A More Productive Day!

It isn't the same thread because we have become quite productive. Dahlia is perfecting her weather machine and moving mountains. I have impressed a dragon. We have gone to an island and had a party. Gloria has joined us! Sofer has sent pictures. And much, much more! What next?

I will make a link to this thread for the older unproductive thread. Here is where we came from:

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/937832/#new

This message was edited Jan 17, 2009 9:20 PM

Thank you! Here is a tropical fish for the lagoon or the moat.

Oh lovely! Better than crocodiles which I think are traditional for moats.

Definitely time for a new thread.

Picante, I used to live on Lopez Island in the San Juan Islands in Washington.

Roybird, I think I like your tai chi instructor. Herding cats, I think I understand perfectly. And if there is anything that makes a cat mad, it is being herded. I used to raise litters of border collie puppies. Often at five weeks one or more puppies would turn on to herding and start herding the other puppies. Or, on occasion, our arrogant elitist tuxedo cat, who was totally indignant and appalled.

Personally, I use the analogy of ducks. I no longer attempt to get my ducks in a row, what a futile task! Instead I settle for a loose flock if I can manage it.

I am going to do something drastic tomorrow. I should wait until early March to start up the greenhouse, but it is going to be 53 degrees tomorrow and I am going to plant some tomato seeds and put them in the hot frame in the insulated section of the hoop house. I had a pretty bad summer last year for tomatoes, never got my usual massive avalanche of them.

It will be different this year! Even if we hit 20 below again in February, full speed ahead!

This way I can bring tomatoes to the mountain/island top picnic. By the time they are ripe, I am sure Dahlianut will have it all figured out.

There was a loose flock over the Hudson River yesterday. I suspect it was even looser after that encounter with the airliner.

I try not to mingle my hypothetical ducks with airliners. It does not seem to be good for either the ducks or the airliners.

LOL! You guys are funny. Poor ducks. Lucky airline and passengers and heroic captain. I would have gone nuts if both of my engines feel off while I was trying to take off. I know I am off topic, but I am still proud of the captain, crew and even the passengers. A little good luck is a good thing!

We have a topic???

Yes, I think the topic is "Anything You Want" because we are all so bored with winter. We will have plenty of topics as soon as the weather warms up.

Then, chocolate it is!

Ah, yes, the all time favorite topic!

Oh, you just have to see this ice sculpture. It expresses the weather in the Rockies perfectly.

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/fp.php?pid=6016841

Actually, it has been getting warmer ever day here -- highs close to 50. Snow melting slowly. Nights in low 20's.

That sculpture is a riot!
Chocolate. I take it like vitamins. Organic 70% cacao, 3 squares a day, whether I'm tired or not. Cures iron-poor blood.

That is hysterical.

Reminds me a little of when my daughter was 3 and wanted me to make her a gingerbread house. I always made elaborate ones but was having a bad year, that was when my ex had gone violently insane.

I was in no mood for Christmas but I wanted to make hers nice, so I made a gingerbread house with a marshmallow fireplace and a table inside. It had a peppermint path to the little outhouse with the half moon in the door. It was a one holer with a chocolate chip, so I made her happy while expresing my own attitude, ha!

It's been around 50 here. Yeah! But it's just a tease. With our story/ fantasy threads we are engaging in a traditional winter practice. Hunkered around the fire, or the computer, or both we are...uh...telling stories to get through the dark, cold winter. It is lighter than it was and great to have the january thaw. But, I can feel it takes a toll on me; winter. You all have such interesting, quirky, fun free association skills! And laughing is a really good way to stay warm!

L.o.l. , Mulch! Just what I meant.

Agreed about the laughing. Yes, I can feel the sun warming. I mean literally. Sunny days are sunnier than they were around the solstice. And then, of course they are noticably longer. My attitude is improving, but it isn't quite there yet. Raja gets me out in the sun for walks and we have just started going to the dog park. She loves it. We have also started obedience training. She loves that, too, but has a way to go in the obedience department. So cute and sweet and cuddly, though. She sure helped me with this winter.

Speaking of being productive; I am now organizing my pictures to put on an independent hard drive. I am starting on a rose folder. Six hundred and thirty five rose pic's so far and still counting! Egad! This is just for 2008. I promise that in 2009 I will Not save a picture of every single flower. They are nice to see, though.

Wow! I am going to have to do something like that, also. For the first time in my life I actually go back and look at old pictures and am really enjoying it. Like the pictures I posted of the sausage tree and the cannonball tree. When they were in boxes, I never looked. On the computer, I can find them in minutes.

Good idea, Roybird, I have four or five external hard drives. I never completely trust any one backup, due to long experience with the fact any equipment eventually fails. So I like at least three backups of everything, and more is common with me. Usually cds and/or dvds and on at least two external hard drives.

However, there is nothing wrong with keeping most of the photos of flowers you take. You never know when you might be looking for something different than you have in mind as you save them. As long as they are not just plain awful, keep them. I have around 60,000 flower photos now and still going strong! That means I can usually find almost anything I need, especially poppies since well over half of my flower photos are poppies.

PS, I envy your roses as they do not grow that well here, and even if they do, the deer eat them.

roybird,
Is this new hard drive internal or external? Where did you buy it? I may need to get a new one myself.

