How my Computer ATE My Pictures
A Tale of Woe by Absinthe
(bold type for dramatic effect)
Chapter One
so my lovely silver laptop's iphoto program wasnt loading, so I took it to the ETC (tech support). They told me I'd reshuffled my pictures (who knew you couldn't reorganize things on a mac?) and confused the program, so to fix it i'd have to put all my pictures into one folder and then all would be well. About halfway into doing this, I realized that none of my pictures would open.
Chapter Two
Took little absinthe (my computer) back to the ETC where the guy who gave me the shoddy advice helped a ton by telling me that somehow the computer had changed all my photos into aliases when i moved them, and without the now non-existent originals they couldn't be opened. Yep. My computer ate my photos. He also really helped by using the phrase they're just .... GONE alot.
Chapter Three
The horror continued as i had to wait until the next day to get this "undelete" program to see if they could find my original files. This involved booting my comupter to a Firewire port, putting it in a coma. They got a program, which ran for three hours, then selfdestructed when it didn't have a serial number, accomplishing nothing.
Chapter Four
Program number two took just as long, but magically retrieved 3,000 files. Weeded these down to 1,2000 that were actually my photos, burned them onto a CD, and voila!
Chapter Five
Until, that is, we realized that all the files, which had once been about a megabite each, were now only the size of thumbnails. Nothing could be done (including the computer dude, the third one to help me, going into the terminal and writing some mysterious code in Unix) to find the original ones, which like i said, were eaten up.
So, I got my photos back, they are all tiny and suck, but all is not lost, i suppose. Iphoto is the dumbest piece of crap ever.
!the moral of the story is!
I've decided to garner some wisdom from this massive headache of an experience (other than all the cool computer terminology I learned). You rarely think of the last time you'll have something. The last time you'll see someone, really; your last day of work; your last day in an old home; the last day a familiar site or place is the same.
This happens to me all the time. My favorite coffee-shop haunt closed, my old youth leaders got kicked out of the church by bible thumpers (no, I wasn't god's special helper, but I did go to youth group way back when), the 100 year-old tree in my front yard back home got cut down, my friends left home, the bands we always drove hours to see broke up.
You never know when an unforseen change will come and devour what you know. So if you ever feel like you should make a metaphorical back-up disk, you should. Don't wait to do or say things, cause you never know.
I'm talking about deep, meaningful stuff here people, like how you never know when your naked pictures (well, most of them weren't naked, and none of me) will be chewed up by your computer. So Save, people. SAVE !!
A Tale of Woe by Absinthe
(bold type for dramatic
effect)
Chapter One
so my lovely silver laptop's iphoto program wasnt loading, so I took it to the ETC (tech support). They told me I'd reshuffled my pictures (who knew you couldn't reorganize things on a mac?) and confused the program, so to fix it i'd have to put all my pictures into one folder and then all would be well. About halfway into doing this, I realized that none of my pictures would open.
Chapter Two
Took little absinthe (my computer) back to the ETC where the guy who gave me the shoddy advice helped a ton by telling me that somehow the computer had changed all my photos into aliases when i moved them, and without the now non-existent originals they couldn't be opened. Yep. My computer ate my photos. He also really helped by using the phrase they're just .... GONE alot.
Chapter Three
The horror continued as i had to wait until the next day to get this "undelete" program to see if they could find my original files. This involved booting my comupter to a Firewire port, putting it in a coma. They got a program, which ran for three hours, then selfdestructed when it didn't have a serial number, accomplishing nothing.
Chapter Four
Program number two took just as long, but magically retrieved 3,000 files. Weeded these down to 1,2000 that were actually my photos, burned them onto a CD, and voila!
Chapter Five
Until, that is, we realized that all the files, which had once been about a megabite each, were now only the size of thumbnails. Nothing could be done (including the computer dude, the third one to help me, going into the terminal and writing some mysterious code in Unix) to find the original ones, which like i said, were eaten up.
So, I got my photos back, they are all tiny and suck, but all is not lost, i suppose. Iphoto is the dumbest piece of crap ever.
!the moral of the story is!
I've decided to garner some wisdom from this massive headache of an experience (other than all the cool computer terminology I learned). You rarely think of the last time you'll have something. The last time you'll see someone, really; your last day of work; your last day in an old home; the last day a familiar site or place is the same.
This happens to me all the time. My favorite coffee-shop haunt closed, my old youth leaders got kicked out of the church by bible thumpers (no, I wasn't god's special helper, but I did go to youth group way back when), the 100 year-old tree in my front yard back home got cut down, my friends left home, the bands we always drove hours to see broke up.
You never know when an unforseen change will come and devour what you know. So if you ever feel like you should make a metaphorical back-up disk, you should. Don't wait to do or say things, cause you never know.
I'm talking about deep, meaningful stuff here people, like how you never know when your naked pictures (well, most of them weren't naked, and none of me) will be chewed up by your computer. So Save, people. SAVE !!
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[Edited on Dec 01, 2004 9:14PM]