds up in court.
What struck me was not so much the temperature of the coffee as the way the cup failed. If I were to get some sort of liquid in a cup, I'd expect the cup to be able to hold the liquid, and that was not true for McDonald's coffee cups. The coffee temperature may have weakened the cup, and it certainly caused a lot of damage, but if McDonald's had provided a halfway decent cup there would have been no injury and no lawsuit.
Now *that* is a reasonable point. And it doesn't even require a conspiracy theory. The problem seems to be, (and here we circle back to the battery "exploding") that when something like this happens, the real, true facts of the case are almost immediately replaced by something much more dramatic, and both the plantiff's lawyers and the media are usually complacent in this. Just on the face of it, I personally doubt that any of the phones are "exploding". Maybe getting really hot, enough perhaps for combustion to occur in some circumstances, but detonation seems really unlikely.
Testing for myself isn't going to tell me much. I'd get a measurement of what the current temperature is, at that particular store, on that particular day. It wouldn't tell me what the temperature was for the plaintiff.
The temperature range of the coffee at that particular McDonald's is mentioned in the court proceedings, so apparently someone had the data at some point. It was stated as being between 180 and 190 degrees. This is in the wiki for the lawsuit, and (if you want to be bored to death) is in the court proceedings, also online.
Shortly after the trial, I personally tested several local coffee houses (five, if I remember right -- I probably still have the spreadsheet somewhere), and every single one of them served, and (discounting the local that was bought out by Starbucks) still today serves coffee at between 180 and 190 degrees. I'd argue that this is relevant. I think a defense lawyer could argue in court that this is relevant, but indications are, the McDee suits were so confident of success that they didn't put up much of a defense.
So what you're saying is that Oracle didn't get out of a typical government contract... It was a contract involving government, insurance, medicine, and a very political situation highly likely to change multiple times.
"mistake" may have been too strong of a word. Indications are, Oracle made significant money on the deal. The project was not successful, but that was not Oracle's objective.
That would require Oracle to put limits on the level of service offered by the end-product, the change process, the requirements and design process. IOW, all the things Oracle can charge more money for, because it was done twice or thrice.
About half of ERP implementations fail, yet both vendor and (new) customer go through the same flawed process one more time; why? Because the vendor wants to screw the customer; as its first, second and third priority. Because, despite the endless horror stories about open-ended contracts, the customer still says "fix this" without implementing it own change review/control/analysis processes. Because the customer uses a management psychopath instead of its own IT department for project management. Because the customer is too busy saying "gimme, gimme" instead marching the project towards completion.
Absolutely true. But any customer with an ounce of experience goes into the process *knowing* that the vendor (especially ORACLE) intends to screw them. A savvy customer, realizing they really do need to do business with some collection of vendors to meet their objectives, puts checks and balances in place, and has an exit plan, to prevent something like this from happening. Oregon was not savvy.
But I would submit that this is entirely different from tinfoil-hat arguments that McDonald's was somehow saving buttloads of money by serving their coffee litigiously hot, which would be more fitting as an item in the Evil Overlord manual.
They were saving a little bit of money at the risk of giving customers serious burns. It's from the Stupid Overlord manual.
Again, what I'm saying is that if you can set aside for a moment your obvious...
That's why they're running only two things, Jack and Shit, and Jack has left town: McDonalds "restaurants" are closing left and right as former customers increasingly opt to eat something else.
If you've worked for food service (I don't really want to think about that part of my life -- Pre-IT-career, I rose to manager of a fast food joint during a time I would soon forget.) you'd know that considering end-to-end cost, coffee is the third cheapest beverage to serve, right behind (2) iced tea, and (1) non-bottled water. Serving an inexpensive (most of the cost is labor, and most of *that* is borne by employees who'd otherwise be standing around waiting for customers) beverage at an unwantedly-high, (which I dispute, more in a moment) accident prone and ultimately litiguous temperature merely to reduce the cost of refills is *pragmatically* idiotic. Never mind the moral implications, it just doesn't make sense from a business standpoint to risk litigation just to save on COFFEE REFILLS.
