Life, Kids, Technology & that move to another continent
I know that it is a huge step down from either of my daily wear watches however that isn’t stopping me from trying the Apple Warch. I am a geek for cool technology after all. So far first thoughts in the few hours I have worn it are nifty and did I really put down an Onega for this?
Going to see how a few days of use changed my opinion for better or worse.
When the iPhone 6 & 6 Plus came out I originally wanted the Plus. With my eyes I wanted as big of a screen as I could get. However I did have a Galaxy Note whoever version was out right after Teagan was born. I tried it for a few days and quickly returned it because it was unusable with one hand. Someone needing to hold a baby a lot having two hands free isn’t always possible. Those thoughts in my head and the fact that the Plus wasn’t really available right away led me to the 6. Even with the 6 i was concerned about its size. I need that one handed use. I was pleasantly surprised when I got the 6 that it is generally usable with one hand. The screen size was much better than my old 5.
This upgrade cycle I opted for the 128gig version. I had the 64gig for the 5 and the 4S before that. I may have had a 64 4 if they made them but I can’t remember. When I got the 5 I really needed the space. As I used it and day to day used my iPad more I found the storage not to be as limiting as it used to be. That being said I did come close enough to filling up all 64gig’s that I didn’t want to chance another year or more with that much space. I spend the extra money on the larger storage. I also opted for the white version this year. For a few years I kept wanting white but either canceled the order and changed to black or couldn’t get the white. This go round I didn’t want to make any excuses and I got the white.
So far I have been very happy with my choice. I even toyed with a 6 Plus for a few days last month. I confirmed my original thoughts that it was too big and I returned the phone. I made the right choice for me until next September. Then we shall see what else comes out.
Today MC and I took some of our holiday to goto Home Depot. We are looking at renovating our kitchen and we needed to investigate some details. After we finished doing that I wanted to check out the lighting section. Our fixtures in the ceiling are not big enough to allow me to put in 75 Watt equivalent CFL bulbs. I have enough trouble seeing on a bright sunny day outside so I can use every extra lumen I can get. I recently read about a flat LED bulb from Phillips. The shape of the bulb had me curious if a 75 Watt equivalent would fit in the ceiling fixtures. The only problem has been that the last Home Depot and every online store I have gone to have not had them in stock. I am not ashamed to say I was very happy to see that this Home Depot had them in stock. I picked up 4 of them to see if they would work out. I was happy to see that the bulbs do fit perfectly in the fixtures were only 60 watt equivalent CFL’s fit before. In our bedroom it was amazing how an extra 300-400 lumens make the room so much brighter.
Besides the fact that I now have brighter lighting in the apartment, these bulbs shouldn’t need to be changed until after Amelia is out of College. That is assuming we still live in this apartment. The LED bulbs will also allow me to dim them. Master plan is to put in smart dimmer switches that plug into my home automation system. The possibilities get interesting once i do that. I hope to write about that once my plans start to materialize, but I am excited by the possibilities. Yes I said it i am excited about new light bulbs and light switches. I had to think about why that was. The reason I came to is I always loved Science Fiction. I don’t yet have swooshing doors that open when i walk up to them but I can have lights that dim depending on the time of day or go off when people leave the room. That on top of the fact that my iPad seems to do more than those PADD’s in Star Trek The Next Generation my 12 year old self would think I am living in a great Sci-Fi future. Take that Star Trek!
Last year I canceled my pay Drobo subscription. I still have the service but with a lot less storage. At the time I wanted to build my own “cloud” storage system. In reality I wanted to take my data at home and make it syncable via the internet like a cloud storage provider to my devices were ever i was. Originally I bought a Transporter that I had hopes would take a 1TB drive and let me sync data to my computers. That dream lasted about a week. Their sync software was problimatic for me. Instead I opted for a Synology NAS DS412+. The added app’s functionality and redundant storage allowed me to move all my data to the Synology and no longer rely on my aging Drobo(s) as my primary storage system. The Synology also allowed me to move some multimedia functions i did on my mac mini off to the NAS. So far I have been very happy. The Synology Cloud Sync app gives me Dropbox like functionality with my personal stuff. The other file access options the Synology offers gives me access to all my data. To do that with any other provider would be prohibitivly expensive because of the amount of data stored on the NAS.
The timeing for this change to self hosting my data was perfect. I couldn’t realistically do what I am doing now earlier because when I had Time Warner my upload speeds were horrible (1.5mb). After I moved to Fios my upload speeds jumped to between 25-35mb. I have no problems using the Synology.
The problem with the Synology is that as much as the NAS itself is designed to last and has some drive resiliance in it, I do not have an offsite backup. I used to copy my data manually for a while but now a days that is not a good idea. it is also not feasable with the amount of data i have now.
