That'd be me. The Republican party is an odd beast these days, especially here in Colorado - a strange fusion of the religious conservative faction and the economic/personal liberty conservative faction. How the two get along I'm not sure - one side wants government to enforce their moral convictions, and the other just, in the end, wants government to leave them alone to live their lives. Count me amoung the latter camp - a strong believer in the less government tries to "help me", the better off society will be in the end.
I don't get along too terribly well with the other side of the party, but the other option is to vote for a third-party that has no hope of getting elected and probably has some screwed up views, according to me. Libertarians, for example - they know personal freedom, and that's why I love 'em, but their economic theory could use some help.
However, don't get me wrong - with both major party candidates suck, I vote third party.
Stuff I need to back up at home that requires rock solid, offsite storage? A lot of stuff...
1) I'm a fairly rabid railroad enthusiast/photographer in my off-work hours. A decent number good enough for publication, several actually published. I shoot about 20-30k images a year, and I keep everything. I do mean everything. Bad stuff gets sorted out, but kept anyway just in case it comes in useful in the future. Losing it would mean losing several thousand hours of time, tens of thousands of dollars in vehicle wear, gas, food, lodging, airfare, and good photos of some never-to-be-seen-again shots. A huge chunk of the last six years of my life down the drain if it was to get lost. Not counting the railroad stuff, also included are several thousand shots of family events, people and places I've known, scans of old historical documents, etc.
2) Schematics/source code/misc design files for numerous electronic devices I've designed and built over the years. Included would be a Microchip PIC/IDE hard disk MP3 player, a 2kW solar array maximum power point tracker, an ultrasonic pump cavitation sensor for bulk liquid tractor-trailer rigs, a completely modular and networked model railroad signalling system, and a whole pile of things I can't think of right now. Again, more countless hundreds of hours of effort that I'd lose.
3) The usual personal stuff - tax records, email discussions with people/companies I've contracted with (not to mention jobs I've done for free for those that have asked), email records of purchases, bank statements, and all manner of other goodies. Also included are numerous whitepapers, articles, two small (under 30 pages each) undergrad thesis papers from college, personal letters, hours upon hours of website work, etc.
My backup solutions?
As far as photos, everything's burned to CD in duplicate once it's sorted and named. One copy stays at my house, one is migrated across town to a friend's place. Oh yeah, and 75% of it is all accessible online with a very liberal license, so hopefully other people have picked up and saved the good stuff.
Same goes for much of the electronics information - I've posted a good chunk of it (or at least what I think will be useful to others) online with open and free licensing (GPL or BSD for software, GPL or other open hardware license for hardware, typically). However, since my webserver alternately serves as a nice warm footrest while I'm sitting at my desk, the redundancy of the machine alone won't really help me in event of a disaster at my house.
The main strategy I've got is an IDE drive in a firewire case (120Gb) that I leave at work. Once a week I take it home and mirror my data drive onto it. However, with the 120Gb data drive approaching full, I've got a dilemma.
That said, I've also got a few friends starting an online storage company. However, my main problem is getting the archive loaded in the first place. My data's nearly static, but by the sheer volume and my hideously slow DSL (IDSL, if you're wondering) connection, it would take months to get it all transferred the first time.
It's cheaper, easier, and faster to just haul an external drive back and forth from the office every week. Of course this obviously leaves me vulnerable for 8-10 hours every week (the time when the backup drive is at home), but since I'm in the house too it seems like a reasonable risk.
Sorry, dag - Union Pacific beat you to it by about 4 decades. Back in the 1960s they experimented with 10,000 HP gas turbines that burned Bunker C oil. Eventually, reliability problems and the rising price of price of Bunker C did them in. However, they screamed like banshees and weren't allowed in many parts of the UP system due to their noise problems. While I'm sure advancements in noise damping tech will help significantly, it's hard to keep something producing several megawatts quiet.
