I’m Not a Slacker

I have been having a hell of a time backing up my file server. I’m running NT4 server just because I installed it about 9 years ago and it’s always been rock solid (that’s coming from a linux fan!) I don’t have any complaints about the performance but the hardware is lacking. My 120GB drive is full and the BIOS can’t handle any bigger, that and other things like no USB support is leaving me to pursue other options. I want to run at least RAID-1 which I think I can do with a P3 450 box I got for free and using linux with samba. I want to get a SATA RAID card and two 200GB drives and mirror them so there is less chance to lose something important, since everything we have is stored in that one location.

Anyways, I’ve been trying to back up my stuff and so far it has taken about a week and I still haven’t got anywhere. I bought a 250GB drive, split it into a 200GB as NTFS and the rest as ext3 for the webserver backup and went about copying the files. I kept getting errors over the network so I took the drive out of the USB housing and tried to put it into the fileserver but the hardware is so old it couldn’t see the full 200GB drive. I then put it into a newer computer and tried pushing the files into it and still got errors. My last resort is to take the drive out of the server and put it into the newer computer and Ghost it, so far it seems to be working but it is so very slow!

The last option worked but it took 29! Hours! to copy! If I have to do that again I am going to take the drive out of the USB housing and connect it direct. I still haven’t mustered up the desire to start on the webserver backup yet.

It’s football playoff season and normally I don’t really care, but last night I asked the wife if I could get out of the house and go to the neighborhood bar to cheer on a team.
I was happy to be out talking to random guys about random stuff. I actually miss random conversation since I don’t get it that much and I’m usually talking about football to a 2 1/2 year old who doesn’t understand why The Blues aren’t playing.

I’m not sure what to do, I need to consolidate computers soon and I don’t know if I want to give up my 1700AMD linux box or my dual 450 OSX, or the 733 OSX machine. There is a reason I have these computers doing their jobs but I don’t know If I can give up linux on the desktop.

After thinking about it for a few days I think I will use the dual 450 mac as my main desktop. The 733 is doing fine as a jukebox, while my current day to day machine, the 1700AMD linux box, has more of a chance to be productive doing something else.

I am with my kid all day every day and the few times my wife gets to go out with us I let her be a mom as I stay back and let her enjoy this time with her child. Sometimes this bothers me, no, not the fact my wife enjoys being a mother, but what I am imagining other people thinking. I know that this problem is all in my head and usually I ignore it but it does make me think about our role-reversal situation. Let’s say that our family is at the mall and the wife is holding his hand or pushing the stroller and I’m relaxed walking beside them enjoying my mini-vacation. I feel that everyone is looking at me thinking what a useless father, he doesn’t seem to care one bit about his child, as usual the woman is doing all the child care and he’s just coasting along. I know that I care and that I am always doing that work but when I’m out with the wife and child it is the only time I fell weird about being a stay at home dad.
It might be because men tend to define themselves with their jobs, (I’m a stockbroker, mechanic, burger flipper, etc…) and since my job is being the primary caregiver, that identity gets lost while we are out as a family.
I know it is silly but I was wondering if anyone else feels like that when they are all out together?

I debated on whether I should post this man’s story since he did have a delimma. Does he not pick out any porn today, does he bring the kid inside the porn shop with him, or does he leave the 3 year old locked in the van while he browses the isles for 40 minutes?