Terabytes, Tech Support, a Twit, Tables, Trapped, Treats &Truly Wonderful on a Sunday ...

TERABYTES, TECH SUPPORT & a TWIT:



Last time I was here ...



... typing



... into the ether



... to nobody ....



... no one reading ....



... no one caring ....



... yet, still ....




... I type -


I had stated that the wonderful UPS man had just delivered my 6 Terabyte External Drive:

I actually waited until Saturday to install it. Put the disk in and it seemed to hang.

Waited.


And waited.


And waited some more.


Then I decided to do what I do as a non-hacker ... I called Technical Support.

Unfortunately I got the "Support Guy From Hell With a Thick Accent". Wanted to ask a few questions, but he jumped right in and wanted me to turn on the device. I was leery since that was not the order it said to do it in, and you know me - BY THE BOOK!

He was hard to understand and things were not showing up on my system like he expected so he spent an hour verbally abusing me, not listening to my REPEATED suggestion to work from a page that I thought we could get the device to be recognized by my computer. But no ... apparently I was not to have a say in what we did other than be berated if he perceived I did something wrong (most of the time I had done it correctly, my system was just not showing what he expected to see) and told - repeatedly when I tried to make a suggestion to: "stop talking".

I was LIVID.

After AN HOUR, I had had more than enough of him. He was asking what drive letter was assigned to the device, but since my system was not recognizing the device (gee - could that be because we had not formatted it for Windows yet, sir?) I told him there was not one - and he had the AUDACITY to sarcastically start explaining what letters of the alphabet were - and did I recognize them?

At that point, well ....


we sort of got into a verbal ... tussle. My patience was gone! We each stepped back and tried one more thing, me not suggesting that if we just RIGHT CLICKED ON THE STATUS LINE .... RIGHT ... THERE! (just as I had described it - 10 times to him), maybe we could get the menu he wanted to show up! But I stayed silent this time as he told me that my device was broken and how to go about returning it.

I said OK and got off the phone as fast as I could with him. He basically just hung up on me - didn't give me my case number, nothing - just a dial tone in my ear.


I took a deep breath, calmed down a bit, looked at the menu that he said should not be coming up and to shut up about it, RIGHT CLICKED ON THE STATUS LINE OF THE DEVICE, and whaddya know? THE MENU HE WAS LOOKING FOR POPPED UP. I selected 'Format as RAID 0' and in a mind blowing 5 minutes I had my device up and running.

A TOTAL WASTED HOUR ... In addition to the fact that I have NEVER been spoken to like that in either my professional life or my life as a home computer owner. And let me tell you - my first job was back when women did not fix computers and the older 'gentlemen' who were very frustrated that their computer was not working correctly did not seem thrilled when I stepped into their office to sit down with them and find out what the problem was. They were abusive and thought I was an idiot - getting all this all from me just walking into their office ... apparently without the requisite sexual organs ....

Those guys were CHILDS PLAY to this ... ahem .... Twit. I seriously do not know what his problem was or what set him off but I could do without going through that again .... EVER ....

And, yes - I know you are wondering, and I, myself wondered after the fact:

WHY DIDN'T I JUST HANG UP ON HIM?

I have discovered at this late juncture of my life that I have a serious problem when someone is verbally abusing me - or basically doing something that I am not expecting. My brain sort of freezes up and I try to make the best of it, plugging along - or if someone is yelling at me - I just stand there and take it. I don't know why I can't snap out of this stupor - it is always way after the fact that I figure out what I should have done, should have said, should have hit them with ...

Thus - my Saturday morning abuse session went on longer than it ever should have.

To make myself feel better - I called back, talked to a lovely gentleman who gave me my case number so that when I wrote my complaint - which he kindly gave me all the information I would need to do so, that the actual individual who was speaking to me would be identified. Wrote a SCATHING letter to Western Digital Technical Support, felt better and moved on with my day.

Started cleaning up my disk to see how much I could recover without deleting my photos and graphics. I actually cleaned a bunch off of my C drive - having a whole 250GB in 'Temp'? Didn't know what it was so I blew it away. Looked much better, yes?


