Fast BZip2 compression on multi core Mac Pro

So you try to compress 8.5GB worth of source code and libraries to a 4.5GB tbz2 tarball, only to discover running:

tar -jcvpf dev20110411.tbz2 dev

takes about 30 minutes to complete, on a Mac Pro with 8 cores Xeon 2.8 GHz, 16GB RAM and a new 2TB 7200rpm WD Caviar Black HDD. The problem is explained below...

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Is it just me?

Or is the world insane? I am having a hard time these days deciding whether I am becoming senile or whether the world is. I see so many wandering idiots, supposedly specialists in their area of labour... How can people be so...eish...voidish....???

Failing Mac Pro HDD

Seems like my primary hard drive on my Mac Pro is about to fail. Better go buy a replacement one tomorrow, it is much easier to replace a hard drive BEFORE it fails even though I have a time machine backup. This is why I believe it is failing...

disk2s2: I/O error.
         0 [Level 3] [ReadUID 0] [Facility com.apple.system.fs] 
[ErrType IO] [ErrNo 5] [IOType Read] [PBlkNum 6201688] [LBlkNum 128] 
[FSLogMsgID 1593631401] [FSLogMsgOrder First]          0 [Level 3] [ReadUID 0] 
[Facility com.apple.system.fs] [DevNode /dev/disk2s2] [MountPt /] 
[Path /Library/Application Support/iWork '09/Frameworks/SFRendering.framework/Versions/
A/SFRendering] [FSLogMsgID 1593631401] [FSLogMsgOrder Last] 
hfs_clonefile: cluster_read failed - 5

And...

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Cold

Taken two years ago, in March 2009 in Winnipeg, Manitoba just before we relocated to Surrey, British Columbia. I think this epitomises the word "Extreme Cold".

Katja - Cold
Katja - Cold

iPad 2 Cameras

Wow. Did not know this... The front facing camera is 640 x 480. The rear facing camera is 960 x 720. Eish... Both are less than 1MP. In fact, they represent 0.3MP and 0.675MP, respectively. In other words, they suck.