Deleting partition: 5 seconds remaining…

 or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Trust the Cloud (for some things)
 

This picture should make sense in a few paragraphs


 I’m in the process of installing Windows 7 and Ubuntu onto my aging MacBook so I don’t have to go to the engineering building every time I need to use Windows.  I backed up my operating system onto one external drive and my music and photos to another.  That way, once I was done I could delete the copy of the OS but retain a backup of the music and pictures. 

Everything was going well:  The computer was running quickly, I had all my DropBox  stuff back (more on that later…), and I was waiting on updates to download.  I had the disk utility running because I was planning out how I wanted to divide up the external once everything was done.  Normally, you must confirm that you want to continue before anything happens.  Which is good.  However, apparently deleting a partition requires no confirmation.  Which is very bad because first of all that’s just inconsistent, and second the partition that was deleted roughly 5 seconds later housed all of my music and every picture I have taken in about 5 years.

It was shocking how quickly it happened.  I knew enough to immediately stop all reading and writing to the drive, since this could ruin my chances of getting anything back.  Fun fact:  deleting a file (or a section of your hard drive) is a lot like burning a map.  The destination still (presumably) exists but you can’t necessarily find your way there anymore.  However, the computer then considers the space that that file was occupying to be empty and therefore it might write over it with new data.

To summarize the next few days (which honestly involved huge amounts of waiting around) I bought some expensive software and got nearly everything back and I learned a lot about data recovery. The music was a cinch (had it on my iPod) but the photos all needed to be sorted, which took forever.

Of course my email and other online accounts were all untouched, but I also didn’t have to worry about my school work, resumes, code I had written, and a few other important odds and ends.  That stuff was all on DropBox: safe and sound the entire time.  And after all of this, I think I am going to be using them even more.  It’s extremely convenient, and this marks the second time it has essentially saved my life.  Hard drives die.  People make mistakes.  Computers (and especially flash drives) get stolen.  Sometimes you overwrite the wrong file.  There are countless ways to lose everything on your computer.

I’m not too paranoid about cloud storage but that’s because I don’t keep anything too sensitive there.  If someone got into my photos or homework, they wouldn’t have too much of my personal information.  Sure, I’m not going to put my tax returns on DropBox, but for anything that isn’t confidential, it’s great.   So if you haven’t checked it out, maybe you should.  2Gb isn’t TONS of space, but it is free and they have lots of ways to increase that amount without paying anything.  For example, if you use this link, you’ll start out at 2.5Gb instead.

Moral of the story:  back up your data. Somehow.  Storage is cheap:  I saw a 500Gb drive for sale the other day for $45, and I am sure there are better deals than that.  There is excellent free backup software available. But more importantly, once you have both of those, you have to actually do it.  I have all the tools, and I still don’t backup nearly as frequently as I should because it’s kind of a pain in the ass.  That’s another selling point for DropBox: Everything you put in your DropBox folder on your computer is automatically backed up for you and you don’t have to mess with cables or remember to do anything.  Just back it all up somehow, because you might not be as lucky as I was.

Here goes...

At the very minimum, I created this blog to keep track of events slightly more significant than what usually comprises my status updates.  Add to that the fact that the blog has been terribly neglected for the past 9 weeks (not a coincidental number; school started around that time), and I think it's time to make the announcement:  I'm taking the plunge.  In two weeks I am quiting my job and going to school full-time. It seemed unprofessional to post this until I had officially given notice, however I just did last wednesday.

If everything works out as planned, then at this time next year I will be finishing my postbac and about to start a summer internship before beginning my masters in the fall.  I'm very excited.  It's relieving to finally have a concrete plan that involves actual dates.  Until recently, I knew so little about which courses I needed, when they were offered, what the requirements were, and how long this would all take.  Now I have a checklist.  And I totally pwn up on checklists.  

The fact of the matter is that I am getting burned out with my current load.  Work and getting to and from work was taking up 25 hours/wk, lectures and labs took up another 15 hours.  Thats a full time job. Factor in homework, which was around usually between 15 and 25 hours/wk and something had to give.  Add to that the fact that after next term, all my classes are 300/400 level couses, and it's safe to say school isn't easing up any time soon.  Finally, I would rather spend any extra time on school right now, since I want to learn as much as I can. 

However, I don't want to give the impression that I'm not enjoying being in school.  I definitely am.  I am learning so much, and about such an interesting field.  I'm constantly busy with one project or another, but they are all very fun and intersting.  A large part of this education boils down to playing with electronics and making things (circuits, programs, robots) that do cool shit. 

The next couple weeks are going to be crazy-- finals, moving, taking classes at two schools at once... new puppy(!)-- but after that my full time job is going to be becoming a computer engineer. And I might even get to have dinner with Beth sometimes.  Things are looking pretty good.

