Pointless Waste of Time #573

cicadabug recently posted a PSA to remind us all to backup our important computer files. She's a sysadmin, so she has a lot of exposure to people who never backup and are then violently surprised when they lose a chunk of stuff. At my workplace they have a passive backup system, where when you connect to the network, the backup automatically starts. When you disconnect, it stops. You have no choice in the matter. So that's good. And I am currently using my work computer for everything in my life, so I feel pretty confident that I'm covered. ( Warning, sorta dull with no big payoff like I lost all my files boo-hoo because I didn't )

Meme-osity

The Birthday Meme

Go to Wikipedia and look up your birthday (excluding the year). List three neat facts, two births and one death in your journal, including the year.

August 21

I like looking at things in a more orderly fashion, so...

Three Events [Politics]
1772 - King Gustav III completes his coup d'etat by adopting a new Constitution, ending half a century of parliamentary rule in Sweden and installing him as an enlightened despot
1831 - Nat Turner leads slave revolt in Southampton County, Virginia
1959 - President Eisenhower signs an executive order proclaiming Hawaii the 50th state of the union

Three Events [Arts]
1911 - The Mona Lisa was stolen by a Louvre employee
1987 - Hard rock band Guns N' Roses release their classic debut Appetite for Destruction
1997 - The British Rock Group Oasis release album, Be Here Now

Three Events [Science]
1888 - The first successful adding machine in the United States was patented by William Seward Burroughs
1986 - Toxic gas erupts from volcanic Lake Nyos in Cameroon, killing over 1700 people
1993 - NASA loses contact with the Mars Observer spacecraft

Two Births (or several)
1952 - Joe Strummer, British musician and singer (The Clash) (d. 2002)
1956 - Kim Cattrall, English-born actress
(and Count Basie, Carrie-Anne Moss, Friz Freleng, Aubrey Beardsley, Princess Margaret!, Wilt Chamberlain, Jeff Stryker!, Kenny Rogers, and Clarence Williams III)

One Death (or two)
1940 - Leon Trotsky, Russian revolutionary (b. 1879)
1614 - Elizabeth Báthory, Hungarian serial killer (b. 1560) (had to add that one!)

I think this all makes my birthdate historically a mixed bag. Yay, Joe Strummer! Boo, toxic gas!