Sorting Out My Backups

Steven Guccione

I am a strong believer in backing up my files. Unfortunately I’m not as organized about it as I would like. It doesn’t help that my main desktop machine is a Raspberry Pi 4 running Ubuntu and my wife’s is a Windows 10 PC that has been in constant operation for literally decades. I also found some old backups of my kids files on an old USB drive.

i decided to spin up my old Shuttle Linux box as a NAS, or really just a place for my backups. It has an old 2 TB HDD that is perfect for the job. I started by rsyncing my home directory from the Pi over to the Shuttle. Then I could use one of my old USB HDD drives for backing up the NAS. I have a couple of 1 TB USB HDDs I was using for backups and then there is the 4 TB HDD I was using for the Pi before I went to SSD.

My plan is to put everything on the NAS, with rsync scripts to automate the backup of home directories. Then another rsync script to save the NAS to the USB HDD, just to be safe.

Only hitch was the Windows PC. I just cleaned it up with a new install. There are a few 3rd party rsync applications, but wasn’t crazy about them. I used to use Cygwin. Is that still around? Maybe. Then I read about this Ubuntu on Windows, in a sort of VM, I suppose. Gave it a try and was quicker and easier than just about anything I have ever tried to do on windows. Now I have rsync, and everything else. Pops up a nice little bash shell window like a native Windows app. No more need to mess around with PowerShell either.

Houston seethes over being frozen out of federal flood funds

Steven Guccione

It is getting tiring looking at all the ways the current Texas government is, what is the word, screwing the more urban (i.e. democratic) parts of the state. Of the $1 billion in Federal funds for hurricane relief for Hurricane Harvey, Houston gets — zero. Really, the place hit hardest by the hurricane gets nothing. So where does all of this money to, and why? Hard to say right now. Officials saying is all on the up and up, that they are using official HUD guidelines. I’m very skeptical.

Houston seethes over being frozen out of federal flood funds

Red and Blue State COVID-19

Steven Guccione

Gregory Travis has done some interesting graphs comparing COVID-19 deaths and infections by county, splitting for Republican leaning and Democratic leaning counties. Not a perfect split, since many counties are close to 50%-50%, but even so, there are definite patterns.

I am very concerned about the unvaccinated in the approaching fall and winter. It could be much worse than the first wave, which occurred when COVID-19 wasn’t yet widespread and there were serious attempts to disrupt the spread. What will the reaction be when large numbers of willfully unvaccinated, who tend to oppose things like lockdowns anyway, start getting sick in large numbers?

From Twitter:

The Politics of Violence

Steven Guccione

In much of the world, running for office as an opposition candidate can be dangerous. We aren’t talking about totalitarian countries, but ones that claim to be democracies. For anyone encouraging violence or threats or violence as part of the political system in the US, look around. Is this where you want to go, because this is where we are heading? You can easily find much worse examples than Mexico. I also heard the tally is nearly 100 assassinated.

Mayoral candidate killed in Mexico; 34 dead so far

First Mow

Steven Guccione

Got my second battery in and finished up the wiring. Made more use of these wire nut clip splicer (or whatever they are called). They not only connect wires, but also secure them. Once it was all wired up I couldn’t resist a quick test. The results were mostly good, and I would say everything functions well, but I ran into a couple of hitches.

First, I was worried about the swinging of the blade unit. It did tilt forward and “dig in”, but nothing broke. I probably need to put in a spring to keep the blade unit from swinging back too far. I’m also considering cutting some of the front faces of the blade shields down a bit, exposing the blades, at least on the front side. They are underneath the mower and shouldn’t be a safety problem. Should allow better cutting. I’ll note string trimmers that use these blade do this.

Second, I blew another fuse. This is the one I have on the big line connecting the batteries. I bumped it up to 35A. It blew when I tried to move forward from a stop in the grass. Not sure how to handle this. Tempting to remove the fuse and rely on the circuit breaker.