Hawaii (Finally!)

It's been nearly a month since we got back from Hawaii, and I've been meaning to write about the trip ever since.  I've also had plenty of other topics come up since we returned that I wanted to write about but the linear thinker in me won't let me move on to those until I finish the prior task.

It would take far more writing than I have time for to really do the trip any  justice, so a glorified sideshow is just going to have to do...

Breakfast on our first morning in Hawaii, at Lulu's in Waikiki.  French toast stuffed with homemade pineapple marmalade!!  Should that really be a breakfast food? 

The Honolulu Zoo was one of the coolest zoos I've seen.  They had very few cages; instead the enclosures are designed in such a way so the animals can't escape, so you aren't constantly looking through bars/glass.

The zoo also had dinosaurs!  Ok, not really but pretty close. 

We found an awesome shrimp truck tucked away in an empty corner of the otherwise bustling Waikiki.  Some of the cheapest and best food of the trip.

Watching the sunset on Waikiki beach. 

The sun sets very fast, but its an incredible show. 

This is the kind of thing you would see a few times each night simply walking up and down the streets in Waikiki.  There's SO much going on there all the time.

We rented mopeds one day to get out of the craziness in Waikiki and explore at our own pace.  I even got Beth to ride one!

We rode the mopeds out to Diamond Head State Park to hike the crater.  On the way in, I saw this door in the side of the mountain and thought it looked oddly military in origin. 

Turns out that Diamond Head Park is an old us base of some sort.  There's a network of old tunnels  connecting the bunkers that soldiers would sit in watching for ships to come in.  It was a really cool place; certain areas of it were closed 60 years ago and it looked like no one had set foot in them since. 

The groomsmen and I decided to go for a hike to see some waterfalls at the Manoa park.  Little did we know we would be hiking through what appears to be Jurassic Park.  Fortunately, we did't encounter any raptors.

We made it to the end!  Which, honestly, is kind of impressive considering the path was made up solely of boulders of varying sturdiness and sharpness, all entirely covered in mud, going upwards at a 60 degree angle. 

Another beautiful night in O'ahu.  This was taken at Kira and Ryan's rehearsal dinner before the wedding at an outrigger club near Waikiki.

After the wedding,  it was off to Maui for us.  I can't emphasize how different Maui was from Oahu.  It would be like comparing Las Vegas to... uh... somewhere calm.  The first day we arrived, we all went to the Old Lahaina Lu'au, which was an excellent way to kick off the beginning of our "real" vacation. 

Tim and Betty sure did find an excellent condo for us to rent.  It had plenty of space inside, a huge balcony, and look at this view!

Here we are getting ready to start our zipline tour.  I'm glad we decided to do it, even if it was brief.  It was a lot of fun and our guides were hilarious.  It was called an "Eco-Tour" because we were supposed to learn about the local wildlife and habitats.  Instead, our guides threw brownies at mongooses.  It was still a blast.


Here's a video of me doing one of the ziplines.


Here's a POV video of a different run.

Eventually we rented our own car.  Even through everything else costs and arm and a leg in Hawaii, car rentals are reasonable.  Around $30/day.  Beth liked the Soul quite a bit and I thought it was surprisingly a pretty solid little car.


Seen at a local coffee shop.  I especially liked the albums entitled "Happy Talk" and the picture of the guy saying "Aloha, you all"

We decided to go exploring after we had our own car.  Here's an example of one of the roads we had to navigate; one lane, on a cliff.  The key is to get in a group of cars all going the same way so that other people have to pull over to let everyone past.  Pretty awesome drive, though!

We found some really cool beaches on our exploration around the island.  Some of the lava formations were crazy!  You wouldn't want to fall on this stuff, thats for sure.

We stopped to see "the blowhole."  I know thats what it was called because there was a sign written in pencil and made out of garbage in the parking lot that said so.  After some cajoling, I got Beth to come down and see it up close, and after a lot of tries, we got some cool pictures.

Nothing phases me. 

We ended up having to cancel our plans to bike down Haleakala, the tallest peak on Maui.  However, we still had the Soul, so we decided to drive up and at least see it.   This picture is unrelated to that story though.  This is just here because it cracked me up that every island apparently has its own Kamehameha Rd/Hwy/Dr/etc. 

Apparently it doesn't take much to get a street named after you in Hawaii... I mean just look at this.  Kane's a cool guy and all, but seriously-- naming a street after him?

The observatory on top of Haleakala.  The view's from up there were pretty incredible.  And it was about 50-60 degrees colder than it was on the coast.


I decided I needed to take a picture at 10,024 feet.

It's actually high enough up there that we were completely above the clouds.  I didn't get photos of it, but from up there it looked like airplanes were flying at about the same altitude we were at. 

All things considered, we had a really great time...

Hopefully we can go back again soon!