Day 163

When I was out of the office today I made a telephone call from my iPad and it actually worked. I'm delighted. Now I have the cell phone I've always wanted: big, bulky and totally impractical. Janet thinks I'm nuts to waste time trying to use a bulky tablet computer as a phone, but it works for me. I can use Skype to call for free when I'm in Wi-Fi range and use Whistle over 3G everywhere else.

I remembered a bunch of important files that I forgot to back up yesterday, so I continued my backup efforts for another day. I'm sure when the next big computer crash occurs, the files that I really need will still be the ones that I forgot to back up. That's always what happens. I used to back up everything, but now it's simply too much trouble. When a single photo image can be 100 megabytes or larger and the source material for a typical corporate video ends up filling up an entire terabyte hard drive, you learn to be selective about what you back up. I don't bother to back up video files at all. It's much easier to just save all the original video tape and redigitize it if necessary.

I wish the city would decide when they were going to pick up the trash on our street. First, they cut back our twice a week service to a single day. Then, just when everybody was getting used to the trash truck coming on Friday afternoons, they decide to come at 6 AM on Friday morning instead. Practically everyone on the entire street missed the trash pickup last week. They wouldn't come back either. I'm ready for them this week. I took my trash out to the curb this evening. I noticed that a lot of my neighbors did the same thing. It's going to be a bonanza for the raccoons and possums in the neighborhood tonight.

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