Well, as you can see, there are no photos with this post today. Shortly after writing and posting on January 1st I off-loaded a bunch of photos to my computer. I had been asking my husband to back up our files so we could compress or delete some since I feared our hard drive was getting too full. Husband did not believe me. but, with the grand kids here for Christmas for 2 weeks and my son and myself taking tons of photos the hard drive DID fill up and my computer would not finish off-loading my pictures due to lack of memory! By now I am crying. So then husband tries to fix the problem for me. Nothing. So, I spent New Years day in despair and the only thing that relieves my distress is when he takes me bird watching at Lakeside Park. That evening as I babysit grand kids at my son's house poor sweet husband tries to fix the problem and in the process downloads a Trojan virus! Now we were totally locked out of our computer with pop-ups flying everywhere. Time for the yellow pages and a computer store. Gus and my son drive the hard drive into town where it remains at the computer store to be de-bugged. Hopefully more memory can be added so I can store more photos.
I did not think I would be able to get onto the Internet and blog for a few days until we reclaimed our hard drive, but then I remembered that we got a new (used) laptop computer. Now, I know many of you are used to using these things but they intimidate me and the laptop has been sitting on the counter for a few months. Well, I dug it out tonight and Gus hooked it up to the Internet for me and voila! I'm blogging again!
In the meantime, I have also been counting birds wherever I go. With my grand kids here from Maine they have been my first priority, so other than Lakeside Park, I haven't gone anywhere spectacular yet, but the kids leave tomorrow morning and I will be out the door as soon as possible. It'll take a good week or two to get my house back to normal, but I don't care. The visit has been wonderful and I have lots of photos to post once I get my regular hardrive back! Meanwhile, I am up to 40 species of birds seen so far this year! I plan on publishing a master list in a different post.
I did not think I would be able to get onto the Internet and blog for a few days until we reclaimed our hard drive, but then I remembered that we got a new (used) laptop computer. Now, I know many of you are used to using these things but they intimidate me and the laptop has been sitting on the counter for a few months. Well, I dug it out tonight and Gus hooked it up to the Internet for me and voila! I'm blogging again!
In the meantime, I have also been counting birds wherever I go. With my grand kids here from Maine they have been my first priority, so other than Lakeside Park, I haven't gone anywhere spectacular yet, but the kids leave tomorrow morning and I will be out the door as soon as possible. It'll take a good week or two to get my house back to normal, but I don't care. The visit has been wonderful and I have lots of photos to post once I get my regular hardrive back! Meanwhile, I am up to 40 species of birds seen so far this year! I plan on publishing a master list in a different post.
11 comments:
The one thing I have learned about computer equipment is that it will crash, sooner or later. After you get your computer back, invest in a couple of external hard drives. They aren't that expensive, especially when you consider the value of your photos. When I get back to the computer, I immediately dump the file of photos I have taken to one external. If your camera card fails, (has happened to me) you still have your photos. After you've deleted the junk photos copy to the 2nd external. Some call me paranoid, but I've been doing this for 3 or so years. So far, no lost photos.
If I can ever get out of snowbound Nebraska, I'll join in the January count! So far all I've seen are juncos and Canada geese.
Hope you have a wonderful 2010....
I agree with Kayleen...go to Best Buy or wherever, and get a sizeable external hard drive or two. You plug it into your computer whenever you want to add them to a blog, etc. No more space taken up by a gazillion photos! I am so sorry to hear this. I can imagine your anguish!
I am so sorry for your computer troubles Kathie. I've got several portable hard-drives that I have backed up my photos on because a long time ago my computer crashed and although I gained most of my precious cargo back, it gave me enough of a scare to back everything up now. BTW, I also recently came across a photo recovery program in case you delete photos off your memory card by mistake without saving them first. Yes I did that too recently. My niece's precious graduation pics. Couldn't believe I did that but I was so tired after an exhausting journey home in the snow. Anyhow, if you are interested in the info let me know. It is around 50 dollars to buy the program but the peace of mind is wonderful. I actually recovered everything I thought I had lost on my memory card. Sounds like you had a lovely time with your family. Happy New Year to you all!
p.s. this is the memory card inside my camera.
kayleen, how nice to see you again! I do have a Seagate but it was making my computer take so long to upload that I disconnected it months ago. I wanted my husband to reconnect it but he and I kept putting it off. Then, when it said the hard drive was full he finally tried to hook it back up. He did, but then we discovered that the software we use for our photos (Picture Project) doesn't let you move photos in and out of it. Once they go to the external hard drive I can't move them back into picture project and manipulate them anymore. Since taking the computer in we found out this is one of the downsides of Picture Project. So, we will need to find a new program to use.
So much learning to do when I would rather be out birding! Thanks for the comment and the encouragement. I agree with your double method! Sounds very wise to me.
Carolyn, thank you for your empathy. My anguish was complete but I am feeling better now. See comment above for explanation about external hard drive.
Denise, I have been so busy with my family visitng from Maine and I have so much to tell and so many birds to count and so many photos I can't access at the moment! I have heard of those recovery programs but so far I have been so careful that I have never deleted all my photos from the memory card. I knew that our hard drive was getting full but my hubbie tends to think I am over reacting or I don't know what I am talking about. I told him I wish he wouldn't have to keep proving that I am right all the time! He just laughed!
Ah yes, well sometimes Gregg and I have the same conversation - ha! I have just made a post on that card recovery, letting everyone know where they can obtain it if they need to. Let's hope I'll never have to use the blessed thing again. It was a first for me and hopefully a last :)
Kathie, sorry to hear about the puter problems, but glad it's being fixed and that you have a back up system. Thanks for reminding me. I should probably clean my hard drive of a few 1000 pics and make things run smoother and maybe even faster.
How nice to have family visiting, and then to have your life back again. Enjoy!
Commiserations Kathie. I too have been subjected to the flaming Trojan Horse and now now subscribe to Malwarebites ntimalware who up to now have caught it before it could do any damage.
My computer was down to 5 percent capacity and I too was having kittens. DD (darling daughter) downloaded a bunch of photos to the external hard drive so now I have 11 per cent to play with until she comes bach from overseas st the end of the month.
Hope your computer comes out of intensive care soon.
XOX Arija
computer woes are the worst! Hope it all straightens out for you quickly.
Kathie, you shouldn't have to change photo programs. Once you have an external hooked up, bring up where you have your photos stored. If you are dumping directly to your computer they are probably in "pictures". Then using the menu from the windows button where you turn off the computer open another screen by clicking on computer. It will show your c drive and the drives for the external as well as the camera card. If you are using vista then it's just a drag and drop excercise to move the file folders. If you are using an earlier version of Windows, there's a few more steps. If you need further help, email me at nebraskabirding at gmail and I'll try to help...
Hoping to leave for Bosque del Apache on Friday. Then will head for Louisiana, head down the Texas coast and end up in Rockport. Have a place rented for the month of Feb. in Rockport. Am looking forward to getting out of the snow (had the 8th coldest December on record), seeing some birds and reacquainting myself with the camera.
kayleen
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