[Dave Rice]

I have brief flirtations with other backup applications, but EaseUs ToDo is my go to these days. The free version will do 95% of what most people want and the emergency USB stick whilst based on WinPE gets the drive letters “correct”.

Rather than hit or miss cloning and partition size mis-matches, I use the system backup and restore when replacing drives. There are plenty of cloning options though and it can deal with MBR disk to GPT disk or GPT disk to MBR disk.

Setting up scheduled incremental backups is easy and you can set a limit on the number retained. Create the emergency USB after you’ve setup your backups and it will know all about them and any NAS devices you’ve set up. Some words of warning, the emergency USB only supports wired connections to NAS not wireless. If using the system backup / restore the new drive must be initialised before. I use an EaseUs Partition Manager USB stick to do that.

[Dave Rice]

I had forgotten that!

[Dave Rice]

And this is why sucking up to the USA is such a dodgy thing to do, the current incumbent in the top seat notwithstanding. He’s just a lot more open about the vacillation and vacillates in a shorter time frame.

It’s always about American First and the politicians here and there use any excuse to get what they want now and sort it out later. Will the 5 Eyes now withdraw their objections? Will the Hawks in the Tory party do the same? No, it will quietly be dropped when it isn’t the main focus of public opinion and so won’t be job threatening for anyone. Not that it is that much anyway.

For them, what about those who have already lost money or jobs? Still we can always vote the offending politicians out at the next opportunity can’t we? There’s as much chance as voting out Xi Jinping, he’s as much beholding to his political party as BoJo is.

[Dave Rice]

It’s not that old, 3 years?, but interrupting the boot sequence can be tricky. It is definitely a modern UEFI not a BIOS. It’s one of the Intel Quad SoC chips.

I’m not sure how it’s got into the state that John’s has but I’d reset it with the jumper on the motherboard. It’s probably the CMS legacy settings screwed up – easy to do that.

[Dave Rice]

That explains why I’ll be flying into Schönefeld Airport. In the back of my mind I knew there was some reason I shouldn’t be.

I went to IFSEC at the London Excel a few weeks ago. I should have been going on Crossrail from Reading but it was Paddington and the old hot and sweaty Bakerloo and 2 changes. Doesn’t look like I’ll be using it next year either.

Now they’re talking about Crossrail 2! What about spending some money elsewhere? We had electrification cancelled.

[Dave Rice]

These always do my head in. I would agree with ED, don’t shrink it – find another way to organise the data you want to put on the new D:  You could make use of the Public User folders as they can be seen by every other user.

However, looking at the box above I believe you will end up with a 40GB C: so reverse the numbers. If you go ahead with this you are going to have to carefully watch the usage of C: and do regular Disk Clean Ups including the System Files option.

When mucking about with partitions I like to use tools like EaseUs Partition Manager as it doesn’t apply your changes until you tell it to. What it shows is the affect the change(s) will have on your disks so you can easily “undo” them as they haven’t actually happened. When the disks look like what you want, then you click Apply Changes. You can mock up a whole chain of events, it’s very useful.

It’s a while since I used it, but IIRC G-Parted on a Linux Live stick does the same mock up then apply. They both do a hell of a lot more than the MS tools and with a good GUI.

[Dave Rice]

I have friends holidaying in the south of France – 42 yesterday. Scorchio.

[Dave Rice]

Usual mouthing off crap at the G20. Theresa May gave him a stern talking to!

She’s planning to do the same to all the other naughty men there as well, but not Trump.

[Dave Rice]

Can’t remember the last Boeing I was on, mind you I only do short haul and not many of them a year. 4 x EasyJet coming up and they’re all Airbus.

[Dave Rice]

So even with an American pilot then?

I hope certain politicians will be made to eat their words, but that never happens.

[Dave Rice]

You just uninstall the old version first. I always backup the Outlook mail file too.

[Dave Rice]

Not had an issue with Draytek’s, Synology’s or PiVPN (OpenVPN server) speeds. They are as fast as the connection allows and the protocol doesn’t seem to make a difference.

