The Happy News thread

[Distracted]

Sounds like you had fun. Inviting the Jr High bands to play at the fundraiser is a great idea. I'll have to bring up the suggestion at the next Band Parent meeting.

And I know what joy awaits already. My daughter was in the high school marching band last fall as an eighth grader since they recruit the best musicians from local Catholic school 7th and 8th grade to fill out their numbers (very small band). So I did all of the above last fall and I've got 4 more years of it to look forward to.

[Alelou]

I don't envy you the football game obligations at all, but I've enjoyed being a band parent -- in my case a jazz band parent (and they always put that at the end of every concert, so we get to hear the whole, sometimes quite painful program). Most of all I wish the wonderful band director that they had up until this year hadn't finally retired. He was really somebody special, who knew how to push the kids to excel.

At this point, thanks to brutal state budget cuts and the resulting school closing, layoffs, and program cuts for three years in a row, we're just glad to still have a music program at all.

[Distracted]

Yep. Money's tight all around for education. Fortunately (or perhaps more accurately, unfortunately) the school my daughter will attend is a private school. At this private school the music program (and pretty much every other program) generously bleeds the parents for financial support. Every kid even gets a tablet computer (complete with on-site tech support) on which to store all of their electronic textbooks and all of their homework, a tablet for which we have the privilege of paying 500 dollars.

Per year. Plus tuition and fees.

And we don't even get to keep the tablet when she graduates. Sigh.

I want her to get a good education, but seriously, can't they manage to do it without forcing the average parent to take an extra job to pay for it?

[Alelou]

Ouch. That's pretty brutal. (Of course, it'll probably seem like nothing compared to college.)

[Cogito]

Five hundred bucks to rent a tablet for a year? That's a good business model - it sounds as if your daughter is being taught by people who know how to turn a profit, even in these difficult times. Let's just hope they manage to pass some of that business acumen on to their students.

[Distracted]

That's an interesting way of looking at it, Cogito.

[Alelou]

Thanks to all the help I got on the whine thread, I was able to get my computer fixed today for $43 bucks and about five minutes of leaning over a counter while the guy installed the new power supply unit and made sure it worked.

Thank you, Kotik, Cogito and Entilzha!

My husband no doubt thanks you, too. Now I can leave his computer alone again.

[Cogito]

Glad you managed to get it fixed. I highly recommend you get a surge protector before this happens again.

[Alelou]

What do you think, can I just plug the whole battery unit into a surge suppressor? It's supposed to BE one. Gah. It's still handy when I'm working on a project and the power goes out, since it allows me to save my work.

I've actually thought I should buy surge suppressors for every major appliance in the house. Power issues are fairly common in this neck of the woods, and they can really fry things like modern televisions and refrigerators. But then I find myself wondering if surge suppressors really do anything. The only one I was fairly confident of, just because it's such a great big heavy piece of hardware, was the one that failed to work.

[Cogito]

What do you think, can I just plug the whole battery unit into a surge suppressor? It's supposed to BE one. Gah. It's still handy when I'm working on a project and the power goes out, since it allows me to save my work.

I suppose it depends what your 'battery unit' is. I guess it's an uninterruptable power supply, but they aren't all the same type - some of them only switch in when they sense the supply voltage browning out, and don't actually get involved the rest of the time. With that type, any spike on the supply would go straight through.

As far as I can see, it would do no harm to put an ordinary separate surge suppressor between the mains socket and your UPS. Depending what type your UPS is, this might be a waste of time, but it won't do any harm. Worst case if your UPS isn't actually giving you any effective protection against surges, this could save your equipment.

Bear in mind that all these approaches only protect against mains voltage spikes. If you get a direct lightening strike it'll go through any path it likes (phone lines, power lines, doorbell wiring, satellite cables) and leave anything it touches a smoking ruin.

Just as an aside, I suppose you probably do have a good backup system in place already.

In case you don't, you can set up a very effective offsite backup system for zero cost. At the moment, mine consists of a FileHamster archiver and Microsoft Live Mesh. Any time I change a document, FileHamster takes a copy of it and saves it away in an archive directory. Mesh has been configured to back up my normal documents directory, and the archive directory. This is totally transparent and just keeps an encrypted copy of all my files somewhere in the cloud. I can access them from any computer with internet access. So for example, last week I had to go away to deal with some other stuff but I could access my fanfiction files, tinker with stories I was working on, and my updates were uploaded back into the cloud, downloaded to my home PC, archived in the FileHamster change control system and the archive was loaded back into the cloud as a backup - all totally automatic and transparent - and all free. The fact that my screen and keyboard were somewhere else made no difference at all.

I do still have RAID storage and local backup at home, but with free online storage getting bigger and access speeds getting faster, the local backup is becoming less important.

[WarpGirl]

My Happy News is... I sold my trailer and today I'm getting a fish tank!

[Alelou]

Lots of food for thought there, Cogito. I do have automatic back-up, but since it sits less than a foot away from the computer, it's of limited use in a disaster. I tend to email myself important files, but your system sounds a lot more effective.

Congratulations, WarpGirl!

[Cogito]

My Happy News is... I sold my trailer and today I'm getting a fish tank!

You're downsizing? I hope it's a big fishtank. Will it have curtains?

[WarpGirl]

Funny Cogito ! I sold the trailer to move into my parent's garage apartment. It just got too much living on my own when I can't even stand for 30 seconds. I've wanted an aqaurium for a long while now, I love fish. So now I have the means to do it! I find I don't mind living back with my parents as much as I thought I would. I'm a lot less lonely and therfore less moody (which is a good thing for Y'all) and things have been so much better. It was the right decision for me. Okay so most 28 yr old's would balk, but I have a tremendously loving family that actually likes each other. I count it as a blessing.

Oh is it bad I named a murder Riley in one of my stories? I was writing it and remembered all of the wonderful chats I've had with KTR and it just kind of snuck in there! Not that I believe the gentleman is anything other than an upstanding human being, but my brain works in funny ways...

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

^