Oh man, piping dd through ssh! This brings back a fond memory: I was learning Unix at the time, but never used pipes for anything serious (cat | grep, not much more). I had to clone a machine at my internship; all the Windows guys used some specific tools for that, but this was a Linux box, so their tools wouldn't work. When I had the idea of piping dd through ssh, I thought I was so clever! I was really impressed that it actually worked, too. That's when I realized the power of the Unix philosophy.