Completely Lost

We finally finished the 4th and most recent season of Lost.  We started Netflixing the first 3 seasons last spring, but the fourth season we watched online because it isn't out on DVD yet.  We were able to watch it in HD online which was very impressive.   No lag time and short 30 second commercial breaks. 

So for all of you who have so rudely talked about Lost in front of me and I have shushed you, or held my hands over my ears while loudly singing "LA LA LA", you may now speak freely in front of me or better yet to me about Lost and I will gladly listen.

For those of you who haven't watched it, I highly recommend seeing Lost, it is one of the best TV series of all time.  I fought watching it for a long time because I thought it would be like the X-Files and just break my heart with a major let down by ending with some guy sitting in a cave smoking a cigarette and saying that the world was going to end in 2012.   I was worried until lobiwan informed me that the producers specifically said it was not going to end in disappointment like the X-Files and that they have had the story line mapped out from the beginning.

Thank you lobiwan I will never doubt you again.  I just can't believe that we have to wait until "early 2009" for the 5th season to begin.

Virtual House Fire

Several months ago the processor on our computer went bad. The computer had lived a good life and was in need of being replaced anyway so then I finally had a good reason. I ordered the parts to build the new computer, but when I removed the hard drives I placed one of them on the desk with the intent of adding it to the new computer later. This was the drive that had all of our pictures and music on it. I am talking thousands of songs and tens of thousands of pictures! Then a magnet was accidentally set on top of the drive.

The drive was quite a mess. To make a long story short I was sort of able to recover most of the pictures and luckily I had all of the music and most of the pictures backed up elsewhere. I suppose we may never know for sure how much was lost. It was like a virtual house fire. One of the things that people fear most with a house fire, other than the loss of life, is losing those irreplacable things like family pictures.

The digital age we live in comes with pluses and minuses. The negative thing is that rather than taking a rare fire or flood to destroy 10 years of family memories it can take one simple little magnet. The advantage is that it is easy to have multiple copies of these digital items like music, pictures and documents. But of course you have to take the time to make sure you actually back them up. After lots of searching I think I have found a pretty good and inexpensive solution. Its called iDrive. You install a small program to your computer, configure the settings and it backs up all of your files, and this part is important, to an off site location! You aren't just backing up files to another hard drive in your house, which is better than nothing, but still vulnerable to theft and fires, but you are backing up to a secure server located somewhere else. It uses 128 bit encryption both in trasmitting the data and in storage, you can access the backup from any computer with an internet connection and you can have 2 GB of storage for free! If you need more than that, it is less than $5 per month. A great deal if you ask me.

Remember it is not a question of if your hard drive fails it is just a matter of when. Keep in mind that most hard drives have a life of 2 to 5 years at the most. Please, please, please take my advice and make sure that you have some kind of backup system, it will save you a lot of frustration and heartache later on.

The Biggest Loser - Season Preview

Jez is going to be on TV tonight! Don't miss it. 7:00 Central time 2 hour special.

Here is a note about the above clip from Karen on Aug. 2nd:

He is SO embarrassed! The one time he cried was when they told him he did not make it on the show after he thought he had - and he really had (it was part of the story line). But that is what they showed on the teaser clips. Needless to say he did not have a very good day yesterday after he saw it. That's Hollywood. They use you how they want to. Never the less he is about 100 pounds down so I think that is worth a little public humiliation. As Pastor Kent used to say "You can't humiliate a humble guy". Stay tuned to see the manly man emerge

Relevant

I have been listening to the Relevant Podcast for about 6 months now. It "features the editors of RELEVANT magazine discussing the news, issues and entertainment that matters to your life—with in-studio music performances and interviews thrown in for kicks."

The show is usually about an hour long with no commercials, just fun. It consists of 3 guys and a girl sitting around and chatting just like any of us might do with 3 of our friends. The only difference is their discussions are recorded and include having a band showing up and playing a few songs. Sometimes they will also interview a Christian author, like Don Miller.

The podcast is released late Friday nights, but it leaves me with something to look forward to listening to at work on Monday. I highly recommend at least giving it a try for a few weeks. The magazine, which I just subscribed to, is also great and the website has a plethora of interesting articles as well.