That evening I was going to continue to work on a Photoshop project that I had been working on. Started to click into the folder where all the files lived and went 'Ooops!'. I remembered that for some reason I had embedded that set of folders in a folder with a very vanilla, 'look-at-me-I'm-not-really-doing-anything-but-taking-up-space' name and I had deleted it. TOTALLY forgot that all my files were below that innocuous folder - thus .... gone.

"Ah ha!" I said - yes, out loud. I was fine! I realized that it would be in the trusty Recycle Bin! Can't tell you how many times I've scrounged around in that Digital Dumpster to recover something I didn't mean to toss in there ...

Blissfully click on the Recycle Bin icon ....

Hmmmm, there are only 27 items in the Recycle Bin? How can that be? I was just rummaging through it Thursday and .... Ohhhhhhh Nooooooooo! Perhaps that particular trash is stored in something called Temp? Me thinks this is the case because EVERYTHING WAS GONE. Hours of work on my part. Not the end of the world - no family heirloom photos lost forever - or not permanently deleting 5 YEARS OF GARY'S PHOTOS (did that in 2005 - eek! Don't mention it to him - his face gets a very mottled red and, well, it's just not all that pleasant ....) so I was trying to get over it and move on - begin again ...

As a last gasp attempt to find it, I did a search at the top most level of the C: drive for the name of one of the folders - one that I was sure of the name so that it would not be a wasted search. Started the search and set it off to the side to chunk away for hours and forgot about it.

A couple of hours later, I popped it up and WHAT DO YOU KNOW! For some totally inexplicable reason - the folders were in my 'Drop Box' folder! I must have put it there so that it would be on the Drop Box server so I could access it from everywhere - but the 'why' is totally beyond me. Really no reason to need to access it from everywhere since 'everywhere' does not have Photoshop CS5 and I totally don't remember putting it there. I'm not complaining! I just cannot for the life of me figure out why it all was there - and every bit was there - I lost nothing. I am so glad that I decided to do a search - I really thought it was gone. Good to know that the little piece of Pollyanna in me is rewarded every now and then.

Being wary, now of blowing stuff off my system, I made sure that all my drives were in good working order and ready to transfer data off the C: drive so that it could breathe again.

Here is one of my USB hubs (yes, WHAT? I can't have more than one USB Hub?), my 6 Terabyte External Drive and my 3 Terabyte External Drive:

Transferred all my graphics over during the night, and my photos over during church. I was pleasantly surprised at how fast it transferred that much data! I purchased an eSATA cable to use with my new drive since I have one eSATA port on the back of my machine and only about 6 or 7 USB ports - which, of course are all used up. The eSATA is much faster than the USB 2.0 that I would have had to use if I had not purchased the cable - so a good $8.00 investment.

Then came the fun part .... DELETING ALL MY PHOTOS AND GRAPHICS! I checked that they were on the 6 Terabyte drive. I checked that the number of bytes, folders, files were exact - thus knowing it was a clean copy. It was. I checked that my backups to my portable 1 Terabyte Drives were working properly and that all the data was still there and accessible. So with two good, complete, stable copies .... I was brave enough to delete all my data!

Look at my computer now! Much, much better? Now it looks like a normal persons C: drive!


In addition to being a data hog - I am a drive hog - which I guess is a good thing - I will always have a drive to dump all my data on! Here is the top of my computer with the other USB hub (so that I can plug in more than two of these little cuties - the 1 Terabyte Portable drives that I don't go anywhere without! You never know when you are going to need that photo from May 2007 or that one piece of 859,275 pieces of graphics I have for something ....

You will find 1 Terabyte portable drives lying about my desk all the time like so much litter:

They do have homes - their little traveling suitcases. Here is my 'Tower of Drives':

Colorful, yes?


TABLES:

Gary has put the oil on the entry tables and a couple coats of Polyurethane and they are unspeakably gorgeous! Well, see for yourself:

Hmmmmmm?

