The Hard Drive that Was

Wednesday, 30 May 2012

So, last week, while wrestling with Hamline’s “convenient” on-line bill paying system, I also experienced full system failure of my hardrive at work. This is the third time that’s happened at work and the second time in the last 9 months. The IT guy, who did a great job of reimaging my laptop, attributed the issue to the anti-virus software. I asked the obvious question: “Can you just leave off the anti-virus software?” But he just chuckled at me like I’m some sort of Mac-using computer half-wit (Bingo!).

I lost about ten hours worth of work I had done over the past couple of days, and I lost a lot of non-essential files – for example, most of my Toastmasters speech outlines. Wisely, I back my stuff up regularly on the shared drive, so I was able to get most of my stuff back – even if it wasn’t always the newest version. I was surprised to find I had once dumped my entire iTunes library on there a few months back, so I was able to recover about 99% of my music. I also had a file titled “Favorites.” I didn’t know what this was, so I opened it (always a good policy when it comes to work computers).

Turns out, it was a file from about 4 years ago that I had saved of my favorite online sites. I clicked on each link to see if it was a link I still wanted. In some cases, the link was useful, but I could have figured out how to get there again even without the helpful link. Like, yeah, I think I could have found Wikipedia and YouTube even without the saved link. Other links were really helpful, like the one that took me to where I have to track my time at work, and the one where I can submit medical receipts for pretax dollars. Some of the links were defunct, and others were no longer relevant to my job.

But then, today, I clicked on this one: Jenz Daily Pics.

Wow! Did that bring back memories. I don’t think I’d been to that site in over four years.

It’s a site my wife maintained for one year: from July 1, 2006 to June 30, 2007. She took one picture a day and uploaded it to the site. It was fun to see all the different things we did that year, and to see how much Owen grew. In some ways, it was a good year for her to photograph, because, like I said, Owen grew so much, and we had two fun cats, and we did a lot of home improvements. In other ways, it was kind of a downer year – we lost a lot of friends that year (you’ll notice there’s not many in the pictures), and we didn’t go out of town all year (well, there was a trip to Rochester, Minnesota and another to Hudson, Wisconsin, but nothing big).

I scrolled through all the pictures and read all the comments. When I got to the picture for January 14, 2007, I came across her picture titled…

Is there anything cuter than this?

The answer is no…there’s not. Here’s the picture–>

So innocent, so pure. Memories of young boy, a sweater, a dining room chair, a house, and a hard drive that was.

Thursday, 31 May 2012

I am ending this very busy, ambitious, and eventful month on a high note. But first, some back story…

Back in October – or maybe it was September? – Owen and I were at the St. Paul Corner Drug Store for our weekly treat of ice cream. On the shelf to the left of the soda fountain were copies of the 2012 St. Paul Almanac. Intrigued, I grabbed a copy and thumbed through it.

“Hey,” I thought, ” I could write an essay for this thing.”

So I did.

Actually, I first got myself a copy of the 2010 and 2011 Alamanacs. I read some of the essays in those editions and then looked for more information online, and found THIS SITE.

The site’s been updated since then, but back in the fall of 2011, it featured a call for submissions for their 2013 edition. The deadline was December 15th, and the site said that if a submission is accepted for publication, authors will be notified by June 1, 2012.

Well, they waited until (almost) the last minute: at 10:05 this evening, I checked my email and saw that one of my pieces was accepted. This is really cool! These almanacs are really fun, they’re local, and they’re professionally made. Also, I get paid for my submission. That’s really exciting because, up until now, most of my payment has been in the form of free copies, meals, and hearty handshakes.

The only problem is, I submitted two pieces, and the email I received merely congratulated me on getting one accepted. So…I don’t know which piece they liked. Meh. Oh well. I’ll find out soon enough. And I’ll save the other essay and resubmit it later this year.