[d] enclosed in brackets chaotic perfectionist for hire

Ever since the movie The Saint (with Val Kilmer and Elizabeth Shue, not the TV series with Roger Moore), I've wanted a phone that flips open - not just a clamshell, but something with a keyboard inside. I thought that was the coolest thing, and until I saw the price... it was practically mine. I don't even remember what the price was, just that it was WAY out of my budget.

It went to the back of my mind as I got my first mobile phone in 1999. It was a sweet Nokia 5160 and I thought it was (almost) the best thing ever. That was replaced by a Motorola v60i (good except for the snap-off antenna), then a Motorola v265, then a Motorola e815 (see a trend?).

Our "New Every Two" was up last May (whee, Verizon Family Plan), and we finally got around to picking new phones. After looking at what I could get for free (if I had the money I would've liked the vx6800), I went with the LG enV Green. After waiting a couple of days, it came in, and I like it.

Has anyone else played with one? It's got a good look and feel, plus green *is* my favorite color. There's plenty to play with, but it's still really good as a phone. Speakerphone is easy to use and turn on/off, whether it's open or closed.

Now, the next step is to see how much I can get onto it. I want to be able to make my own ringtones, and I don't want to have to send them to myself (regardless of having unlimited messaging, which I don't have). Verizon is a pain and won't let you do it on your own, at least without messing with a few things first. Luckily, the camera is pretty decent, but I still want to get all of the pictures from my old phone onto it. If anyone has any tips on transferring data and/or ringtones, please let me know.

It's bad, but I don't have a really solid backup schedule for my system. There's plenty in place for my "work" system, but not for the one I'm writing this on now.

The closest thing I have to a schedule is running SyncToy once in a while to get my whole profile folder (I'm using Windows XP) onto a separate system and a separate HD. Far from perfect (no image), but at least I have the data.

If funds weren't a limiting factor, I'd just buy a couple of 500GB drives and put them into a beige box running linux (like Ubuntu!) and run backups to that, but unfortunately... I don't have a wealthy benefactor to help with that.

There's box.net, but I feel like that would be limited. I could also try the all-too-shaky "save it to a mounted gmail volume" but that's more than a little scary for important stuff.

Does anyone have a suggestion for a free/cheap solution to back up my system (and possibly one other)? Maybe I'll just have to suck it up and buy a new, fresh HD...

Whoa.

This thing is pretty solid looking. The Ironkey is a sweet piece of security hardware and software. It encrypts all the data on it, and if someone tries to crack it, POOF! The data is gone on the 10th wrong password.

Even physical cracking won't work - it's filled with epoxy. It also needs the crypto chip to read from the memory chips... oh, and it's shielded, so even a scanning electron microscope won't get into it.

I haven't had a chance to play with one yet, but it's available through ThinkGeek.

The holidays are coming, right?

Great.

Help and Support Center Error

I came back to my system the other day and found this little gem waiting for me (after seeing that I was at the initial login screen, not the "locked" screen):

wtf. That's not cool at all. This is one more reason that I need to get a new system, and yet another reason I'd like to start using some form of *nix in the near future (for work as well as home).

Any suggestions? Yes, that means the sarcastic ones as well...