The Left Side of Normal Airplanes, The Internet, and Everything Else

I was just wrapping up some pretty important work this morning (moving a website from one server to another) when my laptop suddenly died on me.  A chat with Dell tech support indicates that the motherboard has gone bad, so it will be out of service for the next few days while replacement parts get shipped to the tech who will be repairing it for me.  What now?

First step, don't panic!  We have another laptop in the house which I'm using right now.  It's not as powerful and doesn't have any of my tools installed, but it'll get me through the weekend.  I'm in the process of installing all of my off-the-shelf software now to at least get some functionality back.  I'm also having to pull some installers from backups or other storage locations for tools which aren't readily available online.

One good thing about this experience is that it's showing me where some weaknesses are.  For one, I use Carbonite to back up important stuff in real time.  I'm quickly finding that the problem with Carbonite is that it tends to exclude a lot of files even in folders that you told it to back up.  For example, I have an "install" folder which contains installers for important programs.  I told Carbonite to back that up.  Unfortunately, it's excluded all executable files from the backup, so pretty much nothing in that folder is actually available to recover through their web interface on this laptop.  I could really use that folder right now.  When my main laptop is back in action that is one of the first things which is getting changed.  It will either back up ALL of my files in the folders I specify or I'll find another solution.  It did have copies of some Word documents that I need, so that came in handy.

Next, I do have a full system backup on an external disk that is less than a week old, so my data is safe locally anyway.  Unfortunately, our other laptop has Windows Vista Home edition which isn't playing well with the Windows 7 backup files on my external drive, so pulling data from there seems to be a non-starter as well.  Granted, that particular backup is designed to be restored on to the same computer and hardware that it came from, but it would be nice to pull a few files off there.

The star of the show today seems to be Dropbox.  I installed it on the other laptop, gave it my credentials, and it immediately set about downloading the dropbox contents to this computer.  Everything appears exactly as it did on the other laptop.  Kudos to the Dropbox team!

Apparently my blog was offline for a couple of months with some obscure error and nobody noticed, including me, lol.  I monitor the server where the blog is hosted, but not the blog itself, so I didn't get notified automatically.  Anyway, it's back now, hopefully to stay up for a while.  Cheers!

Back in April, we took on the responsibility for raising two awesome ducks that were only a week old.  They started out in a small plastic swimming pool with a bed of wood chips huddled under a heat lamp.  The wood chips quickly gave way to straw, and they began to grow very quickly.  Within a couple of weeks, we set up a portion of the back yard as their pen and built them a shelter to live in.  Within a month they were nearly fully grown and feathers were replacing their cute yellow fuzz.  After a couple of months, we took them out into the lake and let them swim around.  They've made several supervised trips into the lake, but they prefer to hang out in their pen instead.  They're always in a hurry to waddle back up the hill to get back to their safety zone.

Overall, the ducks have been awesome.  They're gorgeous, incredible animals, and raising them and having them with us has been an amazing experience.  Unfortunately, as they mature, the environment we can provide just isn't suitable for such incredible animals.  Ducks really need water to be happy.  We set up a kiddie pool for them, but that really just doesn't do them justice.  We considered leaving the fence open so they could commute to the lake, but there was too much danger of them wandering off and getting hit by a car or leaving the lake in someone else's yard and doing damage, not to mention the neighborhood cats, dogs, and other wildlife that could put them in danger.  It just wasn't fair to keep them penned up in such a small area without ready access to a pond or some other water to swim in.  The noise was also beginning to become a problem for us (and probably our neighbors as well) with fairly loud quacking from Peaches fairly early in the morning every day.

So, it was with a heavy heart that we decided that change was at hand.  Jeanette wanted to put them on a plate with a garnish, but I decided that we should try to find them a loving home before we resorted to taking their lives in the name of dinner.  I made a few calls to farms in the area with little success (one at least promised to call me back but as yet has not).  Craigslist has usually been a good way to find things or sell unwanted stuff, so I posted a note in the "farm and garden" category that we were seeking a loving, suitable home for two mature Pekin ducks.  As usual, craigslist did not disappoint.  I had a couple dozen e-mails from people who were interested, though mostly from people who had no experience with ducks.

Then, a message came in from a lady in Arcadia that looked promising.  I gave her a call and we spoke for a few minutes.  She lives on 40 acres of rural land and takes care of a wide variety of animals including horses, cows, llamas, goats, geese, and ducks.  She said they had six Pekin ducks, one of another breed, and two geese.  A small stream runs through their property and they've created a pond off of it with a large pen where the ducks live (right next to the pen where the goats and the llama reside).  It sounded perfect and we made arrangements to make a visit and drop them off if we were satisfied with the location.  We packed them and their remaining food and straw into the car and made the trek out to northern Arcadia, nearly an hour away.  When we arrived (in the middle of nowhere), I was happy with what I saw.  They did, indeed, have a very nice area sectioned off for the ducks and geese with an adjacent pond for them to swim in.  The ducks she had were similar in age and looked very well fed and cared for.  We let them out into the pen and they seemed disoriented for a few minutes.  The other ducks began checking them out and sizing them up.  Since they are new to the flock, there will of course be some jockying for position to see where they will fit in.  After a few days, they will be full members and have lots of new friends to huddle up with.

The new location isn't perfect, but it's far more ideal than we would be able to provide for them.  The pen is a lot larger and she said they have plans to make it even bigger.  The pond is adequate for all of them to swim in, and occasionally small fish come up the stream that they can chase after.  Overall, our experience with the ducks has been amazing and I wish we were in a better position to better provide for them ourselves, but it wouldn't be fair to them or our neighbors to keep them here.  I do not know if we will see them again, but she did say that if we're in the area we're welcome to drop by and visit if we like.  I'm very happy that we were able to find what I hope will be a much better life for them.  Quack quack!