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I might follow Narendra’s suggestion, but for now… 24:30 run to work this morning, returning home on my bicycle.

Yesterday was the first day of the new Wall Street Journal. Mostly, the changes focused on the print edition, which got smaller, physically. While the change was initiated to save $18M a year in newsprint costs, I think the end result is attractive and useful, mostly because it’s better in the hand and on the eyes.

Amusing part: yesterday’s edition included an eight-page guide to the new paper. It’s still a newspaper. It doesn’t require a manual. I do understand, of course, that this guide was the largest part of a very extensive marketing campaign the WSJ has been doing for months to convince its readers and advertisers that this shift is in their best interests, not simply a response to the financial requirements of the new size.

One day of handling the paper, and I’m convinced. Not because of the marketing, but because it’s easier to hold and read. Simple as that.

I rarely open Money & Investing, so the continued move of stock tables to the Internet, which helped them trim the size, was of little value to me. Note: the paper started this transition 18 months ago. I do wonder if their new Markets Data Center (note: wsjmarket.com is a typo landing page already) will gain much traction against Yahoo Finance and even the Dow Jones sister site MarketWatch.com. But it hardly matters in the short term, as long as they keep their print subscribers happy and gain a few online subscribers (paid) along the way.

I’m curious to know whether advertisers are paying the same rates for the reduced real estate or not.

Just the short run home, about 24:30, after the fun downhill bicycle ride to work in the morning.

I don’t know if I’ll do this all year, but I’m going to start the year optimistically, and document my exercise. I’ll do it here, despite my occasional readers. I’ll keep the title format consistent if you want to skip these!

I ran for 30 minutes today, approximately four miles, out around Stow Lake and back. Pleasant day, and 40 degrees warmer than Colorado was. A Northern California “winter” will make you soft, as the song says.

On an exercise-related note, the Ohana series of races last year (April, November, December) turned into a cash prize!

Happy New Year, approximately one hour early.

I spent the last week in Colorado, on Mountain Time, so I’ll use that as my excuse.

Not that I’d be staying up to midnight anyway. 😉

Our Christmas evening movie this year was The Good Shepherd. This dark look at the CIA and its founding, through the fictional story of the director responsible for planning the Bay of Pigs invasion, is generally strong, and worth the nearly 2.5 hours it asks of the audience. Still, I didn’t enjoy it as much as the rest of the group. It’s trying pretty hard, and sometimes you notice.

I thought the historical back-and-forth worked, as you watched Matt Damon’s character pitch backwards in time to his introduction to the Agency while he worked through the current cleanup of his botched operation. I just didn’t consider his connections to his family, especially to his son, to be strong enough to occasion the conflict presented at the end of the movie. Without a real tearing between his loyalty to the Agency we’ve watched him help build and his love (?) for his family, the film’s ending feels forced. The rest of the movie doesn’t, though.

Metacritic score of 62 probably reflects high expectations, which are not quite met. I’d wait for the DVD, though it’s worth seeing.

2006 is coming to a close, and before I head up to bed (no late evening for me), I must note another fun Carl Hiaasen read: Sick Puppy. Take a trust-fund enviromentalist with anger-management issues… and that’s your hero. I finished this one just before Christmas, and passed it on to other family members. Wasn’t on my planned list of gifts to give, but might be the most appreciated.

OK, I’m biased. But I think OpenDNS CacheCheck is remarkable. Very simple, sure: you can see what address OpenDNS has for a domain, and ask OpenDNS to refresh that address if it’s not correct. Nothing more. Read what I wrote on the OpenDNS blog for more.

But if it’s so simple, how come no one has done it before?

I moved DNS for this domain, pencoyd.com, back in November 2004. I’m hardly alone in having warned people ahead of time, and then being relieved when the changes were propogated (or propogating).

I know I would have jumped to use this kind of tool, even though I did lower my TTL setting before making the switch. If you have the chance, wouldn’t you want your website to be visible as close as 100% of the time to as close to 100% of the Internet as possible?

OpenDNS does not equal the Internet as a whole. Not even close. But maybe we can start something here?

