Photo Storage and the Zen of Carpet Purchasing

Photo Storage Solved

 

Well, I think I finally solved all my photo storing issues. I now have two 200 gig hard drives in two different computers. I copied all my photos and made all the directory names consistent. I also put all my documents and code on the new hard disks too. At 4:30 AM tonight it will copy all the new files from one hard drive to the other. I was able to write a simple batch file that will copy the files with the xcopy command. I used the following command:

xcopy d:\ \\Beige\datadrive /C /D /E /Y

This will copy all the files from one computer to the other with: continuing on errors (/c), only copying new or changed files (/d), recursing subdirectories (/e),  and automatically overwriting files (/y). I put the batch file in the Windows scheduled tasks. One interesting thing to note: You have to check the "only run when logged in" check box on the scheduler. Otherwise it doesn't work on XP when you don't use a password to log in. It just silently fails when you don't check the box.

 

I made it write the output of the copy command to a file so I can look and see if it worked. That way I can tell if it's actually copying the changed files. So the whole batch files is:

date /t >> CopyDataDriveResults.txt
xcopy d:\ \\Beige\datadrive /C /D /E /Y >> CopyDataDriveResults.txt

The Zen of Carpet Purchasing

 

I went to Home Depot to purchase carpet for Marny's house. We torn out the carpet last weekend because of a not-so-pleasant septic tank issue. Taking my Dad's advice we looked into why it was backing up before we replaced the carpet. They ran a camera down the hole and found that the pipes were misaligned. They didn't think that it was going to backup again before they fix it, so it's ok to replace the carpet.

 

The best thing I did was get the Home Depot 1-2-3 of Flooring. The book told me that it way too hard to install the carpet myself. That was kinda my hunch. You need a few special tools and seeming the carpet sounds like you aren't gonna get it right on the first try. Home Depot will install the carpet for a reasonable price. Purchasing carpet at Home Depot was a fascinating experience. This nice man helped us fill out the paperwork and schedule a measuring appointment. It took him about 15 minutes to fill out the one page form and type it into the computer. Then he had to call the automated Home Depot appointment scheduling place on his phone. After he finished with that we realize that we put our home address on the form and not Marny's home address. D'oh! Chris was with us and he said, "I accidentally sent flowers to myself once. I wondered why they wanted me to enter my address on the form twice..." He said he ending up taking a picture of them for Julie. Ha. Anyway, so after screwing up the form and the appointment, the nice man had to start over from scratch. Yea. 15 more minutes waiting.

 

Lindsey apologized for the long wait to the Indian lady behind up who was waiting very patiently. She said, "It's ok. This is Home Depot. Waiting is what you do here.  I order a kitchen counter top once from Home Depot. We had to come in three days in a row and wait three hours each time." I started to feel bad for her but then I figured that she had read the same Zen book that I'm reading. She wasn't mad at us or at the nice man because were are all together the same being and it's silly to get mad at yourself. I think I like it when other people Zen at me. When we got up to leave, she said to the nice man, "I just have a simple question." Ok, now I feel bad for making her wait.

 

The appointment is Tuesday. Then about three days after that they will come back and install the carpet. It will be nice to have this all done.