The Monkey

It's true; it is pretty simple now, especially if you don't have any esoteric investments. I still have my accountant do mine just in case I go back to the government so that I have nice clean returns. But it's probably an unnecessary expense.

Hiya, Wes. Anything new in development?

Paid my taxes. That was really just a lot of fucking fun.

Happy birthday to good group of people.

This problem bothers me and I would like to see it resolved. Probably a very stupid question, but were you guys saving to some sort of external drive that isn't hooked up anymore (e.g., external HDD, thumb drive)?

very cool.

Happy Birthday Doug! Hope you're having a great day!

Not sure if this is the best place for this but am interested in an infrared thermometer. Uses could be as varied as making sure my HVAC is working right, to gear operating temps, to coffee temp. Don't necessarily want to spend 300 bucks, but Fluke is on my radar.

Jeff, I approve of your shoe choices. And Stretch, I am very much considering ordering from that site.

Not modern, but a pair of Alden cordovans in color #8 (burgundy) is about as classic as it gets. I am partial to the cap toe bluchers and the wingtips. Alden will recraft them, too.

very nice, ari.

Site says out of stock on the NAS.

My dad has a pretty bad tremor and can get around the iPad pretty well.

Happy Birthday, Al!!!! From Nathan Thurm, too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOLBQxk72NY

@ Dusty, yeah, multidrive failures and failure of the box itself, right? Backblaze, yes, thanks very much for the reminder. I have been meaning to do that and will get on it.

Update: I have the Drobo up and running with 5 WD Red 2 TB Drives in it plus a 64GB msata SSD. So far I have only my music on it, but it's working very well for that. Drives are truly hot-swappable and size doesn't matter (have fun with that, peanut gallery). It was a little finicky during setup and I was a little impatient, which resulted in me losing a lot of movies that someone had kindly shared with me, but I guess that was part of the learning process. The box itself is smaller than I expected, well made, and easy to use. Lots of bright LEDs, which can be helpful AND annoying. The Drobo Dashboard software is decent but not great, but at least easy to use. One thing I don't like is that in Mountain Lion (or Chupacabra or whatever the fuck we're on now in OSX), it reports the size of the volume, not the actual storage size as configured. So you are basically wedded to the mediocre Drobo software to monitor capacity and usage. Relatively minor annoyance. I am slightly regretting not getting the 5N (NAS), but this setup in my apartment is really pretty much sufficient as I use my iMac to which it is attached as the Mothership. I am backing up the Drobo and my iMac with using Time Machine with a WD 4TB external drive. I may need a more robust backup solution at some point.

nice. I HAVE A COLLECTOR'S EDITION!

Group buy.

Wise words, my friend. I lost my head momentarily.

Thanks Ari. I would need the sports capability.

I'd be interested in thoughts on the Nikkor 70-200 2.8 vrII vs. the new Nikkor 70-200 f4. For now, it would be used on a D7000. From the reviews I've read here and there, the differences are not huge, at least for a crap photographer like myself. But would like to know what you guys think. Oh, and after playing with the Canon 6D, I'm sticking with Nikon.

Ok. Someone give me a good reason to buy this. What would I use it for if I have an attached Drobo?

Jesus. The question is, do I need it after the Drobo?

Well put, Crappy. I think Matt would have said the same to me more than once over the last several months. Reminds me to man up a little bit.

Well done, sir!