Sharing Know How

Do you backup the important files on your home computer to a external USB drive? or to DVDs?  or at all?  

Until just recently, I backed up my files to an old external USB drive every once in a while.  Which roughly translates to about two to three times per year.  Yesterday, I stumbled upon a free (yes, I said free!!) online backup service that gives you 2GB of online backup storage space for your home computer.  I decided to try it out and see if I could improve my already incredibly “bad” backup routine. 

I went on their website and signed up for an account (2 minutes).  Downloaded the software. (6 minutes) Installed the software and used all the recommended settings. (4 minutes)  So, after 12 minutes of dead easy setup, I was backing up my computer.  The total size of all my documents, pictures, videos, e-mail and miscellaneous files was 1.6GB.  This leaves me about 400 MB of room to grow, or I can finally get around to deleting all those files I really don’t need!  The 1.6 GB took about 12 hours to get backed up and completed overnight while I was sleeping.  Future backup will only take a few minutes since they only backup the changed data on your computer.  And the best part is, the software will take care of scheduling the backups.  This will allow me to concentrate by forgetfulness on other things.

Overall, a great service at a fantastic price of Free!!  But if you outgrow the 2GB, you will have to upgrade and pay for their unlimited home backup service.  The cost is only $5 per month for unlimited space.  Yes unlimited is correct.  You can have Terabytes of data (which would be a crazy amount for a home computer!), and it won’t cost you a penny more.

Want the free online home backup service?  Click here to go to the Mozy Home page.  You will need to click on Mozy Home at the top of the page, and then you should see a link to Mozy Home Free on the left side of the page. 

After opening a new bottle of Advil recently, I wondered about the cotton that sits on top of the pills.

Why do they put cotton in there in the first place? 

Do I need to keep the cotton on top of the pills after I open the bottle, or should I just throw it away?

Does the cotton help keep the vitamins or pills fresh or help extend the expiry date?

Well, after doing a bit of research, I found the answers to all these questions and put my mind at ease (not that this was an all consuming question burning in my head and keeping me up at night or anything!). 

Why? 

The cotton is mainly used to prevent the pills or vitamins from being damaged or chiped during transport and handling.  Since they almost never fill pill bottles right to the top, you need to fill the space so the pills and vitamins don’t smash into each other.  Who wants to buy a bottle full of broken pills?

Keep the cotton after opening?

As long as you don’t toss your pill bottles around the house, you should be fine without the cotton.  I have also read that keeping the cotton after opening can be harmful.  The cotton will absorb things like pathogens or bacteria from your hands and then get smothered all over your wonder drug pills when you put it back in the bottle. So, just say no to keeping the cotton!

But what about the freshness?

Nope, it doesn’t keep them any fresher or help them to last any longer. The good news is pills and vitamins tend to have great expiry dates. (Especially when you compare it to bread which seems to always go moldy the day after I buy it!) 

So, make sure that you practice safe pill and vitamin bottle care.  Throw away the cotton after you open it, and keep it out of reach of children and away from the prying eyes of guests that use your bathroom. We all know that people love to know what’s inside other people’s medicine cabinets.