Gosford Park won out over football on Sunday night. Metacritic gave this film a 90. User ratings, though, are down at 59. I’m more with the users. There are sparkling characters, but the interactions are uneven. The scenery and setting are fantastic: 1932 England, at a divine country estate. Yet the dialogue was like West Wing on speed, with accents just to add an extra challenge. The mystery which supposedly drives the movie feels more like a distraction, especially in its comical investigation. The unveiling of hidden connections among characters appeals, but the murder was no more than a blunt excuse for the revelations.

Note: The official movie website gosfordparkmovie.com has been squatted on (hence no link). Again, I ask… does no one at a movie company think it’s worth $10 a year to try and keep a domain running to sell DVDs, if nothing else? This movie was made in 2001, so it’s not exactly ancient history, and since the director Robert Altman just died, there is likely to be renewed interest in this movie. It did receive 7 Oscar nominations (one winner, for screenplay). Oh well.

On Sunday December 10th, after I had backed up about half of the 250GB internal drive on the iMac, things went wrong.

I’m not sure what exactly finally brought the drive to its knees, but some sectors were problematic as far back as January 2006 when I first tried to get serious about backups. (And failed.)

I left things alone for the rest of the (very busy) year, but I know that there are only two kinds of people: those who have already lost data, and those who will. Only those who backup their data handle the loss well, whenever it happens. My recent mishap with my contacts probably overcame my inertia. That, and I’ve wanted to upgrade the iMac to Tiger for quite some time.

So, I fired up SuperDuper and got, well, a lot farther than 11 months earlier. All the videos, music, and photos were backed up to the external drive before things got stuck. This was the bulky data, which turned out to be very useful.

The SuperDuper log was clear that the application failed while trying to copy an IMAP archive, so I tried to clear up Mail.app’s older files, especially the mailbox in question. The file was simply a coincidence, but somewhere in the sequence of restarting (repeatedly), I ended up with the flashing folder icon. No system folder found. Argh!

The only “good” news was that I could still start the computer up in FireWire target disk mode. The bad news? The disk was unrecognizable, and I was being asked if I wanted to reformat it. I declined, and got ready to start the week, considering my options for data recovery and more.

That was Sunday evening, and it was not a great end to the weekend.

NOTE: SuperDuper was not a contributor to this sequence of events; just an ironic, unfortunate coincidence that the drive died while I was trying to (ahem) back it up.

Monday morning, I spoke with my friend Sean, and got the best tip: DiskWarrior. Fortunately, version 4.0 which works with Intel Macs was just released, so I could run the software on my work laptop while tackling the problematic G5.

Short answer: DiskWarrior was a data saver… and savior.

While I could not rebuild the drive, I could get all the data off, with the exception of the borked (technical term? should be!) System folder. Various items were “Rescued” but I’m uncertain I need them since the end goal was an upgrade to the System anyway. The data was spread across my work MacBook and a thumb drive. Fortunately, we never got a change to fill up this 250GB drive (well, 233GB formatted), or I would have been doing even more juggling.

Monday night, then, ended in a much better place. The wife had her data, and I knew that the whole process was doable. And I relaxed for a few days, doing sporadic research on internal hard drives and the process of replacing them. I scheduled a stop by the Genius Bar at the San Francisco Apple Store, just to ask a few questions.

• How long would it take for them to do the replacement? Answer: 10 business days. Ouch.
• How expensive would it be? Answer: $350. Hmmm…
• How hard is it to do this myself? Answer: Not so bad. They suggested going online and taking a look around, but since (a) the computer was already out of warranty and (b) I’d opened it up before (RAM install, and other mucking about) I was a good candidate to do it myself.

With a busy weekend and a general retail phobia during the pre-Christmas weekends, I didn’t buy a new drive until yesterday, at CompUSA. I paid more than I would have online, but I had it in my hands, and last night I installed the drive while watching the Colts demolish the Bengals on Monday Night Football.

Installing Tiger was simple from there, and I called it a night.

I still have lots of work to do, re-installing applications and re-connecting the applications with the recovered data. But I expect the applications, at least, to be completed tonight. I’m typing this while Software Update catches up.

And, yes, when I’m all done with the whole enchilida… I’ll be backing up. Wish me luck!