My office setup includes two Macintosh computers, a Mac Pro and a MacBook Pro. I have a 500 GB FireWire drive attached to the Mac Pro that I use for TimeMachine backups. Through the power of a DNS entry for the Mac Pro, and this article on Network Time Machine backups to another Mac, I am able to backup the MacBook Pro, wirelessly, to the TimeMachine drive on the Mac Pro.
The only problem with this arrangement is that the MacBook Pro attempts to back itself up regardless of my location. When I’m at home at it is connected to our home network it can locate my work computer (via the DNS entry) and it tries to use our less-than-significant upload bandwidth to backup once an hour. The simple solution is to turn TimeMachine off when I am at home. Of course that means remembering to turn it back on again the next day I’m at work. On occasion the simple solution has meant the MacBook Pros backups are a week or more behind.
A better solution would be a script or automated action that would turn TimeMachine on or off. Since I work relatively stable hours a cron job coupled with code to activate or deactivate TimeMachine would suffice.
You can turn TimeMachine on or off via Terminal using this defaults command:
defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine AutoBackup -boolean [YES|NO]#!/bin/bash
defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine AutoBackup -boolean YES#!/bin/bash
defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine AutoBackup -boolean NOHere’s my completed crontab:
# minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week what
# activate TimeMachine zero minutes past 8 am M-F
0 8 * * 1-5 ~/bin/timeMachineon.sh
# deactivate TimeMachine zero minutes past 5 pm (17) M-F
0 17 * * 1-5 ~/bin/timeMachineoff.shUpdate 1: The evening cron job fails to run when the laptop is closed, i.e., sleeping, when 5 pm rolls around. Cron is a useful tool but it has to be awake to run. I’ve changed the evening cron time to 4 pm, a time I am almost always still at work. I am considering adding a second evening crontab entry, say for 7 or 8 pm in case the 4 o’clock instance is missed for some reason. A better solution would be a network aware triggering of the scripts, running the on script only when the work network is detected, and the off script for all other networks.
Update 2: Here’s the latest solution, based on Josh’s comments.
I created a script called login-hook.sh, which is the target of:
sudo defaults write com.apple.loginwindow LoginHook ~/bin/login-hook.sh#!/bin/bash
# login-hook.sh
if [ "$(ps ax | grep tm-control.sh | grep -vc grep)" -lt 1 ]; then
sudo -u mhn /Users/mhn/bin/tm-control.sh &
fi#!/bin/bash
# tm-control.sh
while [ 1 ]; do
python ~/bin/TM_off_on.py
sleep 1800
done
In German, Ausfahrt freihalten! means “no parking here!” You see these little signs on garage doors and buildings to warn people from blocking a driveway.
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Since moving to Manhattan in January our garage has been too full of boxes to hold a car. Gradually over the seven and a half months we’ve lived here, boxes have been emptied or repacked and combined to take less space. All, or nearly all, of our books are now inside; and we’ve given away some things. The largest objects left in the garage were a kitchen table, a dining room table, and a table made from a door and two metal filing cabinets. One night this week it occurred to me that with some rearranging I could use the door table, and the kitchen table as shelves, and absorb their size functionally. Yesterday morning I put my idea to the test and it worked.
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So, we now need a Ausfahrt freihalten! sign on our garage door, as the car is now safely tucked inside.
In addition to great customer service, and fantastically fast shipping, Zappos, it seems, has a sense of humor.
I’ve been wearing my new Timberland shoes indoors only since they are a little tighter than I’d like, and I want to be able to exchange them for the next size larger if necessary. Consequently I swap them with my old shoes at the start and end of each day, and before and after lunch. Toward that end I twittered this yesterday afternoon:
In any relationship there are dates of significance. Today, August 12, is one such date for Sibylle and I. Three years ago today we met in person for the first time. We had been introduced to each other on eHarmony nineteen days earlier and had already traded well over a hundred emails.
Six months ago today we were married in a quiet, private ceremony.
Both of us are introverts and therefore found the idea of a date terrifying. We had talked about just being in the same place at the same time. Perhaps a bookstore or coffee shop. We could sit together or apart, read or talk or just be together quietly. As it happened our first meeting was in a concourse at the Kansas City International Airport. We sat together and walked. We were quiet, and we talked. We held hands and she gently rested her head on my shoulder.
