Packrat in the digital age
Posted by Dana on Aug 28, 2008
You know how you look at:
1) your mountain of mail, and
2) your other mountain of laundry, and
3) the layer of dust on everything
and just sigh?
Imagine my surprise when I discovered the biggest crap shack in my place isn’t my junk closet. It’s my tiny external hard drive. 
This little beast, it turns out, manages to hold about 200 gigs of total garbage leaving about 50 gigs of stuff i want to keep. I just found out I have 12 copies of The Beauty and the Beast Soundtrack. TWELVE. Same version, same order, just saved in different folders. I think it’s safe to say that’s too much Disney. Don’t even get me started on how many dozens of the same version of the same song I have by current artists.
As for my work. I have tons of copies of the same manuscript with different names and slight changes. I don’t know what the changes are unless I read them all. Am I going to read them? Hell no! I’m sticking them all in a “what the hell were you thinking” folder, grabbing one version and going from there.
I passed a display at a Fry’s Electronics today. They have a 1 TERABYTE hard drive for like $230. All I could think is, if I have this much crap on a 250gig hard drive imagine how much garbage I could store on a drive four times bigger. Suffice it to say I moved past that display rather quickly. Note to self, do not rename files and folders for no apparent reason!
How about you? Is your hard drive squeaky clean or do you fear it just as much as your laundry pile?
NOT so ewww
Posted by Dana on Aug 27, 2008
False alarm. A GROSS alarm, but a false one.
The thing in my ceiling? It wasn’t a rat it was a lizard. Apparently he has found a hole he likes to exit but return (hey it’s a nice place who could blame him). Now how he can scale a two story building from the inside I do NOT want to know, but we found the hole, and the lizard.
I’d like to thank the pest control guy who managed to freak me out with the image of a giant rat in my ceiling. Chewing. The pamplet he left behind? Made me wonder if we should just say “eff it” and move. Ewwww.
Thank you Mr. Lizard. I’ve always been a fan of you folks since back when I was 8 and we used to catch you for fun.
Carry on people, the trauma is over!
Roof Rat…
Posted by Dana on Aug 24, 2008
Apparently I have one.
Will return with more details later.
Blogging at OCCRWA
Posted by Dana on Aug 21, 2008
About some pretty random stuff! Click on the picture to check it out!
Rest in Peace, Roi
Posted by Dana on Aug 20, 2008
There was announcement on the Dave Matthews Band website yesterday. Their sax player LeRoi Moore died from complications of an ATV accident back in June. What a horrible tragedy.
Roi is the guy on the big screen. He was a good man with a great sense of humor. However you feel about DMB music, I think we can all agree that age 46 is entirely too young to die.
Rest in Peace Roi (1961-2008)
I could have blogged today
Posted by Dana on Aug 19, 2008
but yesterday I got quoted on Barbara Vey’s publisher weekly blog along with several of my friends so I can’t resist pointing out my awesomeness to the world.
check it out HERE
Things I do not want to see
Posted by Dana on Aug 18, 2008
when standing on a balcony…
Happy Monday! *SHUDDER*
Open Letter to NBC
Posted by Dana on Aug 16, 2008
Dear NBC,
Thank you for being such a horrible network. I can’t believe you aren’t even willing to cut the west coast a break at what YOU and YOUR anchors repeatedly describe as potentially the most miraculous moment in Olympic history. I heard the results HOURS early from my friends in other time zones.
Michael Phelps won and I am so happy for him and his family I could just scream. But I didn’t watch it. Why? Because you strung me along for another hour after the event was over watching women run a marathon through the streets of China. Running. That’s it. It wasn’t even the END of the marathon, just the start and the beginning part. Michael Phelps was creating Olympic history and you expect me to sit there and add to your ratings while you mock me with a “LIVE” emblem on delayed replay.
FORGET YOU.
Not only am I NOT watching that race, it is my new mission in life to catch as many events as possible on YouTube and other places on the internet. If I have to wait hours for you and listen to Bob Costas repeat himself 6000 times I’m going to find another outlet. I will suffer through the shakiest cellphone footage before I watch any of your telecasts again.
And don’t think I’m the only one. Phelps’ races are over and your ratings are going to plummet.
Oh, and now I’m so ticked I’m not watching your fall shows either. You lose. BIG.
If I want info about the Olympics I’ll be visiting the official site in Beijing HERE.
Or I will visit the Yahoo! site HERE.
I’m not even clicking on your website.
Aren’t you happy you got that extra hour of ratings from me after Phelps’s race? I hope it was worth it. This will be my first summer Olympics EVER where I am not glued to the TV every minute I can be for the duration.
It’s definitely not an accident that “BITE ME, NBC” has such a nice ring to it.
Original scent
Posted by Dana on Aug 16, 2008
I’ve used Jergens lotion all my life. I’m a huge fan of all their stuff (particuarly Ultra-Healing) so imagine my delight when I found the two pack available in bulk at Costco. CHEAP! So I bought a pack.
It comes with one Original Scent and one Ultra-Healing along with a smaller Ultra-Healing bottle. I hadn’t honestly thought about it but apparently it has been YEARS since I’ve used Original Scent and it smelled…odd. Then I really read the label.
<—–Original scent is Cherry- Almond? REALLY? I honestly had no idea. I’m not a huge fan of scented lotions (I have perfume allergies) so I was really disappointed. I kept waiting to break out in hives (fortunately I didn’t) but I also didn’t feel comfortable using it so I traded with my mom.
How about you guys. Do you have fond memories of something that you haven’t used in awhile only to discover that it no longer measures up?
Why oh why did I say yes?
Posted by Dana on Aug 15, 2008
So I was having one of those conversations with my mom that involved a lot of “uh huh” “yup” and “yes” (yes, that’s what I sound like when I’m only half paying attention). So I hear my mom say “REALLY?” and she sounds delighted. So not wanting to kill her obvious happiness (or out my lack of attention), I say “Yes.”
It turns out I just agreed to organize the family box of photographs. God help me.
Here is the thing, there must be at least 5,000 pictures in there. In no particular order. AND most of those are of my dad’s feet. Random plants from trips I don’t remember, etc. So instead of just sending the whole frigging box to get digitized I have to actually sort through them.
Then there is the whole digitization process. Have any of you ever done it? In bulk? I’ve been looking around and you have to pay for each picture separately. That’s INSANE.
Fortunately for me I discovered a NY Times Article today on this very issue. Apparently he went to scanmyphotos.com and got 1000 pictures scanned at a time and returned to him along with a new dvd. So now I have somewhere I can send this stuff and I really have no excuse.
What are your thoughts? Would you be willing to send your memories away with no guarantee of safety for those images? Am I just being paranoid?