Little beauties, aren't they? I cannot stress enough how NICE it is to be married to someone with so many talents! He has truly outdone himself here ....


TRAPPED & TREATS:

This evening our home teachers were coming over. A father / son combo and Gary was going to take the son to a fireside after the visit - so there was a time limit on the visit. When they got here, everyone but me was in church clothes and Charlie was jumping wildly about, so we did what we do every now and then and locked her in our bedroom. She is actually pretty good about it. She does not scratch the door - having some innate sense that we would kill her if she put claws on wood of any kind in our home ...

They finished up and everyone went their separate ways. Gary and the son off to the fireside. The father back home and me to my desk. That was at 5:40 - right on schedule for Gary and company to get to the fireside on time.

I was reveling in a quiet house - with echoes of Jessies happy laughter still floating in the air. Working on my computer, soon, I had lost all track of time. At about 7:30, I heard a faint scratch and thought "Is Charlie outside?" I didn't think that she was, but I got up to check. As I was walking over to the back door, I notice THAT OUR BEDROOM DOOR WAS STILL SHUT! Yes, she had waited TWO HOURS quietly to be let out (hopefully she was asleep). She was FREAKED and ECSTATIC! I was so appalled I plied her with treats and hugs ...

poor, poor Charlie ....


And I saved the best for last ... and this is so long - if there is anyone out there actually reading this, I doubt they will have hung in this long ...


So sad ...


TRULY WONDERFUL:

Jessie was here today - as she is on Sunday afternoons. She was dressed especially nice and her hair was, well ... she didn't look like a homeless person ...

So I took some photos. She was funny about letting me take the photos, but I just kept snapping away! As I was clicking through them, I thought it was cute as each one popped up and she had moved - sort of a jerky 'Jessie Movie'. Since I am thinking of saving this electronically (no more books, but probably will save an electronic copy) I didn't want to put in a slide show - since 1) They don't show up on iThings (iTouch, iPads, etc) and 2) They are just a blank spot in the electronic copy or the book. So I put them in just in order. So no stop action movie - but still - I thought she was cute:













Yeah - did you figure out that BOTH Charlie and Dad were in my bedroom - off to her right? She really wanted to know what was going on in there!

I wish photos did Jessie justice. She has such an energy and light and joy and peace radiating from her (most of the time) that you can sense it, feel it, see it. 'It' seems to stay in our house for a bit after she has gone back to her home - like a faint, beautiful scent that has lingered, and when you take a whiff, you immediately stop, smile, slow down, and enjoy the fleeting moment of being wrapped in a soft blanket of pure joy, love and peace ...

When Jessie is here - it is hard. I am not as healthy as I was when she lived here, and I am not used to her being here all the time, so it can be hard - needing much patience and the ability to flit around with her. It helps when Gary and I can volley her back and forth - we go to separate places him with a movie, me on the computer and she goes back and forth. Watches a movie with Daddy (and I don't have to!) and with me we make Disney Princess pages for her to take back to her house - perusing the web for newer and more exciting pictures every week - with her doing a lot of 'hmmmmmm', 'ummmmmm' then a strong: 'that one!' and onto the page it goes!

But even though it is hard, and tiring and I lose my patience with her (I hate to admit) it is so, so very much more than that too.

Gary does not mind picking her up, and I am having a hard time health-wise with staying upright for the 3-hour block of meetings, so Gary is the one that usually picks her up. When they arrive home, sadly, I am usually in bed.

And so this is how it goes:

It will be quiet, Charlie lying by my side and I am totally relaxed starting to feel better - or if I am sick that day - trying to talk myself into feeling better.

Then:

Charlies head raises off the bed, her ears perking up ...

Soon she is jumping off the bed and into the kitchen to whine and jump straight up - 5 feet in the air - her usual greeting for anyone coming home ...

Then I hear the metal gate between the cars and the backyard clang ...

Next: a very loud: "Charlie!" from my girl ...

The door opens and I can hear her bursting into the house shouting: "Mom, where are you? I am here!"


And it begins ...





... and for another week -




I am filled, reset, rejuvenated, calmed, at peace ....