Mortaine’s Blog

My Adesso keyboard is an ergonomic split-keys keyboard with a trackpad in the middle of the board.

I like it, and find it usable, but it’s the only splitty ergo keyboard with a trackpad in the middle of the board available, so I’m a bit locked in for keyboards to like.

As of today, it’s dead. The right shift key gets interpreted as a capital “D.” The left shift key is read as “find.” I am now on the prowl for a replacement keyboard.

There is a spare one in my storage locker in Scotts Valley.

Where John was, less than a week ago.

And didn’t go into the storage locker to get my keyboard (I did ask him to before he left, but he never made it there).

*cries*

In unrelated news: We are in Connecticut this week for a wedding. Arrived yesterday. We’re staying in the smallest campground ever– it’s 13 sites in a small parking lot. But it’s fine, and inexpensive for the location.

There’s a wildfire burning in the Santa Cruz Mountains. It is not near our (soon to be former, I hope) house. It is, however, close to my mother-in-law’s home. John is checking in with the sisters to make sure she’s fine. It’s 5 miles away from her. Last time it got that close, we thought about evacuating her, but it turned out to be unnecessary.

I’m now a writer over at Suite101.com as of yesterday.

And about 2 weeks ago I quietly launched/started Vagabond Writer, to showcase my travel and freelance writing efforts. Check it out, let me know what you think!

As long-time readers of this blog know, I have a troubled relationship with my Mac, the way some people have a troubled teenager. I love it deeply and tenderly, but sometimes it misbehaves and I just don’t know what to do with it.

The most recent frustration had to do with my iPod. You see, some time ago, I restored my iPod because I kept having this problem where it would flash the “Do not disconnect” screen, but wouldn’t actually sync. I kept having to do a soft reset to get it to start back up again. It usually synced fine the first time, but the second time would require the reset.

I’d like to state right here and now that this blog post does not talk about how to fix that problem. And, in fact, restoring the iPod did not fix the problem. The problem is a minor annoyance and doubtless wears out my iPod faster than normal use. The geniuses at the Apple Genius Bar wanted to fix that problem when I brought in my laptop and described a completely different issue, which is why I even bothered trying to fix it in the first place.

Moving right along, then. After I restored the iPod, I had problems synching it. Most things worked all right, including all my purchased music. But my photos wouldn’t sync. The error I got was that I did not have sufficient permissions to sync. What? I’m the administrator– if i don’t have permission, prompt me for my password, for crying out loud!

Anyway, I dug around. This time, the discussion group over at Apple’s Support website was no help. I saw a lot of iTunes problems and syncing problems, and I saw a couple of people who had the same problem, but no solution for it. Some of the indicators showed that it was related to my iPhoto Library being stored on an external hard drive.

In an unrelated forum post over on the macosx.com forums (having to do with a similar error in iPhoto), I found some advice that people reported as working for a permissions problem in iPhoto. I decided to give it a try in fixing the similar iTunes/iPod permissions problem.

1. Go to the iPhoto Library on the external hard drive and select File->Get Info. Wait a minute and see how much hard drive space that folder requires.
2. Clear off enough room on the local hard drive so that you can move the entire folder from the external drive to your internal startup drive.
3. Drag and drop the entire iPhoto Library from the external hard drive onto your local drive. I put mine inside the /home/username/Pictures folder, where it is when you first get your Mac.
4. At some point in the copying process, you will be prompted for your administrator password. Enter it and press OK.
5. Press and hold the Option key while you click the icon to launch iPhoto. You’ll be prompted to find an iPhoto library. Click Choose Library and navigate to the iPhoto Library folder in your local hard drive.
6. Click OK to open it.
7. Open iTunes and sync your iPod.

You can now move the entire iPhoto Library folder back to the external hard drive and re-open it (holding down the Option key). The permissions will be fixed and you can continue to sync your iPod even though the library is stored on the external hard drive.

