thoughts.bjsintay.com

By now you are well aware that daylight savings time (DST) was adjusted by the 2005 energy bill put forth by the US Congress.    If you’re not aware, you may need to check your clocks.  This act mandated a change in the usual DST dates in 2007 in order to “save energy” by utilizing daylight.  This came about from a study that showed DST reduced American consumption of oil by about 100,000 barrels daily.  Congress decided that (in 3 paragraphs worth of explanation) they would help the world become a better place to live by capitalizing on these “savings.”

Let me just say, congressmen and women - DUMB MOVE.

I applaud the thought that doing something this simple could save oil and help the environment.  Yes, indeed, this all looked good on paper.  Apparently, no one remembered that this would also make the morning darker, requiring people to simply replace the amount of time spent with the lights on at night with more lights on in the morning.  Forget the fact that it is estimated this change cost American industry $2 billion to fix nearly every computer system out there.  It seems our friends in congress forgot about our old friend Y2K.

So thank you, thank you for handing a 2 billion dollar expense to our high-tech industry which will in turn be handed down to consumers like me.  Thank you for creating a myriad of headaches among the IT workforce which probably consumed more than 100,000 barrels of fuel per day just keeping the lights/computers on to think about this problem.  Thank you for forcing me read countless emails about how this or that upgrade needs to be done to fix the DST change issue.  Thank you for forcing me to check all of my devices, computers, and calendar appointments for proper rollovers.  Most of all, thank you for giving these two PhD. students in economics something to write a thesis on which proves that all you did was tick a lot of people off:

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/print?id=2938715

Few programs are as near and dear to my heart as LeechFTP.  The sad part is that this graceful creature hasn’t been touched by developers in years.  In fact, I first received LeechFTP from a coworker at NCSU about 5 years ago.  The developer, Jan Debis, hasn’t touched it since.  The program was folded into a “newer” program which I absolutely hate and resembles nothing of the original.  Debis’s site for LeechFTP has been shut down in the past year marking a final death for the program.  The .EXE file is still available at download.com.  With 1.2 million downloads and a 4.5 star rating (215 votes), you’d think Debis would notice that this program really caught on.

The basic layout has an echoing terminal at the top to visualize FTP chatter.  Below is a 3-pane panel with operations, local files, and remote files panes.  The operations pane contains a file upload queue that you can put to “sleep”.  My favorite tab in this pane is the threads tab which shows you exactly what threads are running, what files they are transferring, their speed, estimated time each, and more.  You can limit the number of connections here easily.  There are also other tabs, but the only one I find useful is the failure tab which allows you to re-queue any problematic file transfers.  LeechFTP also has a system to store your favorite FTP connections in folders.  You can easily access or edit your connections through this brilliant system.

One of the saddest days of my life will be the day that LeechFTP no longer runs on my computer.  I have not tested this program on Vista, nor have I heard anyone talk about it.  I am hoping it will survive this OS upgrade.  It was originally designed in the Windows 98 OS, but XP picked it up just fine (minus the old GUI still adorning the app).  I would almost pay thousands for the code to LeechFTP so I could maintain this brilliant program myself throughout the decades.  I tried to work on my own FTP program, but this proved to be very time consuming.  It has never reached the full capacity that LeechFTP has.

Jan Debis, please, if you are out there anywhere, please consider coming back to our old friend LeechFTP.  Don’t force us to use other programs like CuteFTP or FileZilla in the future.  You made the FTP process so easy and quick.

I will saver my final years with this program like a fine wine.

Ever wade through thousands of files and folders trying to figure out what you’ve backed up and what needs to be updated in your backups?  Do you manage multiple desktops, laptops, and other portable devices but want one backup location?

My search for backup utilities a few years ago turned up Microsoft’s SyncToy, available for free download from the Microsoft website.  SyncToy is a very simple utility that manages a “left” and “right” folder where you can set the rules about what should be copied or mirrored to between left and right.  I first was interested in this sort of utility after receiving a laptop computer from Wake Forest University’s Medical School.  It became an integral part of my coursework and research, so backing up that data was crucial to me.

SyncToy allows me to open up my laptop at home, literally click one button, then have the info on my laptop backed up through the wireless network to the RAID 1 (mirroring) array on my home office desktop computer.  As a second line of defense for all of my data, I make quarterly SyncToy-managed backups of the RAID array to an external drive.  SyncToy makes it all happen.

This program is able to determine what files should be updated or removed on the backup drive, then makes all changes automatically.  The folder pair can either synchronize, echo, subscribe, contribute, or combine depending on your preferences.  It also allows folders to be network paths (such as \\Machine\Folder).

After using SyncToy for the past few years, I would say that I am very happy with this tool.  It is very easy to use, doesn’t suffer from feature creep, and best of all, it’s free.  What do you use for backups/synchronization?

SyncToy Page at Microsoft.com