dot mac: not worth it for me

[substitute]

My .mac membership will renew in 22 days and and I don't think I'll keep it. I don't need the email or the net storage, and the backup was the only thing I really liked. I'd successfully restored my settings more than once after some mishap. But everything else was either redundant for me or just missing. They kept promising all kinds of cool

Comments

[uncleanton]

I've had .mac for either 2 or 3 years, can't remember, and usually wonder why I still have it. Perhaps it's the email -- enough people have the address I'd rather not ditch it -- but other than that I don't know. I thought about starting a word of the day blog using iWeb, just to get some use out of .mac, but I can't even get the RSS feed to show syndicated on LiveJournal, so I scratched that. Oy!

Rough transcription of my end of the conversation:

[nosrialleon]

Dot mac does WHAT now?

No, I don't need that.

Yes, I'm sure. I already pay money for those things, and have a much better deal than your offering.

Re: Rough transcription of my end of the conversation:

[substitute]

also includes the shittiest website creation tools ever seen!

My version of dot-Mac backups

[brianenigma]

#!/bin/sh
RSYNC=/usr/bin/rsync
OPTS="--recursive --size-only --links --times --whole-file --delete --exclude '*/Caches/*' --exclude '*/Data/*'"
if [ "$1" == "-v" ]; then
OPTS="$OPTS --verbose"
fi

set -e

/usr/bin/osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to mount volume "smb://myusername:mysecretpassword@10.10.10.69/backups"'
/usr/bin/hdiutil attach /Volumes/backups/FibonacciBackup.sparseimage -readwrite -quiet

echo `date` "Home Dir"
cd /Users/brian
$RSYNC $OPTS . /Volumes/FibonacciBackup/Users/brian/

# ...etc...

/usr/bin/hdiutil detach /Volumes/FibonacciBackup
/usr/bin/osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to eject disk "Backups"'

Yes, a few of those hard-coded things should probably be made into variables at the top, but this gets the job done. The whole thing is in a crontab for 2am.

Re: My version of dot-Mac backups

[substitute]

Thanks - I heart sample code. I may buy something or I may do something like that and hook it up to the automounter and anacron so the laptop can handle it.

[kiteflier98]

I have a friend who keeps complaining about WinXP. I should show him this post.

[la_lisa]

I have no idea how to even START my mac.com account after two years of having a mac, and now thanks to you I realize the wisdom of my Ludditery. "It's not laziness--it's prescience!"