Paj, you can go to Tom's Hardware and look at reviews of both external and internal hard drives. That is one of the most respected sites for current and accurate hardware information.

However, I reccommend not buying Maxtor as I foolishly bought two of them before I found out how often they fail. One died very quickly but the other one is still going. I also have a couple of ibooks, an iomega, an azio, and I forget what else.

Kevin bought it at Baillos. It is a mini-max desk top hard drive.It's for Macs. We don't have it hooked up yet. There is some controversy about the best way to store photos. I think Mulch is right to back up files in more than one way. We will also be burning c.d.'s and I'm considering joining an on-line photo gallery as well. But, first I want to be organized. This will be our 2nd hard drive box because Kev uses one for his videos. Whew. I keep forgetting to tell you that I was on t.v. the night before last on the food network show Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. On a show called "Neighborhood Favorites". The show was filmed last summer at Tune Up restaurant across the street from our house. I had fun taking pictures of the film crew working. I also ate lunch and got on t.v. saying nice things about the food. I haven't seen it yet. Charlotte, one of the owners, says she will bring me a d.v.d. The food network is airing the show a few more times which can be discovered on their website. I'm a neighborhood super star and food critic! I hope I don't look too awful.

roybird a star! I knew it! I will look the show up and see if I can catch you. Thanks, mulch for the info on hard drives. I got a new Maxstor a few years ago and it died the minute I tried to do anything with it. They replaced it free, but it messed up some of my files irreparably. The sad thing is I had started moving files to it, then after a day or so erasing the originals, so I didn't have copies of all of them. Grr. The second one is fine, but no one can replace the files I had on the old hard drive.
I will check out Tom's Hardware, never had heard of it before. Or use of storage is starting to increase at a more rapid rate because DH got a whole bunch of new software for Christmas and is getting more involved yet in theatrical sound design. And I keep taking more pictures.
I have been backing up to CD Rom, as well.
Guess I won't be buying hardware at Baillo's because I don't have a Mac.

I've killed two external hard drives - different brands and I thought reputable. Seems like they are not as reliable. Perhaps they assumed they would be turned off most of the time.

They can run really hot, which shortens their life. Ones with good venting and possibly fans are likely to last longer if you keep them on a lot.

I don't have a fancydancy hard drive but I can back up my pics on DVD, can't I??? Do I know how do this, of course no, but I have DVDS. I am so impressed I know a movie star ^_^ I shall brag about roybird at parties now. I have no shame. I luv to brag about my friends.

If you have software that writes to discs, just start it up, tell it you want to make a data disc, copy the files you want to have on it to the indicated location, and burn them to the disc.

And you don't need a DVD for that. A CD will do.

DN /Les I periodically copy all my pics onto CD and other files too! Good thing cause I accindentally deleted some dogs pics awhile ago and there they were on my backup CD! But a little flash drive would probably be just as good except they seem to get lost!

Backing up to CD or DVD is a good idea. Trouble is, many of us don't do it enough. I backed all mine up about a month ago, but much has changed since then. Need to backup is one of the first lessons of being a computer geek. If you are meticulous about backing up there is no need to worry about loss.

Paj, you can say that again in all capital letters. I have backup religion, having gone through so many chunks of computer equipment that managed to self destruct in endlessly creative and maddening ways.

Forgot to congratulate Roybird on her TV gig. CONGRATS!

Hi fancyvan ^_^ I never did make it over for homemade cookies. Drat my loss. Glad to here you saved the puppy pics! I will take all your advice and hope the wizard shows up to help me through it. ps I bet you have to organize the pics with the ACD software first before you do this? I'm really hopeless aren't I sigh. I'm sorry I'm so challenged (blush)

ACD software? What is that? If it is the built in compression automatic backup software that comes with some external hard drives, I never use the stuff. I like putting file folders on there that I can recognize, sort through, etc. and the fancy software ruins all that.

My flower photo organization is basic. Name of flower, and then the year for the folder. Then I just dump all the appropriate photos in there. So I might have Amaryllis 04, Amaryllis 05, etc. Poppies get more sorting because I have so many of them, like Poppy Red 08, Poppy Pink 08, etc.

I just stick the folders and contents onto the hard drive, generally just doing drag and drop. Easy. When I am taking a few hundred photos a day at peak bloom in the garden, I burn them onto cds or dvds unsorted, just to have a quick backup. As I said, I have backup religion.

Not a big issue Les. Once I put the CD in I just follow the instructions!

Thanks so much Carol. Mulch the ACD software is the program that gets the pictures out of my camera onto the Puter. I think I will back everything up in its mixedupness just to be safe on CD or DVD and then I will try to organize my photos on my harddrive. That way if I blow something up they are backed up right? I'm extremely techie challenged.

Dahlianut, you are right on track.

If you want to see techie challenged, look at my DH. He refuses to even turn the computer on to check email. He does not know how to check email. Once, before I met him, someone gave him a digital watch. He tried to set it, but it kept going further and further into the twilight zone. Finally he solved the problem by opening the wood stove and throwing the watch in there.

Now THAT is techie challenged...

O I can sooooo relate paj. I don't wear a watch. They make me nervous. I'm just not comfortable wearing a little time bomb on me. Why? Someone just explain it. No one has ever explained it so that it makes sense. I am not anti-watch. Watches are allowed in my home. They just make me nervous.