BACKUP YOUR COMPUTER... NOW!!!

My laptop screen suddenly went BLACK.

SH!T

Okay, don't panic...

I'm on a laptop and the battery is charged and the cord's plugged in at both ends and I don't think this laptop has a one-touch-make-the-screen-go-black button and the house lights are still on so it's not a power outage and even if it is I'm on a friggin' laptop so what the hell?

Check connections.

All good.

Check connections a second, third, and fourth time.

All good.

Try another power cord just in case the battery's bombed AND the cord's crap.

Nope... nothing.

SH!T

SH!T

SH!T

That was two Tuesdays ago. I was, as I often am, multi-tasking on my laptop: five or six windows open and hopping from one to the next. I need a copy of that appointment slip for next week's trip to the American Consulate in Saigon, so I'll save it as a PDF... Then, when I tried to print a hard copy, my printer suddenly showed "off-line". Strange, I thought, I can see it from here and the blue Wi-Fi light is glowing...

Then, suddenly: BLACK SCREEN.

No fade-to-black; no BSoD (blue screen of death); just BLACK!

Now I'm getting a bit concerned because I really don't want to have to buy another computer... maybe this one is salvageable. What's that phrase? "Whistling past the graveyard"?

Yeah, that's the one.

In the days that followed, I tried:

• Everything listed on the Windows "Your computer just died and we want to give the impression that we give a shit, so here are five things you can do to feel better once you finally give up trying to fix it" web site
• "Windows Repair" on boot-up x 3
• "Windows Recovery Disk" (yes, I actually made one many months ago) x 2
• The first attempt ended with a message along the lines of: "Sorry, Charlie, no can do"
• The second one ran about 60 hours before I decided that it must be stuck in a loop and stopped it
• Removing the hard drive and putting it in a "Hard Drive Enclosure", then plugging that into my backup laptop as an external drive to access the files.
• Taking it to TWO local computer gurus

All fruitless...

If you read the above and thought, "I'm sure that John, logical person that he is, has a recent backup of his hard drive" because you have one, please read on.

If you read to the previous paragraph without once thinking about a back-up and/or do not have one of your computer, then please finish this paragraph, click on the link at the end, and sign-up to immediately begin backing up your computer to the cloud. Once that is running, please come back and finish reading this post. Click here to go to carbonite.com and start your on-line backup.

Now that you have, or are in the process of creating a back-up, I will tell you that yes, all of my 282GB were continuously backed up in the cloud. The only file I lost was the PDF that I created just prior to the crash... and maybe my IE and Firefox bookmarks; I hope they are in the backup, but I don't know.

Ironically, less than a week prior, I had a conversation with Lorelle at One More Café about computers and back-ups. I told her that I've used Carbonite for about four years and had another cloud-based back-up provider a couple years before that. I also mentioned that I should do a hard back-up because it's been too long since my last and if the system does crash, the cloud-based systems can literally take weeks to restore all of your files—especially with the slower Internet download speeds we have here in VN compared to many Western countries.

I'm now working on my back-up laptop and waiting for Carbonite to re-populate it with my files. I already downloaded the 9.1GB Outlook file (30 hours) and extrapolating out from that, the rest of the files should be complete within... UT-OH...

So far, the backup laptop is holding up. Now I get to buy a new laptop.

Top contender is an iMac 13" with Retina display because I think I'm DONE with Windows. Whatever I buy will probably wait until my trip to Thailand because:
1) I will have a better selection
2) Prices are significantly lower
3) I need time to consider the learning curve

This is one of the few times I'm looking for other people's opinions and so far, everyone says, "DO IT!"

I ask again... are you fully backed up? Click here for Carbonite's backup options.

Dalat seafood (hai san) restaurant update

For those currently in Dalat or headed there, I withdraw my high praise for the local seafood (hai san) restaurant in my post of 30 October. Two recent consecutive disappointing visits mean that it will be a while, if ever, before I revisit. Since I praised it so highly just six weeks ago, I feel it necessary to post an update.

Patronize this restaurant at your own peril. Last night, for the second consecutive visit, about 60% of the crab claws were "OLD". By that, I mean that they tasted ammonia-ish and were inedible.

I spit the first one out and started sniffing each before eating it. In the west, they would've gone back after the first one but, remember... I live in Việt Nam—the land of no returns or refunds. The second bad one went on the table. When I hit the third bad claw, I called the owner over and told her via Google Translate:

She shot me about two sentences of something I didn't understand and went back to work, leaving the plate of claws in front of me. I'm pretty sure she told me that she didn't care... or similar. I then put on my jacket and helmet, walked to where she was cooking, showed her a second screen:

paid the 65,000 ($3) I owed (it's Việt Nam!), and left.