And again, regarding the temperature, check by: Observe that shops that are in the *business* of selling coffee serve that beverage in *demonstrably* the same temperature range as was claimed in the litigation. (Feel free to measure it yourself. I have.)
The other guy had a point about the cheapness of the cups. I had not considered that. But the mere temperature and tinfoil-hat legal arguments just don't fly.
Ok, you win. For the most effective single-line summary of a multi-paragraph article I've ever seen.
Ok, look. I remember you, and respect your opinion for other things you've written. You may have a good point about the crappiness of the cups -- I had not considered that. Peets or Dutch Brothers use thick(er), undeniably sturdier paper cups and always (in my experience) include one of those brown insulator rings.
180 - 190 vs 160 - 185 is, I would submit, somewhat of a quibble. I was going by the tests I did myself, where in every case regular coffee was in the mid-180's, (which is the top of your range) and an Americano (expresso plus hot water) could often be over 190 degrees. (Which in my opinion *is* too hot.) If you have some information that 160 - 185 is the proper range, one could argue that this matches my own tests (albeit at the high end). The fact remains that hot beverages, for any reasonable definition of "hot" have the potential to injure. But so do a lot of things in life, if not handled carefully. Like putting gas in your car.
I guess one could make the reasonable argument that if the cups (being of cheap construction) were not up to the job of containing a hot beverage the establishment was serving, this would indicate an issue with the establishment. And having been in jobs that require site visits at odd hours when McDogFood is practically the only damned place open, I do remember the flimsy, styrofoam cups. But I would submit that this is entirely different from tinfoil-hat arguments that McDonald's was somehow saving buttloads of money by serving their coffee litigiously hot, which would be more fitting as an item in the Evil Overlord manual.
Caveat: I'm no friend of Oracle, and as much as both sides in this were odious, I was actually voting for the state.
I live here, and have connections in government IT. The inside word is that this was largely botched on the government side, with too high expectations, too many changes, and huge feature creep. I would argue that Oracle's mistake was not getting out when they plainly saw that this was a dysfunctional working relationship.
But look what Oracle offered -- a paltry (by their standards) sum, amounting to a roughly 15% discount on the original price tag, plus licenses that lock Oregon into more dependence on Oracle, which are guaranteed to make money for Oracle down the road.
One can paint this as a victory for Oregon with inflammatory headlines, but it looks to me like Oracle won in the end. (And since this is Oracle, "the end" is exactly what you imagine it to be.)
Ok, so explain to me. Heat takes money to produce. How can serving a beverage at a hotter temperature be cheaper?
I'll explain it to you. As slowly as required.
Oh yes, please talk down to me.
At the time, McDonald's offered free coffee refills in the USA. So if you sit in the restaurant and drink your coffee, and finish it, you go to the counter and get another one for free. Which costs about twice as much as one coffee.
To avoid this, McDonald's served the coffee so that it was undrinkable hot. So now you eat your food waiting for your coffee to cool down, wait a bit because it is still too hot, then you drink it and now you have spend so much time in a "fast food" restaurant that you don't have time to get another coffee and repeat the waiting game. No free second coffee = money saved for McDonalds.
Ok, so, listen to what you just wrote. It has all the earmarks of a "made by live steam to save money"-grade urban legend -- overly complicated, unlikely, and flying in the face of common sense. It's even possible that a lawyer said this in a closing argument at some time, when they're not required to tell the truth, and can say anything they think will win their case. That doesn't make it true. That actually makes it less likely to be true.
About the temperature: A woman suffered instant third degree burns by pouring coffee on her trousers. If you drank that coffee, you would suffer instant third degree burns in your mouth. If I walked through the restaurant with a coffee and by accident stumbled over my own feet and dropped the coffee on a child, the child would suffer third degree burns. McDonald's was aware of this because they had settled over 700 cases out of court. But they told their staff to make the coffee so hot, so they could claim to offer free refills without anyone taking them up on that offer.
