I’ve always hated commercials. Even as a little kid, I use to leave the room whenever a commercial came on television. Eventually, I stopped watching television entirely. But, of course, this was before the days of ad-free cable television. I still never watch commercial television. Hell, I’m not even sure if my TV picks up those channels.

I’m not sure what’s at the bottom of the disdain for ads. I think it’s the fact that someone is deliberately trying to manipulate me into buying their shit. Advertisers try to make us feel guilty for not buying their gadgets, envious of others who have it, or make us feel somehow less than a person because we don’t bite. Advertisers are masters at making us feel like crap about ourselves: we’re too fat, too poor, our house isn’t clean enough, we own the wrong car, the wrong computer, the wrong phone, on and on. Advertising has always struck me as being sleazy and manipulative. It’s funny — whenever I’m exported to an advert of any kind, I instinctively put myself on the defensive, bringing down a mental wall. That is to say, I consciously fight back against their manipulations.

Every now and then, when I’m out of town, I’ll turn on the hotel room television and attempt to watch a show or a movie. Probably within 20 minutes (often less than that), I’m desperately scrambling for the remote to turn it off. Whenever I watch a program with commercials, it’s pure torture for me. It’s as if I’m deliberately torturing myself for no reason. I begin to get involved in a show, sucked into the story when wham! I’m asked if I’ve talked to my doctor about hemorrhoids. For the next couple of minutes, it’s ad after ad: life insurance, viagra, accident attorneys, funeral parlors, athletes foot spray, etc. With relief, we return to our programming, only for it to be interrupted again 6 minutes later. And on and on it goes. It doesn’t take me long to put the torture to an end and turn off the damn set.

I’m the same way with ads in other areas of my life as well. I don’t listen to ad-based radio, and when browsing the web, I use several ad-blockers on my browser (without it, it’s almost nearly impossible to navigate a website.) If a website slaps me with a pop-up, I immediately leave and never come back. No matter what the medium, whether it be television, radio, or websites, I find ads to be manipulative and insulting. Always have.

Now I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with ads. This is all me and most people aren’t bothered by them at all. Unfortunately, I’m not one of those people and go out of my way to avoid them. The little television that I do watch is only through ad-free streaming networks like Netflix and HBO Max. I find my sanity is much better because of it.

Of course, being an author, this opinion puts me at odds with my business, given that I’m a business person who needs customers. Marketing has always been challenging for me. I never want to appear to be too “in-your-face,” too insulting to people, or too sleazy. I maintain this website and occasionally mention my books on Twitter and sometimes on Facebook, being careful not to turn my feed into an ad machine. It certainly is a difficult balance, trying to figure out how to advertise effectively yet non-sleazily while still getting the word out about my books.

I guess I’m still trying to figure it out. I’ll let you know what I come up with.

When I use to teach technical training courses, I used to tell my students, “There are two types of people: those who backup and those who wish they had.” This is the voice of experience talking here. Early on in my computing days, I lost data due to faulty backups or no backups. Since then, my backup procedure has evolved quite a bit and consists of several steps.

1. Local Backup. Each week, I backup my computer’s hard drive as well as my external drives using a backup program called Carbon Copy Cloner (SuperDupe is also another excellent app). I have two external drives that I use regularly, one for my data files and one for my media that is part of the backup. I have two different backup versions, which I alternate each week (weekly 1 & weekly 2). So thus, I have six drives total for my backup: two for my hard drive, 2 for my data files, and 2 for my media files, all of which I alternate.
2. Time Machine. I have a Mac, so I always have a Time Machine drive. What this does, is backs up continuously throughout the day, so I pretty much always have a recent backup of the data on my Mac. I used to alternate Time Machine drives as well each week but have subsequently reduced it to only one drive.
3. Sync.com This is the primary cloud service that I use. It’s similar to Dropbox and Box in that it synchronizes your data continuously to the cloud. I have my Sync.com folder stored on an external drive, and it also gets backed up each week when I do my Carbon Copy Cloner backup (see #1).
4. Dropbox. I also use the free version of Dropbox. My main reason for using this is because it’s the only thing that works with Scrivener, my main writing application. Given that I switched back and forth between the Mac desktop app and the iPad version, I need to keep Scrivener around to ensure that syncing is smooth and I don’t end up losing any data.
5. AWS. Okay, so this is totally optional. I also have an Amazon AWS account where I store my super-important files that are essential for running my business. AWS is a cloud storage solution as opposed to the likes of Sync.com or Dropbox, which are cloud sync solutions. The difference is that if you delete or change a file from your Sync.com folder, that file is deleted from the cloud. With services like AWS, files are not synced to your computer. Instead, you upload to their cloud servers, where they’ll stay until you delete them yourself.

So that is my backup solution. It might seem a tad confusing at first glance, but it’s really simple. One local backup, an always-on Time Machine backup, automatic sync to the cloud, and extra storage for my super-important files. Some people take the local backup to the next level by storing their backup drives off-site, such as at another person’s house or in the trunk of their car. I don’t do this, figuring that my system is relatively foolproof as is.

I do recommend storing at least one full version of all your data off-site or in the cloud, should your home ever face a natural disaster such as a flood or a fire, or if there’s ever a break-in and your drives get stolen.

Today I received my new AirPods in the mail. What’s funny about this is that I told myself that I would never buy myself a pair of them. It’s not that I have anything against Apple. Hell, I’m a major fanboy in that I have an iMac, an iPad, an Apple Watch, and an iPhone. Yes, major fanboy here.

The reason I never considered them is because when I see people wearing them, it makes me think of a particular scene from a film entitled, “There’s Something About Mary.” And I’m not going to tell you what that scene is — you’ll have to watch the film or do a Google search (look up the term “ear” 😊).

Moreover, I was convinced that the buds never stay put in my ears. I once had a pair of wired earbuds, and they’d fall out constantly. But I became intrigued when I read that the AirPods Pro come with several tips so that no matter the size or shape of your ear, they will supposedly fit snugly. I began to become intrigued.

But a couple of events pushed me towards getting them. One was that my current pair of over-the-ear noise-canceling headphone cans died after many years of heavy use. Given that noise-canceling is an essential feature for me (I’ll chat more about that in another post), I began researching options, and the AirPods Pro ended up at the top of my list. But what really clinched the deal was that they were on sale last weekend for $50 off. I took that as a sign from the universe (hey — we have to justify our purchases somehow).

So far, so good. I like them. I think these will work out just fine.

This weekend I upgraded my Mac to the latest operating system, Big Sur, a task that I was kind of dreading a bit. Okay, maybe more than a little bit.

In the past, I used to upgrade the moment a new operating system was released. This was because I used to create courseware manuals for MacOS, and I needed to have my guides ready to go within the first week after a release. This rarely worked out well for me, however.

Whenever I have upgraded immediately after a new OS release, my computer ran like crap afterward. The computer would be slow, grinding, and in some cases, even crash on a regular basis. The “beach ball of death” made regular appearances. Subsequent bug updates rarely fixed the issues, leaving me frustrated any time I worked on the computer.

This time, I waited several months after the initial release to upgrade and what a difference that made. The upgrade itself went super smoothly, and afterward, my computer ran much faster than before the update. Apps open instantaneously, and there are no delays at all while working. What a difference from my past experiences!

It is said that good things come to those who wait, and in the case of operating system upgrades, this appears to be true.

I’m glad I waited.