Thursday, April 24, 2008

Janna the sentimental computer zombie

Sorry I've not been online much these past couple days.
There's a good reason, I swear.
And, even though I am exhausted, I plan on sharing it with you right now. (Hugs afterward! And a plethora of carbonated beverages!)

You all know that my computer is old and fussy and slow. You know this because I enjoy complaining about it. :) Well, with every passing day, it becomes more and more apparent that this old technosaur is going to die soon. It freezes up more and more often, it refuses to view some webpages, it freezes up whenever I scroll down a Facebook page or a Yahoo page.
I can't download most new software or plug-ins because I have Windows 98, which is rapidly becoming laughably obsolete.

And yet, I am too poor to buy anything new.

Well, guess what.
I have a VERY nice uncle who is VERY good with computers and has VERY generously offered to build me one of my very own. He's built plenty of them before (even my mom has one he built). When he heard that his own niece was reduced to the embarrassment of using Windows 98, he graciously offered to build me an all-new one. I will have Windows NT and a whole bunch of other stuff. (He says to stay away from Vista, no matter what, so that's why I'm getting NT).
A new computer!
I am excited about that.

Thrilled.
Overjoyed!

The ONLY problem is that now I have to go through my files and decide what stuff I want to save. I have TEN YEARS' worth of pictures and stories and poetry and music compositions and e-mails and memories. I have to go through it all and decide what is important to keep.... and what is ok to let go.
That's harder than you might think.
Those of you who have ever had a computer completely crash dead, losing everything in the process.... you had the devastating experience of not even getting a CHANCE to decide what to save. I feel for you!
Here, though, I find myself in the position of being able to choose what I want to keep.

I've spent hours and hours and hours, going through ancient e-mails from all the way back to 1999.
I am a sentimental person, and I wish I could save it all.

I also have A TON of pictures I've used for making my graphics. Plus I have a ton of pictures I've taken with my cheap lousy little digital camera. Plus there are all the graphics I've made for myself and other people. What do I save? What do I throw away?

I decided to save almost all of the music I wrote, even little fragments of things.

If only I had a CD-burner, I could just save all this stuff on CD. But I don't.

So, here's the plan:

I'm e-mailing the music compositions to my mom, then she's e-mailing it back to me once I get the new computer set up.
The e-mails that I'm saving, I'm forwarding to my g-mail account. I might also be able to save some on floppy disk, provided my floppy drive still works.
The pictures I'm saving will probably go to my Flickr account. I may also sign up for Photobucket.

It's very time consuming, and very emotionally draining, to go through ten years worth of STUFF.

That's what I've been doing for the past couple days.
But I need to take a break now. My brain is the consistency of pop-rocks.
So, let's all have a group hug, and drink something.

Guess what happens when you mix pop-rocks with a carbonated beverage....
.

9 comments:

Tug said...

Flash drives are fairly cheap these days - I just ordered an 8 gb one for $43 - e-mail me if you want the link.

Anonymous said...

OMG! I do not envy the job ahead of you!

What DOES happen when you mix poprocks and carbonated beverages?

Pandora Wilde said...

You should be able to send a LOT of that to your own Gmail account, given the amount of space and the fact that the only thing you can't send is exe's.

Travis Cody said...

I agree with Tug. If you can swing it, a flash drive is definitely the best way to save everything you want to keep.

Good luck!

And YAY for you!

BillyWarhol said...

Congrats! Get a Cheap external Drive!
U can get 250 Gigabytes for $100 or i'm sure their are 80GB Drives being blown out for $60 Bucks or cheaper!

Whatever ya do make sure U Backup all yer Memories U will be glad U did!!

;))

Marilyn said...

$60 to $100 is a lot of money in my world... but after loosing too many graphic files to computer crashes I bought one of those portable external things. I don't remember what I paid for it, but I use it a lot to transport jpg proofs from my work computer to my e-mail computer. I got to write it off on my taxes. Maybe you could too, seeing as how Jannagraphics is your business.

Janna said...

Tug: I'm interested! My uncle has recommended something called a "thumb drive", which I guess is the same thing. I'm probably going to buy one!

Metalmom: I think the pop rocks fizz explosively out of control, sort of like Mentos.

Pand0ra: I have been sending some of the stuff to g-mail!

Travis: I've been procrastinating, but yes, I definitely want to buy a flash drive/thumb drive thingy!!!

Billy: Thanks! It's amazing how much time and effort is involved in all this backup!

Marilyn: How many gigabytes did you get for $60-$100? Just curious.

Wavemancali said...

www.xdrive.com 5 Gb of storage free AOL is the company that runs it and you can even share the files from there.

I use it all the time to keep a backup copy of 3 of my flash drives and they've never lost a stitch of my data. I also use it to share files with my sister in Scotland.

Hope this helps you out.

Janna said...

Wavemancali: I checked... to use it, you need to download stuff. That won't work for me, because I'll be getting rid of this computer and getting a new one. The new computer won't have the same stuff as the old one.