More of an Attitude than a Custom Tool

[Jon]

If you are regularly backing up your personal data to your own hard drives, the only advantage you are going to get from also backing up to the cloud (besides simply additional duplication) is geo-distant backups. So you would essentially be prepping for a catastrophe that destroyed your onsite backups, and possibly backups that you keep within the area. A house fire won't do this, but a wildfire or significant flood can.

Most of those fancy cloud storage companies are simply re-packaging existing cloud storage services available from companies like Amazon. You can just signup for their cloud services yourself, and pay a tiny fraction of what others are charging. Agreed that they can snoop on your stuff quite easily.

Hard drives do fail, but if yours won't mount, you should be able to analyze them with some specialty software or existing system utilities.

Remarkably, very long term apocolypse-proof data archiving might actually be best accomplished by storing the data in DNA. Harvard Medical School has tinkered with this concept, storing 700 terabytes of data in a single gram of DNA. There's even some chatter about doing this on cockroach DNA, so that the data can survive widespread nuclear destruction.

[mklotz]

Recognize that the cloud, and the data it contains, can evaporate instantly as soon as the cloud owners decide it isn't making money for them. INMNSHO, the cloud is most definitely not a backup medium. It's for lazy people who haven't thought things through.

Old external drives shouldn't be a problem if you think about the fact that the data on them is valuable. Whenever you buy a new computer with a new operating system, copy all the data on the old EDs onto the new ED you bought to run with your new system. Once the data is verified, disassemble the old drives, extract the magnets and drill holes in the discs before passing them under a bulk tape eraser. Discard or use them to make an artsy-fartsy objet.

If your old EDs break down, you've got backups on other media. Follow the procedure outlined above for turning them into earrings or nose rings.

I don't think I mentioned it in my post above but it's important to remember...

Run all your virus checking software immediately BEFORE doing backups.

You don't want to backup the malware.

[Frank S]

These were not Ed's they died while being the computer's drive Back when I had 2 desktops and a laptop The laptop was more for just caring to job site offices even though I had all of the same software on it as the ones in both my home and shop office I only kept current applicable projects data on it Shortly before returning to the States I copied all data from both desktops to the laptop and 1 ED having limited baggage space the computers had to be packed in with our household and my shop equipment which none of that ever got shipped or was lost at sea I figure the forwarding company never received my materials.
this laptop has since suffered from 2 total drive fails when the first one failed I put the Ed in it to become the drive since it was a perfect clone I bought another ED then copied my data over to it but it was smaller and could not store everything so I bought a 2nd ED to store the rest on but I did not set either up as clones being that they were only 250 GB drives Looking back now I should have dedicated one of them as a ghost drive clone for the OS and all of the programs but hind sight improves while foresight sometimes diminishes. When the drive failed the second time I just put in a new one and started over using as many of my program disks that I had then transferred all data back to the laptop but somewhere along the line I have lost 1 of the smaller ED's the one that contained the oldest files.
Someday I will get enough guts to try and recover the data on the 2 failed drives they both spin up when I plug them in my dock,but something is wrong with the heads or the cards because my laptop cannot detect them .I miss the old IDI drives because I could just tear into them pull the disks and put the disks in another drive tweak a couple things then read away

[rgsparber]

I have mSecure on my phone which is an encrypted file of all passwords that is shared in real time with my wife. VERY handy. I have also gotten into the habit of using the iOS app called Day One which prompts me to have at least one diary entry per day. It has turned out to be invaluable. I just have to be careful about using key words to my searches don't miss anything.

[Frank S]

I hardly ever use my phone for any internet searches mostly because Io find it just too tedious the 3x5 screen is far too small for the propaganda of most web sites plus their actual content that I happen to be searching for.
I mostly use it as a phone and to take pictures but even at that I find an actual camera less bothersome since I can 1 hand my camera but to hold the dumb phone and try and make 1 of my fingers touch the right place on the screen one handed is just not going to happen most of the time. using a touch screen to make calls is bad enough and that for me takes both hands so as you can imagine I rarely text, never really understood the big deal about texting anyway Either call hte party wait till sitting at a computer and email them or post on a forum forget chat as well the streaming conference of that doesn't float my boat.
I'd still be using a button type non flip phone if they were available I tried a flip phone for a while but after breaking the screen off about every other time I used it I got rid of it when my partner decided to put my phone on his business plan and gave me the one I have now I must say that I have surprised myself in not breaking it yet. Which may be because it is encased in a military grade rubber armor case He had close to 300 APPS programmed in it but I have deleted almost all of them As I said phones are for calling and talking not for playing games or or trying to locate myself on GPS if I don't know where I am by now I never will.

[DIYer]

Thanks Rick! We've added your Spray Concentrate Mark to our
Measuring and Marking category, as well as to your builder page: Rick's Homemade Tools. Your receipt:

Spray Concentrate Mark by Rick Sparber

tags: marking

[AirMojo]

The problem with Roundup is that it comes in various "concentrates"... I usually buy the "Super Concentrate" in the biggest container that I can find (usually a one gallon container)... and I can usually only find a "concentrate" at the local Tractor Supply... forget Home Depot... they only have weak formulas.

Last summer I ended up buying the Roundup Super Max concentrate in a 2.5 (?) gallon container... the extra thick pamplet (112 pages) was ridiculous trying to find out the proper mix with water for just killing gravel driveway weeds, and other weeds and poison ivy in the woods that surround my lawn.

There is a table for mixing with handsprayers that just gives desired volumes and desired percentage of roundup... WTF ?

I always fill up my 2.5 gallon sprayer and can always use every drop in it until I'm too hot and sweaty from pumping it up and walking around for 3 hours.

I normally would just write the mix ratio on the mixing cup with a permanent marker that came with the super concentrate.

Not sure yet what the correct Power Max ratio is... but I usually always put too much in just to make sure I kill what needs killed...

[Frank S]

the problem with most concentrates is as has been said the mix ratios are obscure and sometimes absent completely like in those garden hose sprayers. what happens when you want to use part of the refill in a hand pump sprayer????
Also another reason that mix ratios are obscure is a lot of these products are manufactured off shore hence one reason for the instructions being written in a dozen or more languages.
Lastly and probably the biggest reason for obscurity is the manufacture is out to sell product they sure are not going to tell you that a little may work as well as a lot if you add a surfactant like any cheap dish wash liquid.
When using any herbicides I always mix in about half a cup of dish wash liquid in my 1 1/2 gallon sprayer and cut the chemical by about 20% of the recommended quantity
the dish shop breaks down the surface tension of the water then when sprayed on the weeds or what ever the mixture coats better and soaks into the fibers plus the solution evaporates slower I also find that using Luke warm water seems to yield better results

[NortonDommi]

Why are you still using Roundup? That stuff is seriously not enviro-friendly and the technology is some 30 years old. There are modern herbicides with greater dilution rates and formulated to target specific genus.
Good point about mix ratios, they should be burnt into the container as in pyrography.

[Frank S]

Out here where I'm at I doubt that round up would do anything more than turn the weeds greener, Agent Orange might do some good . I have had pretty good luck using fire spent all last summer pretty much scalping everywhere I mowed going back over and over several times about once a month over an area of about 4 acres. then as luck would have it a hot spark from a grinder in high winds set an area on fire late last fall. This summer not a single weed were the fire burned
Might just have to mix up some napalm for the brush areas after I finish knocking down about 8 acres of 3 ft high scrub oak sage brush and 10 to 20 ft tall mesquite