However  I tried using the VPN client of the Huawei 4G router to link two sites (back to a Draytek) and it was dire.For remote access I use a PiVPN and the customers use Windows built in VPN client to access their HQ. Both work at full speed so it must be the Huawei itself. I suspect the CPU just isn’t up to it.

Sounds like your office is controlling bandwidth. It’d certainly be a priority if I was their infrastructure guy to stop the need for people doing what you’re doing. I have one customer accessing big CAD files through his Draytek / FTTC setup and he’s happy.

[Dave Rice]

The TrueCaller app is Swedish, TrueCall box is British.

I’ve noticed that I now get a warning of a “possible spam caller” on my phone as part of Android. It’s not very accurate though! Had a legitimate call (probably from a call centre) that was warned and then a dialler that wasn’t. I really don’t get much crap on my mobile though, never have.

The landline was a different matter, it was getting ridiculous.

[Dave Rice]

I’m not sure I use any new features of Word since Office 3.

If you think about it Word Processors were designed to take over from the typewriter so had to have all the things typists really needed since their version 1. Since then it’s been about making them be more like Desktop Publishing apps IMO.

I’m old enough to remember the typing pool. Dictate your letter into a phone system and a day or so later it would appear, a darn sight better than the crap I’d dictated ?

[Dave Rice]

Luckily none of my customers do any email marketing. Most of them (now) have Synology NAS and Draytek routers so getting robust security is easier and everything gets encrypted. HTTPS certificates are a doodle from both manufacturers tie ins with Let’s Encrypt.

All PCs and laptops are encrypted and they are discouraged from using USB sticks, which they don’t have much need to now they have a VPN to the office. I usually create a single encrypted one for emergencies though.

The Synology’s allow you to create a secure “portal” for exchange of documents with customers so they don’t need to email out anything potentially sensitive. That takes the major cause of breaches out at a stroke. On top of that absolutely everything is logged by default. All backups are encrypted and stored in Synology’s Frankfurt data centre.

[Dave Rice]

If it’s activated it’s activated for all time. I’ve had this situation on E-Bay loads of times, not had an issue yet in the 18 months or so I’ve buying this way. Same with W10 Pro for a clean install.

However I steer clear of 365.

[Dave Rice]

The problem with cold calls is a lot are from outside of the country. “Disposable” phone numbers are two-a-penny which makes blocking them hard.

I would recommend my solution, the TrueCall box, it really does work.

[Dave Rice]

Boots look after my repeats and order them in due time, it’s just if I need anything sooner I ask for them.

[Dave Rice]

I’ve always been suspicious about the word “cluster”. In the Folding days I found a cluster wasn’t what people thought i.e. the same job being processed by X number of units, it was the orchestration of multiple jobs to multiple units. Not much different to just having X autonomous units apart from the Geek kudos and wasting a unit to orchestrate the others.

It was a “Folding Farm” if you wanted to put a label on it, but then people thought that also meant parallel processing was taking place. I’d try and explain that in terms of pigs and pigsty’s.  It’s not a giant pigsty made up of many bolted together to produce a single giant pig ? or pop out lots of smaller pigs in the same time ?

It’s actually lots of pigsty’s producing pigs in their own sweet time. The farmer can’t make them faster (or slower) and the guy from the Ministry decides which Sow is getting preggers from which Hog anyway.

No analogy works, but that was a favourite. But who cares as long as the same amount of bacon ends up in my sandwich?

This seems much the same with the heavy lifting not even involved. Very messy wiring and they’re not even using the GBIC on the Netgear switch! Port 48 is being used for the uplink so not even a stack of switches. Pah! ?

[Dave Rice]

Try this https://www.convertunits.com/dates/daysfromnow/56

EDIT I’ve signed up for Patient Access with my GP. From there I can see my repeat prescriptions and loads of other things. 

If I run out before the next due date (often happens with the pain killers) clicking Add to Request sends an email to the doctor. They OK it and an electronic prescription is sent to Boots who text me to say it’s ready.

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