Blogging from Boston whilst backing up

Arrived in Boston: The cold and snow isn't too serious, just a bit of crunching ice underfoot and a bite to the air waiting for the taxi.  The Courtyard clearly saves money by turning the heat down at night, though: I was huddled in a pile of covers all night. Fodder for TripAdvisor (interestingly, though, the only time I ever get a "This Review was Not Helpful" rating is when I say something negative about a place.)  Boston is completely obsessed with last night's win of the Patriots over the Chargers; I'd forgotten how consuming (American) football gets for people this time of year.

I've been increasingly worried about losing data on my computer, pictures, music, data, documents.  I use SyncBack to backup to a Passport drive weekly, but it feels like that can easily get lost or broken.  I've also been intrigued by Microsoft's SkyDrive, where you upload to a secure server and have access to the data from anywhere.  Both Windows Live and my company limit storage to a few gigs, though, so it seemed like I needed a better solution.  I settled on MozyHome based on some discussion at Mike Tech's forum. It's $5 per month for unlimited storage, and has a good utility for synchronizing and transferring files.  But it is s...l...o...w (I think this holds for all online solutions).  It reminds me of the 300 baud modem days of transferring files to BBS systems.  I think it will likely take a couple of weeks to transfer 75 GB of files to the server.  Still, I'll have a good backup (although, if it takes weeks to get things back...)

Anyway, on to a few hours work in the quiet over a bad cup of room coffee, sitting on a phone book (non-adjustable work chair a foot too short for the desk: note to TripAdvisor), then out to the frozen streets of Boston.