In Part 1 I discussed using Bill Pay to reduce your front-end work at going paperless. In Part 2, I will quickly cover scanning, shredding, online storage, and the all-important regular backup. But first a disclaimer: Electronic record keeping as a replacement for real paper is governed by many overlapping laws, rules and corporate policies, the most important one being IRS Revenue Procedure 97-22. It is my understanding that the IRS will accept printouts from electronic copies as long as they contain all the same information as the paper records are required to have such as date, amount, etc. However, many stores will require original receipts, so saving receipts is still necessary at least until you know you won’t be returning anything. I am not an accountant nor a lawyer. Please seek professional guidance on creating your own paperless system before destroying your real papers!
Ok, let’s get started. The first step in going paperless is scanning. Scanners are very inexpensive now and you do not need anything other than a flat-bed scanner. However, a document feeder is handy for scanning stacks of papers. Simply scan your papers in a format such as JPEG or PDF. I find 150DPI is adequate resolution while keeping file size small. Give the files meaningful names. I name files using the date, who it came from, a reference number, what it is, and a page number. For example: 2008-01-31-WellsFargo-1234-Statement-1.jpg. Then I put the file in a directory/folder named “Paperless” on my hard drive. I create directories for each year and subdirectories inside those for each major entity or category. Make your own directory structure that makes sense to you. In my opinion, this type of organization system is only scalable enough for individuals and small businesses. Larger businesses should look at commercial applications for indexing and securing the records in a multi-user environment. And it’s worth mentioning that the computer you are using should be reasonably secure physically and/or cryptographically from data theft. For the original document you may choose to continue to file it in your real-paper files (a good idea during the transition period) or you may choose to shred them. If you choose to shred them, you may want to delay shredding until after your periodic backups are done, just in case. Note that there are some documents that should never be shredded — use common sense — they don’t call them vital records for nothing. Finally, and most importantly, you must backup your records on a regular basis! A simple copy of your paperless directories to a CD-R or external hard drive on a weekly basis will do. Keep the backup media in a safe place away from your computer. A less regular off-site backup is recommended as well — perhaps a monthly CD-R that you put in your safe-deposit box. That’s all there is to it!

One of the things that we decided before moving into the RV was to go completely “paperless” with regards to bank statements, bills, receipts, and all manner of paper clutter. For most bills it was easy as we have been using a bill-pay service for the last 10 years. MYEZBills.com, previously known as Status Factory, is not the usual free bill-pay service you get with your bank account but rather a full-service bill pay that costs about $20/mo. Basically you change your billing address to their address, they open your bills, scan them, and the best part: they pay your bills using rules you set! For example, I set the electric bill to be automatically paid 10 days before it is due, as long as it’s under $150. All your bills are paid on-time, every time, with no effort. This is especially important now that we are traveling full-time with mail being forwarded once per week at best. You can set fixed amounts or you can have them pay the minimum payment or you can have them send you an email to manually intervene. And you can view and download all your bills as PDFs on their secure web server and even order an annual CD-ROM for archival purposes. It’s the bomb! All payments are made directly out of your bank account and most of the time it even has the full description of the bill payment on your bank statement, unlike cashed checks which simply show the check number and amount. The only caveat with a service like this is you must maintain an adequate balance in your back account.
In my next post I’ll detail how we went paperless with everything else, including scanning, shredding, online storage, and the all-important regular backup.

I finally found a winter holiday that makes sense to me. Krismas (and here) is a celebration of a fat jolly man giving out presents, with the acknowledgment that this particular “reason for the season” is, you know, fictional. What’s not to love? I will recommend that they adopt my family’s take on Santa Claus, though (which makes it less fictional, I suppose): “Santa is everyone who loves you.” For this reason, at age 33, I still believe in Santa Claus.

Krismas gifts from my family are slow arriving, due to not receiving mail last week, so Krismas will last probably until the traditional twelve days are up.

Santa was good to me and John this year. John gave me a haul of yarn that makes my head swoon. Really! And under his stocking, he found a Chumby!

He’s named it “Santa’s Little Helper”! (It’s the thing that looks like a glorified alarm clock!)

And now for a holiday carol:

Deck the Halls
(As sung by Holly and Stephanie, when we were 9 and 8 years old, respectively)

Deck the halls with gasoline.
Fa la la la la la la la la!
Strike a match and watch it gleam.
Fa la la la la la la la la!
Watch the schoolhouse burn to ashes.
Fa la la la la la la la la!
Aren’t you glad you played with matches?
Fa la la la la la la la la!