We have been together ever since.
Happy anniversary, Sibylle, I love you.
Yesterday afternoon, about 1:30 Central time, I ordered a pair of shoes from Zappos.com. The are famous for their customer service, and free shipping plus free returns. Last night I got an email from them stating that my order, while made with the free shipping option, was being bumped up to a faster shipping option.
Today, while at home for lunch, the UPS man appeared, banged on the door twice and left. Sitting on the porch was a Zappos box.
My new shoes were delivered in less than 24 hours, closer to 22 hours actually. Amazing.
Lets hope that this kind of service continues under the new Amazon management, and that some of this kind of shipping goodness spreads from Zappos to Amazon.
Most of the day Sunday Sibylle and I searched for the errant Jimmy title in vain. In order to use the Jimmy for the CARS program we need to show proof of insurance for the past 12 months, produce registration for the past two years (current plus previous is fine), and have a free and clear title. The first two were easy, but finding the title after several moves was impossible.
Living only an hour’s drive from the state capital we could have driven over there Monday to get a duplicate title issued, however, in a recurring clerical error the registration shows an out-of-date lien on the vehicle. The bank in question is an hour’s drive in the opposite direction from Topeka. Jumping through the bureaucratic hoops necessary to contact the bank, travel there to get a lien release, and then travel to Topeka to wait in line for a title was possible, but we weren’t sure it was worth it.
The CARS program stipulates that the dealer give you an estimate of the cars salvage or scrap value, and that you get that money in addition to the CARS allowance. Our dealer said their arrangement with the salvage yard included no exchange of money. In fact, the way it was described to us, the dealer would end up paying a fee to have the car transported to the yard and destroyed. It bothered both of us that no effort to salvage anything from the Jimmy was being made. While it qualifies for the CARS program, it is in no way a bad car. Imagine a elderly organ donor whose organs aren’t harvested simply because there’s too much paperwork. Simply destroying the Jimmy didn’t sit well with us. So we decided to get the new car with just the Lexus in trade. We’ll hang on to the Jimmy, for now, as a utility second car.
After reaching the decision to not participate in the CARS program we visited the dealer to see if the trade-in allowance for the Lexus would still be good. It was, and, after a hour or so of waiting for financing paperwork to be completed, we drove off the lot in our new 2010 Honda Insight EX.
We are both thrilled with the Insight. I’m sure our impressions will continue to evolve and deepen over time but here are some initial thoughts and reactions.
Today I spent roughly six hours opening every box in the garage and sifting through its contents. Along the way I found several items of interest to both Sibylle and I, and managed to repack several half empty larger boxes into smaller ones. However, I did not find the missing car title we need.
Two years ago in July we were preparing to vacation in Germany and I need a passport. We spent hours and hours searching through boxes in my storage lockers trying in vain to find it. One night, just after arriving at the storage facility, I managed to shut my right forefinger in the passenger door of the Jimmy, which was locked. The nail on that finger has grown back, although it is (and probably always will be) partially detached. In the end I reported my passport stolen (as I had been robbed the previous year) and was issued a new one in time for our trip.
Today, while searching one of the boxes I found my missing passports. My original one, filled with franks from the Caribbean, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy, and its replacement - the one I had reported stolen.
Both of these experiences, the passport search two years ago, and the title search this weekend, raise a question in my mind - are we storing or hanging on to too much? We have books and pictures, and children’s art work and tools and electronics and more pictures and so on, all in boxes in the garage. Before moving from Illinois to Kansas I donated lots of old sporting equipment (skis, golf clubs, et cetera) as well as nearly 1,000 pounds of books. I’ve always sort of regretted donating those books. While we still don’t have room to properly display all the books we have, I would like to have all my books.
Having lots of memories stored away feels good, for the most part. It’s only when there is something in storage that I want or need and can’t find that I begin to question the value of keeping all of this stuff. It is valuable - to me and to Sibylle - and we are going to keep it. I just wish I had the determination to go through it all and repack it in an organized fashion, and then label each box or container appropriately.
Tomorrow we’ll visit the county registrar’s office to see about getting a replacement title for the Jimmy. Hopefully there aren’t too many hoops to jump through, and ideally we can go to the state capital (only an hour away) and pick up the new one in a day or two at the most.
