Hey, Microsoft! When did you move to Texas?

I don't know about you, but it annoys me that when Microsoft replaces a piece of software with a different piece of software, they make it BIGGER.

The two most recent examples I have are the snipping tool, and the switch from Skype to Teams.

That is each block minimized to their smallest window size. The New Snip & Sketch is twice as large. Then we look at Skype v. Teams.

that is the smallest the teams window will go. i don't know about skype, because it's no longer on my pc, but that skype window above is about right. pretty sure i can make it smaller. Anyway, there it is. almost twice as large. 

Hey, Microsoft. I love your stuff, but not everything has to be sized for a tablet.

Thanks,

Soulie

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Migrating a crap ton of data

At work we have an old server. Like, 5 years old, not a name brand, some custom thing by a place called @XI. Nice server, don't get me wrong, but way more than we are making use of. The thing has four six-core procs and 64GB of ram, of which our one virtual Windows 2012 server is using 2 cores and 16GB. Total waste. There is one system partition and one 3TB data partition, which is full.

So I bought a new server with 10TB of data space. The trick is how to migrate the data over.

I've heard of XCopy, and that seemed like a good place to start, but when I first tried it on the smaller Corporate files, it didn't take the permissions over, and i had to keep restarting it. Probably my fault for not understanding the switches, but it didn't go well, and it was a lot of cleanup on Monday.

But it was only about 100GB, not 3TB. 3TB is a ton of data.

So with a bit more research, I discovered ROBOCOPY. I love just the sound of that name. I'm planning on moving this data during the maintenance on Saturday night, and I know that it's going to take awhile. Do I have to stay for the entire thing?

Well, while researching exactly what flags I need to use, I discover that Robocopy can do some amazing things. Like, it can move data, and if the files are open, it goes to the shadowcopy and pulls it from there so it's not interrupted. It runs at a default of 8 threads (max 128), and can move data really fast. I'm liking this program more and more. And I can get it to move just the stuff that has changed since a specified date and time.

Now I'm excited. Instead of waiting for the maintenance, I start a copy. Thankfully I'm not deleting the data off the old server for a little while to ensure that the new stuff works. I have a plan. Move the data tonight, do the maintenance, and copy just the stuff that changed tomorrow. Nice and easy, super fast.

I am curious, how fast can you move 3TB of data on a LAN connection?

I open up a data transfer calculator, click a couple of the buttons, and see what it says.

1TB @ 100Mb = 2583 hours.

What the ever living nightmarish hell did I just do?

I check the connection on my servers, praying to the machine gods that I didn't just sign up for a copy session that is going to last... three and a half months.

They're both running at 1Gb. Time: 2.5 hrs /TB. Oh, thank you thank you thank you. So it should be done when I wake up.

Robocopy... It's Xcopy on steroids.

Update: This morning it was still running. must have been only moving small files (of which there are apparently a bigger crap ton). I restarted it, telling it to ignore existing files (don't overwrite) and it's moved a TB in the last couple hours, so good. Should be done by tonite.

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How do I find my focus?

For the last six months I have wanted to get into e-commerce. I have wanted to do something that can grow a passive income to take care of my family and not be so focused on being away from them working all day. Why am I giving my best to my boss instead of giving my best to my family?

The thing I discovered about ME starting an e-biz is that I am unfocused and easily distracted by the next shiny. First, drop-shipping from China. Then, drop-shipping from the US and Canada. Then, print on demand t-shirts. then, affiliate linking through ClickBank. then, writing monitized niche blogs. It's too much. I'm unfocused and having a heck of a time. I have a storefront on this site (click the Shop link at the top to see), but it isn't totally set up. I have several shirts to choose from, but i'm not happy with any of them. I've been so busy with the rest of work and getting the house ready to sell that I haven't had time to work on them, and so it's been a waste of money to keep up. The thing is, if I find something to sell, and then run the ads to sell it, it will probably be able to pay it back and pay for the money I've wasted on keeping it parked for the last six months.

I've noticed that about myself. I have the seven or eight pages on this site, a perfect place to be building a community, a following, and doing the things that I mentioned above, but it's taking the time to do it when I have my four kids at home and two houses that both need work, plus deciding if I can make a living from home or heading back out to look for a job. But I can't make a living from home when I'm doing all the other things that need done. Very difficult to write an article or do research or update a resume with a 14 month old on your lap that really wants to bang on the keyboard.

So my issue seems to be focus. I'm too scattered. My issues isn't that I lose interest, its that I can't decide what is more important, and I waste time on minutia and really unimportant things, like making the graphic logo on the website or trying to figure out why the menu keeps shifting up to one line.

These things don't make sales. They may help in the long run by making the site more professional, but if I had the ads running and the traffic coming, I could then have the time to fix the minutia.

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Been too long

it has been far too long.

I dropped off suddenly for reasons that don't matter anymore. Let's catch up:

• That girlfriend that I got? I married her. We had twin baby girls. We took them to the temple and were sealed to them. They'll be a year in September.
• I own two businesses, partner in one, Soul (snicker) proprietor in the other.
• I put one of my designs on a t-shirt, you've seen this in the art page:
• 
• We are selling her house and buying land and I get to finally build my papercrete house =D
• I've watched way too much politics the last several months... but i'll get to that later.
• I am still running D&D... a family game for my in-laws and going to start another for some friends. I have so many games that I have never been able to play because everyone wants to go the safe route with freaking D&D!! gah! oh well. least it's playing.

If you're still out there, thank you for reading. I'll post more often.

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