February 2011: The shortest month (Thank goodness!)

After the snowiest January on record, what will February bring? 

February 2:  Another storm! This one was massive - called a "monster storm" that paralyzed the middle part of the country, from Dallas to Chicago!  By the time it got here, there wasn't much snow - it was mostly sleet and freezing rain, but that was bad enough.  It created a 1/2" coating of ice on everything, including all the snow piles left from last week's storm.   Conditions on both roads and sidewalks were treacherous!   Enough already!

Cypress Hills Cemetery, the day after!

Can you see the glaze of ice on everything?

February 13:  The ice and snow are melting, but not fast enough for me!!  Some photos taken today, in Baldwin - lots of ice left in that pond:

February 17:  And the snow continues to melt .... and miracle of miracles, no new snowstorms since January!  That huge snow pile in my front yard is but a square foot tonight!    In fact,  the evening temps are currently at 58 degrees, and tomorrow is supposed to get into the 60s!!!! Woo-Hoo!!!!  Can spring be far behind???

February 28th:  Lots of rain today, but no snow!  YAY, we made it through February!!!!!!!

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February 25th:  So far so good!  Another storm today, but here on the east coast, it's all RAIN! Weather forecast looks promising for the rest of February too - not good weather; it's more rain all weekend - but at least no more snow!!!!

Just 7 more days left in this shortest month - will we make it through with no more snow?? Once we hit March, it's only 20 more days until SPRING!  Woo-Hoo!!

February 21:   Excitement over spring came too soon!  Just when ALL the snow from previous storms has finally melted, we got an additional 3" last night.  At least it waited until the old stuff was gone!  We went to get our taxes done today - at least the snow looked pretty on the trees!

Photo Storage and Loss: Update...

Well, it's good news and bad news...

The bad news is that the Geek Squad was not able to recover my photos during their in-house Phase I process.  My hard drive has now been shipped out for a Phase II estimate, but they have already warned me it could be pretty expensive - up to $800!!  I probably will not go that route, unless they surprise me with a really low estimate.

The good news is that - as I blogged earlier - I do have most of my photos saved on Flickr as well (thank goodness!!!)  It will just be a very long and tedious process downloading them to my new external hard drive.   I've already started weeding through the 20,000 Flickr photos, getting rid of any duplicates and lesser quality shots, and once I finish that, I'll start downloading them.  So it will be a lot of added work I hadn't planned on - and it will delay some other projects I wanted to get started on this spring - but I am feeling fortunate that I had, at least, that online backup.

More good news...last weekend I found that most of my digital family & vacation photos through early 2008 were also saved on an old laptop we are no longer using!!!  (I guess it pays to hang onto some stuff you aren't using anymore!)   I have copied all of those to my new external hard drive* (see below), backed them up on Flickr ...  AND saved them to CDs or DVDs!   And I will continue with that 3-way storage process for all my photos moving forward.

I guess this is a good lesson for all of us.  To spare future heartache, please make sure your photos are backed up in some way! Memory sticks, flash drives, CDs, Flickr or some other online photo storage - whatever!  It's soooooo worth the extra cost and time involved!

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Photo Storage ... and loss!

I have been soooo good and listened to all the experts about making sure all my photos were backed up.  I did just what I was supposed to do - I purchased a 1 Terrabyte External Hard drive a couple of years ago and moved most of my photos there - nearly 10 years worth. I had them organized and categorized by subject and year and other sub-categories!  I prided myself on thinking I was being smart and my photos were safe, in case of a computer crash!

But what if the external hard drive fails???  That thought never occurred to me!  Now that worst-case scenario has happened!   Late last week, out of the blue, my computer stopped recognizing the hard drive - the icon disappeared and no info I've found or any recommended "repairs" I've tried have been able to get it back.  So right now I can no longer access it or anything in it; in addition it's making a new and ominous clicking noise when plugged in.  As a last resort I am taking it to the Geek Squad at Best Buy this weekend to see if they can work some magic.  Wish me luck!!

The good news is that most of my photos are also downloaded on Flickr.  Over 20,000 of them!!  But not in any real organized manner.  So - while they are out there somewhere - I can hardly begin to imagine the amount of work that will be involved going through them all, labeling them and saving them to a new External Hard drive. It will literally take months, maybe years!  I guess I know what I will be doing when I can finally retire!!  

I also have over 1800 photos on Daily Pics, Facebook and some on this blog, which is good news as well - all of those photos, which are *happily* some of my best, will be much easier to copy to a new drive.  

So I am feeling a little heartsick right now!  I am not sure what I could have/should have done differently - and this definitely invites more research on how best to keep/store the tens of thousands of digital photos that photographers like me end up with! 

  
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