After leaving Dropbox I read more and more about the potential issues with public cloud providers. Such as Dropbox knows what you upload and wont keep a duplicate copy of a file of music if others have it. That means they can (and i believe they have) removed content if there is a DMCA request. I am also increasingly uneasy about US based hosting providers and the easy the government can get access to data. I am not a criminal and don’t really have anything to hide in what I am storing however those are not reasons why I should be ok with the ease of government access to my data. I will talk about that more in another post. In relation to cloud storage I am glad I do not use Dropbox, however I put myself in the same situation with another provider.
Because I have so much data and I need to really be thinking about a 321 backup sceme I started using Crashplan and Amazon Glacial. Crashplan I recently canceled because I was having problems with my copy of data on my Drobo that i would sync to Crashplan. The crashplan app kept thinking that the drobo was disconnected and would keep creating new copies of my data. When it takes weeks to sync a backup using crashplan having a new copy get created every so often is not good. With that issue and the fact that the Crashplan Synology app caused my Synology to perform super slow to the point that I uninstalled it I gave up on Crashplan and canceled it.
Amazon Glacial has been good so far. The challanges with Glacial is that the cost per month varries by how much i use it. It is also much more expensive than Crashplan for the amount of data i have. Another challange is getting data out is expensive in the event of a major issue. Thankfully i havent had to worry about that yet but it is a concern. The most current concern I have is that Amazon is a US based company and my data is hosted on US servers. For now I am living with that risk. My rational side says I dont do anything to warrent the government to want my data however I would rather that not even be an option.
One alternative to Dropbox I have been looking at is Mega.NZ. They don’t have any access to my data once it is uploaded. They offer 50gig free. It is good to replace dropbox for some files i have and to give my most important stuff an offsite backup but it is not enough to backup my music, videos, and photos. Their 1tb option is doable for me but even that isn’t enough to backup everything. For now I will continue with Glacial as my backup. I am investigating working with a friend or two to replica sync our Synologies between each other. The cost of that may not be worth it but it is an interesting idea.
I have finally succeeded in killing off any remaining documents i had hosted in my personal google account. This action was a bit harder than i expected it would be. I won’t go into further details on a public post due to security concerns however i am glad that I was able to go through and move everything i still needed and delete everything I didn’t need. Exporting data was easy to an offline file but moving things that others still needed to collaborate on was a challenge and requires giving out new URL’s unless i was moving the document to someone else in the same google work domain. I wasn’t doing that so it was challanging.
This milestone was one of the last I need before I can delete my remaining google app’s id that i used to use as my main account. The last milestone may be the most difficult but that will be the topic of another post, Android Apps.
Its that time of year again. Apple has come out with its new OS. This time around I tried the Beta on my personal laptop. I was pretty happy with it so i installed it my remaining computers today when it became available.
One thing that is always a challenge when Apple OS upgrades come out is that some apps just don’t work. Typically it is my VPN app or Dragon Dictate or something specialized. This year I was pleased to see that everything worked without needing upgrades.
The biggest challenge for me isn’t upgrading my personal machines (I already did that). it will be upgrading MC’s and getting my parents iMac upgraded. I think MC is on Mavericks but her Macbook is getting up there in age. My parents are now 2 OS versions behind and getting time to go over there and upgrade is challenging.
This week I started noticing I was getting wireless signal on my phone in the stations in Queens on the way home from work. I was surprised since I hadn’t had that happen before. For several months if i wanted to check mail or sync something i knew i had to wait till 5th ave on the way in or 5th ave was the last chance i got till i got home on my return trip.
After a few days of curiosity I searched the internet and found that the MTA did announce new stations coming online this month. It was just challenging to find what stations. Once i found the list i confirmed that all the stations on my route home in Queens will get signal. That will be helpful to me when i am checking mail on my way into work each day. I have found that my commute is a good time to sort through all the mail from overnight and get quick responses back to people.
Of course the downside of signal in stations are people making calls. Data is great but having some clown talking loudly on the subway into their phone is not fun. Especially when they leave the station and there is the inevitable “hello, hello, can you hear me” when they drop the call. I guess progress has a price.
Today I took the next step in my exodus from Google services. I deleted my old @powerz.org mail domain from Google Apps. I had used it for several years before retiring it for a newer one about a year ago. With my mail backed up elsewhere and after I finally got all of the services dependent on the domain moved I was able to delete my account. it felt good, however my other Google Apps Domain is more of a challenge. I still use some of the google doc’s associated with it and figuring out an alternative is my current challange.
Today I completed my copying of my email off my Google App’s account. That means all my data is safely on other systems besides Google Apps. I finished re-pointing most of my domains to my new web host. Next up is completing migrating my parents to the new system. I cannot yet delete my Google Apps for Work account but i am one step closer.