I'm sorry, this doesn't pass the bullshit test. Again, overly complicated explanation demonstrating a galactic-overloard-grade evil mindset that defies either common sense or direct observation. The fact remains that every "premium" coffee franchise serves regular coffee in this temperature range (and americano even higher) today. (Again, you can test this for yourself.) And their *business* is selling coffee.
Tell you what, let's been intellectually honest here -- I challenge you to go through the nearest Starbucks drive-thru, order a black regular coffee, and then test the temperature. I have already done this. You don't even need to report back. I would like you to see for yourself.
It hides bad flavor from cheap beans. If you serve coffee at a reasonable temperature, taste dominates your senses, if you serve it boiling hot you get a nice warm feeling and no idea what it tasted like.
Ok "boiling hot" is hyperbole, you must know that. But besides that, this doesn't explain why so-called "premium" coffee houses serve coffee in the same temperature range. (From experiment.)
Ok, so explain to me. Heat takes money to produce. How can serving a beverage at a hotter temperature be cheaper?
I think I'd be willing to bet my next paycheck that the phone "exploding" is hyperbole by either the plaintiff or the press. Moreover, didn't the initial reports stipulate that the batteries overheated during charging? It's difficult to believe that a phone not connected to anything spontaneously detonated in a pants pocket. The trial might be really entertaining, but Samsung will probably settle out of court.
> (And McDondald's got in trouble because their coffee was hotter than usual, and they had ignored the risk involved.)
This was the claim made by the plaintiff's attorney, but no, actually it was not.
First, I have no dog in this fight. I think McDonald's food is nasty and I don't go there unless I need coffee in the middle of the night and there's absolutely no other place open.
According to the court records (available many places online, plus the wiki entry) McDonald's served their coffee at 180 to 190 degrees.
In point of fact, this is the same temperature range that Starbucks, Dutch Brothers and Peets serve their coffee, both then and now. I didn't just take someone's word on this -- I happened to possess a lab thermometer at the time that I was using to diagnose server failure in a wiring closet (side note; an unventilated wiring closet is a bad place for servers. But I needed to prove this to the customer.) Buying a regular coffee at the above named shops and a couple of locals and checking with the thermometer, I found that every one was between 180 and 190 degrees.
You can test this for yourself -- buy or rent an accurate thermometer, walk into any Starbucks, order a regular coffee, and check the temperature. Be sure to do several to have a sufficient sample size. You'll find that they all serve coffee at a temperature equal to or greater than the temperature alleged in the lawsuit.
The reason for this is that 180 to 190 degrees fahrenheit is the proper serving temperature for coffee.
But don't bother testing McDonald's, because (in my experience) they all serve coffee lukewarm now. It's nasty.
There has been several urban legends from this case. The most amusing of which (told to me by a very earnest young lady) was that McDonald's was saving boatloads of money by making coffee with live steam which resulted in the coffee being too hot when served. I asked how this was supposed to save money. She didn't know.
But yes, McDonald's lost, and now they serve lukewarm coffee. But indications are, they lost because the defense team acted like arrogant assholes, and the plaintiff was sympathetic, not because of any practical reason.
Problem solved.
I suspect it's there (especially, Europa) but we just haven't run across it yet. Other than Mars, we haven't been looking very hard.
It's right up there on top. The sentence with "cia director" and "aol account". That's impossible.
Absolutely true. I pay for a professional account on the service I use, and one of the bennies is the opportunity to keep all my original images on their cloud so that I don't have to worry about storing them locally or backing them up.
No. Not only no, but Hell No. Not on your friggin' life. Ok maybe as a backup, but putting the only copy of an original photograph on *someone else's* cloud? It is to laugh.
My original images reside on a local hard disk, periodically backed up to *another* hard disk, which is then disconnected and stored on a rack in a different room. (I use one of those "hard drive toasters" so I can use raw disks and not have to pay for USB enclosures.) On a slightly longer timeframe, I do a level zero backup to a hard drive and then drive it over to a friend's house to store in his fire safe. (That's my disaster recovery copy.)