Monday, December 8, 2008

on data redundancy and the pitfalls of digital nomadism.

ok lets just say for some reason you pay attention to my quasi tumultuous life and you heard my hard drive crashed this morning. i figure i may as well tell you what the deal is as part of my own coming to terms with what the fuck just happened...

i consider myself something of a digital nomad. i pride myself on having few enough material possesions to completely move between apts in 3 hours tops. i have a messenger bag i affectionately refer to as "my nomad bag" which contains a redundant set of toiletries, a phone charger, and headphones. when i travel, i throw some clothes in and go. which is often.

like to the point where people honestly dont know that i live in richmond because my fractured existence straddles the east coast and sometimes la and phoenix. first question people ask these days is "what city you in?". busses and trains are typically the closest i get to being alone and calmly reflecting on what the hell is going on in life, because if im not there, im usually surrounded by people i love or in the bathroom. or surrounded by people i love in the bathroom. i own clothes, toiletries, books, and some essential furniture items. besides that the rest of my existence is either social or digital.

the digital just took a serious hit. i backup (image) my computer occasionally to another hard drive id say a couple times a year. i was on the butt end of my (women's moon) cycle. after finals, which is thursday, i was due for an imaging. my last backup was 8/24. anything since then is gone, which is basically this past semester. im torn...

on the one hand, this is what i have been imaging and reimaging and backing up for since about 5 yrs ago. i was partially ready. one of my drives in my raid 0 array died at around 12pm today and im back blogging at around 1pm. cool.

on the other had, i got screwed on the butt end of my cycle and lost about 4 pretty crucial months of crazy pictures, sentimental/hilarious texts, music downloads, job apps, and school work. im gonna go ahead and say the texts make me saddest.

sooooo that totally took away of some prime hours of studying for my final tonight at 7. i gotta get goin and study... finals and work galore til thurs night. and now ive got some digital messes to clean up after all that, including fixing my blog. dont change your links! ill fix it. just for now... http://smashkan.com/blog.html. that works.

now that i think about it, ive got some physical messes to clean up too... not least of which is emerging from a club in nyc inexplicably covered in blood. i thought it was the funniest thing in the world to tell each of my friends a completely different story (jason sonnenschein style) so im pretty sure they still dont know what the hell happened. lets just say it involved climbing through a window from the rooftop.

but learn your lessons from me! data reduncy like crazy. and digital nomadism is great, but its got some pitfalls. buyer beware! back it up like a uhaul truck and always remember the most improtant rule of all... dont die!

speaking of geospatial mobility, heres maybe the coolest thing ive discovered in awhile, thanks to laurel pochucha. im pretty sure the coolest one is lykke li by the sf civic center. my sister used to live in a building overlooking that same spot from where me and andre decided it would be fun to target busses with globs of ice cream from 40 floors up. soft enough to avoid serious damage, but still great for point and aim fun and games. eek... definetly gettin nostalgic about hanging there with julia just like 4 months ago... wow i just realized i want some ice cream. and im nostalgic again.

anyway... blogotheque.net. mobile concerts. pretty awesome. and nomadic.

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