Will's blog

I finally got around to re-doing the backup system on bluesock.org. I'm using arnie this time around. Previously, I was just rolling tarballs of things. arnie allows for incremental backups and it handles some more of the minor inconveniences that I had with my did-it-myself system.

Anyhow, so I decide that my backup script with arnie is working nicely and that I should remove all the test backups I've done so far. Inadvertently, I remove one of the directories that I'm backing up. DOH!

So I got to experience first-hand how difficult it would be to restore from backup. It went pretty smoothly and did what I expected it to do.

This reminds me of a similar situation from a couple of days ago. I had this 8x12 foot carpet in my car and I'm driving up to Chelmsford to deliver it to S's church. I decide it's hot so I roll down the driver-side and passenger-side front windows. After a few minutes, I decide I can't hear the radio, so I'd do AC instead. I roll up the driver-side front window without any problems, but the passenger-side front window just makes clicking noises--it doesn't go up. Ah well, I think to myself--I'll look at it when I'm not driving.

I get off the highway in Chelmsford and pull into a Dunkin Donuts parking lot. I have ... I think you'd call it automatic windows--they're electrically powered--so I leave the key in the ignition so I can power the window up and down. I wander over to the passenger-side front window, open the door, try the button, hear the clicky noises, and then stick my fingers into the door and pull the window up manually. That works out well and the window has enough friction to stay up as long as I don't touch the up/down button.

Smiling, I shut the door. Then I wander over to the driver-side to get my key out of the ignition and discover... that my car has locked itself!

So there I am in Chelmsford with my keys in the ignition and my car locked. I feel really stupid now--a radical contrast to the incredibly smart feeling I was just feeling after doing something incredibly smart. Then it occurs to me that my window is broken so I wander back to the passenger-side, manually pull down the window, grab my keys from the inside, stick my fingers in the door and pull the window back up again.

Then I decided to try a local mechanic rather than the VW dealership in Brighton who, while they have free coffee and they seem very professional about things, tends to be expensive and far away and irritating to schedule appointments with. I looked at the CarTalk web-site and found a well-rated mechanic a mile and a half from me, called them up, and had the window fixed the next day. I thought they added the total up wrong because it was impossibly low--but it turns out they're just cheaper.

Right. So backups are good and we have backups again.