Sunday Search: Digital Digging And Rediscovering

Toward the beginning of the year I was finally able to start sorting through many of the items that I tossed in my desk in an initial effort to get everything put away shortly after we moved into our new home. While there were countless pens that needed to be organized and old power cords and technology that needed to be tossed, there were also a number of digital storage devices that piqued my attention as I rescued them from the grips of the office clutter.

Once I consolidated everything into a couple of plastic sealable bags (one for SD cards and the other for flash drives), I shoved them into a pocket in my work bag with the plan of scanning the contents later in the week. A few days and then a week passed without even a single look. Then, having accidentally pulled one of the bags out by the corner while retrieving my laptop, I unsealed both bags and slid the first of about a dozen SD cards into my computer.

I was actually quite surprised when I found absolutely nothing. However, that was the only empty card as each of the others contained the photos from all of our summer trips from the past several years. Great items to hold on to for the current twigs of the family tree but nothing much more than that. Thankfully when I plugged in the first, and the oldest, flash drive into my computer, there were a multitude of documents that I hadn’t seen in at least a decade (not really a surprise given that I remember this 256kb card being the first I ever used). And as I loaded more and more into my computer, I was able to pull older photos, documents, and the entire digitized genealogy binder that my great aunt put together.

Not satisfied with these rediscoveries I tried to think of all the other means of digital storage that I have utilized over the years… this lead me to pulling out my wife’s old external hard drive as we both used this 1TB monster for many years and it primarily served as our joint computer backup in the past. Well, on this I found even more photos and documents that I had long since forgotten about including the random pieces that I had come across years ago… items that I still don’t know if they are relevant to our family tree.

The digging was almost done as there was still a group of pictures that I had yet to find. Well, actually, I had found them some time ago stored on Shutterfly but only in low resolution. I wanted the originals, I wanted to see the memories from our wedding and honeymoon the way that I remember them… as clear as the moment they happened. A few boxes and CDs later and these too where added to our story, our small leaves in our ever-growing tree. It’s nice to have most of the pieces together for at least one generation.

Where Did Those Emails Go?

Not a message you want to see pop up on your screen!

Lately I have been having some issues with my computer… again. I stepped away from my computer just before noon on Monday and when I got back to my desk the automatic updates had already kicked in. Normally this is just an annoyance so I decided to take a lunch break and resume the multitude of projects immediately after. However, when I returned the icon on my laptop was still swirling… this was followed by error messages and a frozen screen. An hour and several expletives later and I was finally back on the home page backing up all the files… almost like I knew what was going to happen next.

Shortly after I finished the data dump onto my external hard drive, the screen went blank and my laptop nearly sailed across the room and through my window. After informing IT about the problem (still waiting for the laptop to be fixed by the way), I was able to resume my work on the office backup computer (i.e. the old laptop of a former coworker). Even though I had all the files I needed I still had to deal with web access for email and rely on the small Seagate to retrieve all of my documents.

However, two issues persisted. The first is the fact that when Outlook and my computer crashed, all the emails that I had written and sent over the past hour never made it to their destinations and I couldn’t find them in the outbox, drafts, or sent files. Basically I lost half a day of work and had to redo all the edits and responses that should have been communicated. There are also limitations in Outlook functionality between desktop and web access which is proving to be an ongoing issue. 

The second issue I am still dealing with which some would consider minor while others understand the frustration that this can bring about… I am now typing on a completely different keyboard. While it still does the same job, many of the keys are in a slightly different place and so the typos have increased along with a significant decrease in the speed of my typing and subsequent productivity. Furthermore, my work computer also serves as my personal computer which is proving to be a pain in the you know what.

This isn’t the first time that I have had issue with a computer. I can’t even recall how many laptops I have gone through over the years. I have had issues with email, applications, and I have burned out computers in the past. I guess it is about that time anyway so I really should have seen this coming… Well, at least I already had an external hard drive ready to go which was actually fairly up to date. I have also been dumping documents onto the server as of late so I am better off this time than I have been in the past.

It is still annoying and a complete time suck… especially when there is no progress from IT and the broken laptop is still sitting on my desk doing nothing. However, while no other information seems to have been lost beyond the confines of email, I am still taking another step to combat the inconvenience. It is time to get another personal computer. Actually, since I won a DELL Venue Pro tablet (with Windows 8.1 already on it) last month at the Philly Tech Week Signature Event, I think I will go that route and simply add a wireless keyboard. 

That’s right, somehow I keep getting new technology for free… first a Kindle and now a DELL tablet. At least my wife wasn’t there when I won the second one and now I will be better prepared moving forward. So while I transition over I am going to try not to toss (with great vigor) my old laptop into a wall… and do my best to not slam my fist into the keyboard of the one I am writing on currently. This is despite the fact that those where reasonable ways to fix a computer 20+ years ago. Darn dainty temperamental modern technology.