Slashdot Mirror
*Raises hand*
That'd be me. The Republican party is an odd beast these days, especially here in Colorado - a strange fusion of the religious conservative faction and the economic/personal liberty conservative faction. How the two get along I'm not sure - one side wants government to enforce their moral convictions, and the other just, in the end, wants government to leave them alone to live their lives. Count me amoung the latter camp - a strong believer in the less government tries to "help me", the better off society will be in the end.
I don't get along too terribly well with the other side of the party, but the other option is to vote for a third-party that has no hope of getting elected and probably has some screwed up views, according to me. Libertarians, for example - they know personal freedom, and that's why I love 'em, but their economic theory could use some help.
However, don't get me wrong - with both major party candidates suck, I vote third party.
Stuff I need to back up at home that requires rock solid, offsite storage? A lot of stuff...
1) I'm a fairly rabid railroad enthusiast/photographer in my off-work hours. A decent number good enough for publication, several actually published. I shoot about 20-30k images a year, and I keep everything. I do mean everything. Bad stuff gets sorted out, but kept anyway just in case it comes in useful in the future. Losing it would mean losing several thousand hours of time, tens of thousands of dollars in vehicle wear, gas, food, lodging, airfare, and good photos of some never-to-be-seen-again shots. A huge chunk of the last six years of my life down the drain if it was to get lost. Not counting the railroad stuff, also included are several thousand shots of family events, people and places I've known, scans of old historical documents, etc.
2) Schematics/source code/misc design files for numerous electronic devices I've designed and built over the years. Included would be a Microchip PIC/IDE hard disk MP3 player, a 2kW solar array maximum power point tracker, an ultrasonic pump cavitation sensor for bulk liquid tractor-trailer rigs, a completely modular and networked model railroad signalling system, and a whole pile of things I can't think of right now. Again, more countless hundreds of hours of effort that I'd lose.
3) The usual personal stuff - tax records, email discussions with people/companies I've contracted with (not to mention jobs I've done for free for those that have asked), email records of purchases, bank statements, and all manner of other goodies. Also included are numerous whitepapers, articles, two small (under 30 pages each) undergrad thesis papers from college, personal letters, hours upon hours of website work, etc.
My backup solutions?
As far as photos, everything's burned to CD in duplicate once it's sorted and named. One copy stays at my house, one is migrated across town to a friend's place. Oh yeah, and 75% of it is all accessible online with a very liberal license, so hopefully other people have picked up and saved the good stuff.
Same goes for much of the electronics information - I've posted a good chunk of it (or at least what I think will be useful to others) online with open and free licensing (GPL or BSD for software, GPL or other open hardware license for hardware, typically). However, since my webserver alternately serves as a nice warm footrest while I'm sitting at my desk, the redundancy of the machine alone won't really help me in event of a disaster at my house.
The main strategy I've got is an IDE drive in a firewire case (120Gb) that I leave at work. Once a week I take it home and mirror my data drive onto it. However, with the 120Gb data drive approaching full, I've got a dilemma.
That said, I've also got a few friends starting an online storage company. However, my main problem is getting the archive loaded in the first place. My data's nearly static, but by the sheer volume and my hideously slow DSL (IDSL, if you're wondering) connection, it would take months to get it all transferred the first time.
It's cheaper, easier, and faster to just haul an external drive back and forth from the office every week. Of course this obviously leaves me vulnerable for 8-10 hours every week (the time when the backup drive is at home), but since I'm in the house too it seems like a reasonable risk.
ND
Sorry, dag - Union Pacific beat you to it by about 4 decades. Back in the 1960s they experimented with 10,000 HP gas turbines that burned Bunker C oil. Eventually, reliability problems and the rising price of price of Bunker C did them in. However, they screamed like banshees and weren't allowed in many parts of the UP system due to their noise problems. While I'm sure advancements in noise damping tech will help significantly, it's hard to keep something producing several megawatts quiet.