As I sat down this evening to start a posting about the CARS program, I discovered that the last posting I made was the 1600th on zanshin.net. I no longer have a word count on the site, so I’ve lost track of the words I’ve written here, but I believe it was well north of 300,000 a couple of years ago.
If you had told me ten years ago that the little web site I played around with would become a place for me to write about my greatest triumphs, and deepest sorrows, I would not have believed you. It has been an amazing ten years since I started blogging here; I can hardly wait to see what the next ten years, and beyond, holds.
After reading about it this week, Sibylle researched the Car Allowance Rebate System, or CARS program that the US government is sponsoring. In a nutshell: if your car qualifies you can get up to $4,500 when trading it in for a new car that gets better gas milage.
Her research showed that the 1998 GMC Jimmy she owns qualifies. Its combined milage is within the range allowed, she has owned it for more than a year and it has been insured and registered for at least a year prior to today. Both of us would like to have a vehicle that gets at least 30 MPG, as we feel it is criminal in 2009 to buy a new car that gets poorer overall milage than that. Continuing with some online research we started making a list of cars that meet our requirements. The Toyota Prius, Honda Fit, Ford Escape Hybrid, and the Honda Insight were all on the list.
Friday evening we visited a couple of lots here in town, after hours, and surveyed the available vehicles. Priuses weren’t in evidence at the Toyota dealer, nor could we find an Escape hybrid. The Honda dealer had several Fits on the lot, and several Insights as well.
As we had cleaned out the Jimmy and washed it earlier in the week, we took this morning to empty, clean and wax the Lexus. The Kelly Blue Book value for the Lexus was between $6,000 and $7,200. The car has a few dings here and there, and the automatic washer sensor no longer works. (It also no longer sticks to the windshield like its supposed to, either.) On our way out of the house we agreed that we’d take $6000 for the Lexus, but no less.
At the Honda dealer we drove the Fit. It’s a cute little car that doesn’t feel little on the inside. It is rated to get a combined city/highway 30 miles per gallon. I think both of us were surprised at how nice a car it was, especially for a sticker price of about $17,000. After spending 15 minutes or so driving it, we swapped to a 2010 Insight EX. Several months ago I had seen a very caustic and derogatory review of the Insight, but we found nothing to dislike about except maybe the rear visibility in the inside mirror. After driving it for 15 minutes or so we were sold. That the Insight gets a combined 40 MPG rating only made it all the better.
Now all we had to do was find out what the dealer would offer us for the Lexus. Thanks to our research on the CARS site we knew that getting a car with a combined rating more than 10 MPG higher than the CARS trade-in, we’d qualify for the highest allowance of $4,500. After a test drive and some looking at the Lexus the salesman came back and offered us $6,500 for it. Well above our desired $6,000 valuation.
In order to qualify the Jimmy for the CARS allowance we are required to show proof of insurance for the past 12 months, and proof of registration for the past two years. In our case, since we just registered the car in July we have the July 2009-2010 registration, and the just expired July 2008-2009 registration. We also have to produce the title to the vehicle. Sibylle moved from Manhattan to Olathe in June 2007, and we moved from there back to Manhattan in January. Some of Sibylle’s belongings actually moved from Manhattan to our apartment in Overland Park for a few months before settling in the Olathe townhouse. The title is in one of the boxes we moved two or three times in the past two years.
After dinner this evening we stated sifting through those boxes and papers we have in our office, and closets in the house. The high temperature this afternoon was about 102º, so spending any time at all in the garage looking through boxes would have been miserable. Our indoor search didn’t turn up the title, so in the morning we’ll be in the garage hoping to find “the” box sooner rather than later.
Monday morning at 9:00 we’ll hand in all the paperwork to the Honda dealer, who will then submit it to the CARS people. The CARS program, as you may have read, has been wildly popular, and there has been a huge backlog of requests. The dealer wants to wait until we get approval from CARS before completing the paperwork on our new car. He assured us that he had been assured the backlog would be resolved this week and the new submissions should be approved in a day or two.
Hopefully tomorrow will be a short day of searching, and hopefully the backlog of requests is quickly handled by the CARS people.
According to last.fm my favorite musical artists are, in order: