Drama

(LONG STORY, SORRY...but I needed to get this out and it might help someone in the future)

Drama on my blog's birthday (that's just not right)...my cousin Kerry (aka Dupree) was taking care of some "house-cleaning" issues on my computer and well, all hell broke lose. We were there from about 11am until 10pm and what everyone thought would be something easy and fine, turned into a living nightmare. What Lennye would call a MAJOR debacle. The reason Kerry was doctoring my computer was because one day last week I made up my mind to back up all picture files on my computer, because there were a lot and I couldn't find my last back up session. Little did I know how many precious pictures I had on my computer...I'll get to that.

Every time I tried to copy a file, I would get an error message...so we weren't sure if something was corrupt in the files or possibly my dvd drive just wasn't reading correctly for me to burn the pictures on a disk.

I was pretty concerned about it, seeing as if all living creatures were out of the house safely if there were to be a fire, my computer tower, because of the pictures, would be the FIRST thing I would grab. At least 8 years of my memories, Art, and life is all documented through photos kept on that computer.

So, Kerry was going to PIMP out my computer, make it run faster, etc...even put in a new hard drive with a sick amount of space on it JUST to store my ridiculous amounts of photos and music on so that the other hard drive on my computer would house/run everything else. I spent what I feel (being a non-computer person) was an obscene amount of money--though Kerry and his computer buddies see that as just pocket change for making your computer greater--not even the greatest--at Best Buy to buy these things Kerry needed to make it run better. In this process he was going to erase my hard drive by moving all of my important documents onto their server they have in their loft. (I will include the fun parts of the visit later)

It took hours for everything to copy properly and we watched it "say" that it copied all of my pictures. Kerry erases the hard drive, we go out and take pictures, he starts my old hard drive off on a clean slate and starts putting stuff back onto the new hard drive...we go to open the "MY PICTURES" file to find ABSOLUTELY NO pictures whatsoever.

At this point, I had to sit down. I truly felt like I was going to vomit. One could say I deserved this because I didn't have a back up...but that was the reason I was repairing things so I COULD back up. No photos. Not one picture from college, not one picture of moving into the new house/renovations, not one picture of one cute puppy out of four cuties, not one vacation set...nothing. He kept looking, only to find nothing and then I couldn't hold it together anymore. I broke out into an ugly sob...it was worse than just a cry. I'm pretty sure slobber was falling out of my mouth. Pretty embarrassing.

He of course felt like crap and didn't know what happened and sent us home. He was going to stay up and call some computer guru friends and get more minds on the issue. When Julie and I got out to the car, I'm pretty sure I cried harder than I have since they called me on the phone in Valdosta and told me my Uncle had lost his battle to the two types of cancer he was dying from. I know it seems silly to think about crying over pictures, but when I cry it's usually a short thing and I do my best to suck it up and move on...I let myself have this all out sob fest for a few minutes and when it got to the point where I felt like I was going to throw up, I cut myself off and we jammed out to some upbeat hip hop tunes on the way home. It was still on my mind though. I could still cry about it!

I think it upset me so much because those photos are my hobby and my Art. They document so many years of my life and it wouldn't be something I could get back. It would be like it never happened and as my memory started to fade about things, I wouldn't even be able to remember half the things I did and took pictures of. That felt devastating to me, to not have something to look back on for memory, for recognition of something happening once upon a time.

The latest in the drama is Kerry found an online program written by pro-photographers to recover lost photos on computers and cameras--when you think they've been deleted. How amazing is that people? The software is one of the free ones, because ones do exist that cost hundreds of dollars. After spending $300 just to have a computer that would house my photos, it was pretty sucky not to have any photos to do anything with and I'm fortunate not to have to pay for anything extra.

IF (IF the big word, keep fingers crossed!)they all get recovered and Kerry said that he saw it was starting to recover 750!! photos, they wont be organized in nice, neat little files labeled all beautifully like I had them, BUT at least I will HAVE them.

The new plan will be that it's easier to back up on a flash drive (with many gigs) and keep that somewhere safe. If all of this turns out ok, I'm going to get a small fire proof box and every time I update the flash drives, they will get locked in the box. Much easier to grab in case of crisis than unplugging a computer tower. I will be doing this, because apparently they REALLY do mean that much to me.

If I were you, besides the people in your household, think seriously about what means the most in your house and (what you could never replace) and how you need to be maintaining its safety daily, and how you would SAVE it if you ever had to leave your house...and do whatever it takes to insure what means most to you. I thought I knew how much mine meant to me, until it was gone and now I know better than before. Sometimes you can go back and recover something, but most times you can't...so it's better to not even have to worry over the "what ifs."