Abby's artwork merchandise

Abby has multiple designs available on Society6.com. If you haven't heard of Society6.com, they sell tshirts/pillows/mugs/phone cases/etc. featuring any artwork you choose. If you select one of Abby's designs she receives a portion of the proceeds. Check out her designs at http://society6.com/misterabigail.

Building a new house

We have talked about it for many years - this might finally be it. If we build we will have to sell our current house so I've started collecting pictures and writing descriptions. Take a look at my work in progress here - http://6110silverbelllane.com

For my 40th birthday, I bought my 40th car!

I bought a 2013 Toyota Tundra Double Cab 4x4 with the Rock Warrior package. For the first time ever I went with black paint. I've bought many cars in my lifetime but I have been slowing down here recently (only 1 per year since 2009 - see Tom's Cars). My new truck is from Mechanicsville Toyota - if you are in the Richmond area I suggest you check them out!

Finally a NAS I like

It has been a long journey but I have finally found a NAS I like - an Apple Time Capsule.

It doesn't have many bells and whistles, but it does have the one thing many others I tried have been lacking - speed! As a bonus it is a wifi router too. I stumbled upon this beauty due to my recent Mac/Apple obsession. I've wanted a Mac for a while but been too cheap. After realizing how much I love my iPad and how well it works I figured it was time to spend the bucks and give it a try. I got a Apple MacBook Air 13 inch. What an incredible machine! I have been very happy with it.

The Apple Time Capsule allows me to backup all of my computers to one local spot. As I already mentioned, the performance/speed is great. It also hasn't run nearly as hot as other NAS boxes. It is small and quiet. I can map a drive to it from Windows PCs. So far so good, if anything changes I will let you know. Merry Christmas!

Carbonite Update

I just realized I never posted the resolution to my Carbonite issue. I recall the service being down for about a week but it has been fine since then. Carbonite is just one piece of my OCD backup plan, so I will be OK. I wish they had handled the communication better, but oh well. The service is cheap enough and it works.

I do also backup to an external drive at home and I have an external drive that I keep offsite too. I update them about once per week (not my entire computer, just pictures/documents/etc.). I really don't want to lose all my family pictures.

Carbonite

I've been using Carbonite for 2 or 3 months. It had been going well, but on Friday November 18 the service became unavailable. A few hours later I got an email from Carbonite explaining the outage. Since then, nothing. I am now a very disappointed customer. It was nice that they notified me of a problem, but now 3 days with no update? What if my computer crashed and I needed a critical file? What if a new file became corrupted before it was backed up? I'm certainly not getting the service I paid for.

Here's the email they sent Friday, 11/18 6:20 PM:
Dear Thomas,

During a routine maintenance check today, Carbonite identified a technical issue that required us to temporarily take a small number of our customers’ backups offline. Please be aware that while we troubleshoot this, you will not be able to access, add new or update existing files to your backup. Your backup is safe and will be accessible again shortly.

We will send you another email to let you know this issue is resolved.

Thanks for your patience.

The Carbonite Team

I have been busier than ever...

As my kids get older and my responsibilities at work grow I have been busier than ever. I did manage to update my personal website a bit today (TomMister.com). I've long dreamed of taking the time to make it a nicer site with more content but I just have not made the time to do it. Maybe next year when I get to build my Jeep Wrangler a bit more I will document my work on my website.

As the holidays approach, please click through this link for any purchase you are making at Amazon:
Amazon.com