She knows I'm a good customer because she greets me every time with a warm smile and "Xin Chao" (Hello) and, while I am getting seated, she brings over the bag of kitten food that I bought (third one) for her two kittens that were previously surviving on scraps, and feeds them. Other customers arrive and she might acknowledge them with a nod.

Yet she does nothing to keep me as a customer... like replace the bad claws with good or, what a concept, replace the whole damn plate!

Because it's Việt Nam!

Patronize her at your own peril.

Recipe for a Cat Lovers' Dessert

This recipe first came to me in 2004 via the Feline Friends mailing list and, although I never got around to preparing it, I think it'd be great fun!

I know a few of my readers will try this... please send photos!

Cat Lovers' Dessert

1 spice or German chocolate cake mix
1 white cake mix
2 large pkg vanilla instant pudding mix, prepared
1 large pkg vanilla sandwich cookies
green food coloring
12 small Tootsie Rolls®

Prepare cake mixes and bake according to directions (any size pans).

Prepare pudding mix and chill until ready to assemble.

Crumble white sandwich cookies in small batches in food processor, scraping often. Set aside all but about 1/4 cup. To the 1/4 cup cookie crumbs, add a few drops green food coloring and mix until completely colored.

When cakes are cooled to room temperature, crumble into a large bowl. Toss with half the remaining white cookie crumbs and the chilled pudding. Important: Mix in just enough of the pudding to moisten it. You don't want it too soggy. Combine gently.


1 new kitty litter pan
1 new plastic kitty litter pan liner
1 new pooper scooper

Line a new, clean kitty litter box. Put the cake/pudding/cookie mixture into the litter box.

Put four unwrapped Tootsie rolls in a microwave safe dish and heat until soft and pliable. Shape ends so they are no longer blunt, curving slightly. Repeat with four more Tootsie rolls and then bury all eight in the mixture.

Sprinkle the other half of cookie crumbs over top. Scatter the green cookie crumbs lightly on top of everything -- this is supposed to look like the chlorophyll in kitty litter. Heat the remaining four Tootsie rolls and partially bury them as seen in the photo below.


The finished dessert:

ENJOY!

Youth is wasted on the young

Over the past thirty years or so, the phrase "Youth is wasted on the young" occasionally rears its head and haunts me for a bit. Fortunately, I feel I did better than most in getting the full value of my pre-30th birthday adventures—skiing; skydiving (at 17); scuba diving (alliteration unintentional); wild oat-sowing; piloting a hot air balloon; self-employment; a bit of international travel; and more.

A young couple who is doing an even better job of spending their youth well than I ever imagined is Kasia and Manu, writers of "The Clueless Abroad" blog. Their style is engaging and the photos are very good. I mentioned them in a previous post and just today started catching up on their blog. I especially like their post on Dalat, for reasons beyond the fact that they contributed to and mentioned the Helmets For Children project.

I finally found their card, too...

If you're still young—in body and/or mind—and find yourself making a bucket list, do yourself a favor... stop making lists! Get out there and DO!

Slightly shifting topics from those who don't wear ties to those who do...

“And that, by the way, is why I think men so often wear ties… because if you are going to embody disembodied Western rationality, you need a signifier. And what could be a better signifier of disembodied Western rationality than a garment that at one end is a noose and the other end points to the genitals?”—Michael Kimmel

Moving on to standardized testing in what passes for "education"...
Finally... I recently found a photo of my 2002 visit to Cincinnati to visit family.

I'm the HUGE guy in the first row... pushing 290 lbs, if I remember correctly.

For the past few years and when I left the U.S. last year, I was down to about 240 or so.

Now, after a year of living in Vietnam, eating mostly local and unprocessed foods and walking frequently, I'm pretty happy at 215 lbs...

though I'd like to get a bit lower.

I show the fat photo because I have a number of friends and acquaintances in the west who are, if photos are to be believed, a LOT heavier than they were just a few years ago. If you are one of them, please stop eating fast and processed foods—they're killing you.

Namaste...

Dengue Fever

I know I promised that my next post would be about hiccups in the Helmet Project...

BUT...

This is VERY IMPORTANT!!!

Within the past three weeks, two acquaintances of mine were diagnosed with dengue fever, a nasty disease that is carried by mosquitos and currently a concern across Asia.

If you live in or are visiting Asia, please read the following taken from the monthly newsletter of the U.S. Consulate in Ho Chi Minh City and take the appropriate precautions.

The first acquaintance, a native Vietnamese, was hospitalized for 10 days and came close to death. The second, an American living in Thailand and currently visiting Vietnam, was just diagnosed in the past 24 hours.

Be aware of mosquitos and DO NOT IGNORE a fever or flu-like symptoms!

Be careful and aware...