begin rant

Drobo is a great idea.  On paper.   It’s a small simple  RAID (redundant array of independent disks) solution for information storage.   Gale won one in a competition a few years back.     It has multiple hard drives that mirror each other.  So as you put files on one drive, they are copied to the other.   This has the HUGE benefit that if one drive should fail, then you just pop out the bad drive, insert a new one and keep working without any loss.  The downside is, as we have found out multiple times now, is that if the Drobo itself fails then you have lost both drives.

Which means that Gale now has two 1terabyte hard drives with information we can’t access.    Obviously the warranty has expired and the replacement power supply (which I suspect is the problem) is $60.   I’m unsure what to do next.  Luckily, kinda, this is the second time it has failed, so she had copies of pretty much all the important stuff.    Oh, and the other thing, the drives are formatted in such a way that only a Drobo can read them, so I can’t just plug it into a computer and copy everything over.

/rant

Update: They just emailed me back. Which was very quick. The tech thinks i’m right. He suggested things I already tried and then suggest I buy the out of warranty plan for the replacement. $269 please…

My 2 day adventure of being an eReader owner is at an end. And I actually feel I have regained my integrity.

I got it because, I wanted a tablet, it was cheap, it ran Android, so I can run my fave apps on it and Gale wanted to be able to read magazines on it.

It was cheap(ish), compared to other tablets. Because it’s not a tablet. It’s an eReader made by a company famous for their ground breaking work in digital picture frames and just happens to use Android to run the 3 apps it comes with.  As for the processor, I don’t know what it is but I can hear it ticking.

It had a REALLY cut down version of Android that didn’t have Market Place on it! So I couldn’t download Gmail, Kindle, Angry Birds or pretty much anything else. It did have Barnes and Noble, but not the cool Nook app.

The magazines that Gale really wants to read are graphic art and they are not available electronically. The one thing we did download didn’t have pictures, but rather a URL which opened up the picture.

I did manage to hack it so it was rooted, had the market place, kindle, facebook, gmail and was Android 2.0 rather than 1.5 it came with. But damage done. It’s slow, low resolution (my phone is a quarter the size and has a higher resolution screen and even with the nice discount I got (40% off off half of the retail) it’s still a POS. And I don’t mean Point of Sale.

So, back it goes. Of course, it’s my department at work, so I have to resell it. So I won’t mention any of this when I sell it. I will say that it’s a good budget e-reader that lets you surf the web.

That said, it’s still rooted and has Android 2.0, has the full marketplace and Kindle installed on it. So it’s actually better than when I got it. I’m doing them a favour.

Back to my trusty netbook that has a bigger screen, runs windows 7 and has a keyboard. I’m so sorry, why did I ever consider pushing you aside for something that had a veneer of glossiness about it? Please forgive me.

Now once a Xoom comes into the store…….

Not quite art, or photography, but I’m happy with this result and wanted to share the past 4 days work in one blog post.

The plan is to remove our ceramic tile from the foyer and kitchen and paint the concrete floor.   No small undertaking especially when you’re not sure what you’re doing.   So we decided to do a bathroom first as a proof of concept and to find out how much of a pain it is.

Here is the yucky old lino floor:

I’ve already taken the toilet off the floor and for want of a better place to put it, it’s in the tub.  Where it will stay for the next 4 days.

Next was the process of ripping up the old floor.    This was more of a pin than I expected since it was pretty much stuck down and would only come up with some persuasion and a lot of elbow grease.

I found a tip that if you poor boiling water onto the edges of the lino it makes it easier to get off.   But still a pain in the neck.

Me hard at it.

An arty shot that Gale took mid process. Gale took most of the photos here.

And finally it was all up and revealed the concrete floor ready to be cleaned.   I scrubbed it hard with TSP and then mopped and vacuumed it ready for the paint.

Our original idea was to use acid stain.   I was slightly worried about the word acid and the fact you have to stop the acid reaction.  Not to mention all the warnings on the package.  Thoughts of the Alien movie came to mind with stain burning through my arms.    SO we decided to use paint instead.   But as a stain rather than a solid colour.

Off to Michaels we go and buy all the terracotta acrylic paint they had.   9 small bottles and 1 large one.    Gale’s arty knowledge of acrylic came into play and we watered down one small bottle to about 1:1.5   and I started to apply it to the floor.   Amazingly one tiny bottle covered the entire floor.    I ended up putting on 3 coats.

I can’t be sure which coat this was after.   You can see the texture of the concrete coming through the wash, which was exactly the effect we were going for.  I wanted it to end up looking like a stone floor.

To give it bit more WOW I decided to have a border.   Masking off about 5 inches all the way around, I used another bottle of acrylic mixed to about 1:1 and painting a border.

All done.   But it was very flat looking. I was also worried about how tough it was.   It needed glossing up and hardening.   Off I went to Lowes and asked their advice about what I could use on an acrylic artist paint.   “Nothing” said the guy.   Fine, I replied and trotted off to Sherwin Williams.    He also wasn’t sure, but sold me a paving sealer that he said should do the job.

This shows the border, texture and shine I got.   The imperfections of the concrete still show through, which was intentional.   The texture also helps with any slipping problems we may encounter.

So here it is all done.  There you have it, a terracotta stone floor made with nothing but three bottles of artistic acrylic, some sealant H&C paving sealer from Sherwin Williams and a few days spare.    Next we’re going to paint the vanity wood black and then maybe in a year or two tackle the kitchen floor.