Brooklyn, New York
I distracted myself this week by doing some cloning. I’ve been a chef de la saveur électronique for lo these last 25 years, generating a great feast of tasty data. With the exception of a stack of HD 5.25 floppies and a couple boxes of un-digitized video tapes, it’s all here in Brooklyn – about 20 terrabytes worth. For those of you who aren’t zombie geeks from hell, think of 20 tbs as 1428 hours of TV shows. If you were to watch TV for 8 hours a day, you would need 178 days to watch my last 25 years.
All this data is scattered over 20 jam packed G-tech hard drives so it’s a bit tricky to sort through. Only the DOG project is cloned and this means that if just one of the drives failed then I’d loose 5% of my virtual body. That’s like having an arm amputated from the elbow or your left ass cheek falling off suddenly. A responsible cybernaut must be backed up. The ultimate solution is to get another 20 tb of hard drives, copy everything and move the clone drives to another location, preferably undisclosed.
A couple of posts back I mentioned buying new hard drives, but I didn’t really have a plan for securing all my data with a complete clone. After some obsessive research I found there is a way to double my storage, speed up my disk access and (theoretically) not spend any money. It’s called the Venus T5 – cool name right? I was thinking I might name my first born that. A 40 tb Venus T5 deployment would cost about $4000, and that’s about what I could sell my 20 tbs of trusty G-techs drives for. Not spending any dough is purely theoretical ’cause I’ve got to use some of the G-tech income to pay bills. Credit cards will bridge the gap – gulp! I should have my entire digital soul cloned by March, thereby mooting the heaven or hell question for me personally. After March, with a secure off site back-up, I can never die. How do you like me now?
Raw power is the feeling you get from having 13 terrabytes on your desktop.
I did mention DOG once in the last three paragraphs, so it’s not like I’ve totally forgotten what this blog is supposed to be about. The best way to visualize DOG’s status is to imagine a low ranch style house with a single bay garage. In that garage shelters a vintage auto, stock front to back with a slightly oxidized original paint job – maybe sea foam green like Ann Loeding’s Pontiac. From the open hood a tangled bouquet of disconnected wires and hoses cast shifting and slightly obscene shadows in the light of a single swinging bare bulb. Got the picture?
A fall back maneuver is in progress. Money supplies have dropped dangerously low, clients are scarce and there’s only so much gear left to sell. No problem! I’ve got festival entries in the works for ‘Almonds’, two this month and more in March and April. I’m upgrading my freelance presence with new reels so as to bust a move on the revenue front. Life is good! I am forging ahead, a smile on my face and a song on my lips. If I ever need a boost, I can just glance over at my hot black Venus T5, oh yeah…
Thanks for your attention, we now return you to real life.