A Geek Goes Flying

Alas, I missed my chance to build a supersonic BD-10  ( promotional video ). (Yeah, it would have broken up in flight and killed me; minor details...) But my dreams of being a mini-Maverick aren’t dead yet, even if I never buy an L-39 Albatross . There’s: The Stratos 716x kit plane (P&W JT-15 powered) ($2.5M bizjet); The SubSonex Jet ( PBS TJ-100 powered) ($115K single-seat toy), with a 2-seat version under development; and The ViperJet (GE T58 powered) ($350K 2 seater). Day dreaming ... Getting a type certificate letter of authorization to fly a personal experimental jet is a bit interesting .

I have a bunch of stuff I want to move off my little file server - stuff I’m unlikely to need online at a moment’s notice, but don’t want to delete forever. I thought about backing it up onto dual layer DVD+R, but every brand on Amazon has tons of recent negative reviews - discs that don’t burn reliably, etc. TDK, Verbatim, Philips. Seems like production has been moved to cheaper locales with poor quality control. One reviewer made a comment that resonated: “It's 2020, and it stands to reason that blank DVD's are not as popular as they once were. We are definitely now in the autumn of the recordable media era.” That got me thinking. $51 for Verbatim DVD+R DL 8.5GB 8X . That’s approximately 425GB of data storage ($.12/gigabyte) (some of which will inevitably get scratched, etc., unless you’re also spending another $28 or so for jewel cases ). (You can go cheaper, but you get what you pay for.) About $79, then, about $.19/GB, total. Or ... $70 for a Buffalo 500GB external SSD  ($