About a year ago something happened on Google’s end that caused one of my calendar’s information to be lost.  Fortunately I had a backup that had a majority of the information in it, but it got me thinking about backing up my Calendar to ensure that if, worst case scenario, I lost a calendar I wouldn’t be SOL.  Here is how I routinely backup my google calendar thanks to an easy to use bash script.  Note these instructions assume you are running from linux.

1. First thing to do is to get the Private iCal link for your Google calendar.  I specify private as in most cases the Google Calendar is a private calendar
2. Once you have that then you can add it to the bashscript below, replacing the bolded calendar url with the private iCal url that you have

!/bin/bash

wget http://www.google.com/calendar/sample_ical/calendar

Copy the above script and save it in a file called googlecal.sh.  Next configure a cron job to run the script routinely.  Here is my sample cron command:

# m h  dom mon dow   command

30 9 * * * sh /root/googlecal.sh

2010 has started off pretty crazy.  I got into a car crash early in the month but luckily everyone was ok.  The ole nissan was not so fortunate.  I needed to get a new car so I settled on the Toyota Matrix.  It is a 2005 so it didn’t fall under the recall.  It is awesome.  At work it has been crazy with getting ready to move to a new office.  We are moving at the end of this week and it will be great as it is spacious and the network is going to be fast.

Overall I feel like things are progressing well and am excited to bring on some more help into the support department.  We still have a tier 2 position open and am looking forward to more applicants.

I’m looking for an outstanding customer support agent to come work with me at MindTouch.  Read the job description and see if you have what it takes.

Keeping with tradition here is the 2009 Christmas Post.

2009 was a very busy year for Pam and I.  We bought a condo in the early part of the year and couldn’t be happier.  Pam finished her Master’s Degree in Social Work in May.  We went on a couple of trips including up to Sequoia national Park and to Seattle.   We had a lot of visitors and made it to DisneyLand and LegoLand.  Work has been busy for both of us but all good things.

Not much else to say, except if you want more details read earlier posts on my blog    Sorry for a the brevity of this post, have a lot of stuff to get done before the new year.

Merry Christmas to all and a Happy New Year.

I haven’t been blogging a ton lately so I thought I’d recap on the month.  I got a new phone, the Samsung Moment, and am still thoroughly excited about it.  It has saved me a lot of time and gives me a piece of mind when I’m not in front of my computer.  I’m looking forward to Q1 2010 as that is when the upgrade for Android 2.0 will be out.  I installed DD-WRT on a buffalo router on Friday and it was a snap.  It was the first time I had installed DD-WRT and am really excited about the advanced functionality that it offers.

I’ve been playing catchup on my side projects lately which has felt good, I still have a lot of things to catchup on, but I’m taking my time with them. Work has been super busy.  We’ve been bringing on some great customers and tickets have been increasing in number and complexity.  I’m working on pulling together specs so that we can launch a documentation site in the months to come.  This will help reduce support requests but will be an undertaking upon itself to ensure that we capture all information within the portal.

I have a mound of paperwork I need to go through related to the purchase of our condo this year along with preparing for the 2009 tax returns that are coming up.  I like to file early and get it off my plate.  I used turbo tax last year and was happy with the simplicity along with the value of the offering.  I will be heading back to MN for Christmas which will be cool.  It will be good to see family and friends again.

Other than that, this year has been really eventful and I’m working on wrapping up 2009 with a strong finish so that I can accomplish some goals in 2010.