-
Fine Pickle
Hi.
Here I am watching paint dry while my laptop backs-up 150 gigs of data onto it’s brand new hard drive. A hundred and fifty GIGS. Remember when a mega bite was a big deal? Le sigh.
I don’t even know what to say. I thought I’d be up and running in a week. It’s looking more like a month. I’m praying that if I back-up my photos later, I can carve it back down to a week or two. I don’t know anymore. I hate to get my hopes up.
Everything is upside down. I’m sure there is a lesson in this and I have a hunch what it is but it’s not making the growing pains any better.
When Apple reinstalled my new hard drive they renamed my username and now Carbonite doesn’t know where to put all my files. I thought I could just direct Carbonite to the new username but it doesn’t look like that is working.
There are a gabzillion files all over my desktop and stacking by the minute. I don’t know what to do. When it first started happening I cancelled the back-up and had a Carbonite employee walk me through the process. They didn’t know why it was writing to the desktop either but we restarted it anyway, double-checking all the locations directions. They advised me not to change my Apple username. I’m not sure if they were right. But who am I to say? I’m really not a tech head.
Half an hour into the second restore the files started stacking on my desktop again.
At this point I’m just cutting my losses. We are a full 24 hours into the back-up and I don’t want to start over again. I’ll just be the filing queen for a week or two. That’s better than sitting here watching a scroll bar creep across my screen at speeds I can’t even see.
I keep taking screen shots so I can compare them hourly and see that indeed files are moving byte by byte. But some files are bigger than others and the numbers don’t change for really long periods of time. When I asked the Carbonite employee how I could tell if the back-up was stuck or just crunching a big file, she said to just watch it for a day or two.
A DAY OR TWO? Oh my goodness. I remember when I thought wasting twenty minutes was a big deal. Now I have to sit here and wait a day or two to see if the back-up is possibly stuck or not. I’m thinking the lesson here is:
P A T I E N C E
I’m not so sure I’m a fan of Carbonite anymore. I’m so thankful I backed up but I’m thinking my next back-up will be on an external hard drive where I can control things.
So that’s the news. I know. Boring and complainy. I’m sorry. I think in a day or two I’ll have a better attitude and move on to documenting all the cute outfits Bug wears or I don’t know, something…
-
Puzzle Me This
You know what? I love puzzles. Specifically, 1000 piece jigsaw puzzles. Who knew?! I did not know this about myself.
I bought one on a whim while I was at Target before Christmas. I was thinking that it would be a great diversion when we had my mother-in-law over for Christmas dinner. You know, something to ease all those awkward silences when we have next to nothing in common to talk about. Well, it turned out that my mother-in-law (who is now my ex-mother-in-law) has no interest in puzzles and it didn’t ease the awkwardness at all but it was super duper fun for me.
I opened it on Christmas Eve, just to see what it looked like and figure out where to put it in my house. It turned out that it was too big for anywhere but my dining room table. This was not optimum because I needed to serve Christmas dinner on my dining room table but by the time I realized this I was already hooked. It’s so fun!
A few neighbors stopped by and so we pieced a few pieces while we had a cup of tea or two…
A few more pieces went together before breakfast…
Then Toby came over and he got into it too. He declared it so fun that we should all eat dinner in our laps and puzzle all afternoon. Who needs a dining room table for Christmas dinner? We have more important things to do!
Then my mom and dad came over and they got sucked in too (though I failed to take photos of them, sadly). In fact, we were all so into it that my poor mother-in-law felt completely left out or bored or something and asked to be taken home early. It was weird and I do feel kind of bad about that.
But the puzzle was so fun! It was a painting of bridges of San Francisco by Heronim. I’m not a huge fan of this style of art but I do have a soft spot for the city of San Francisco since I did live in the bay area for three years when I was in college. It’s the one big city that I really do know my way about. I’ve walked all over it. You could even drop me in the middle of the Tenderloin and I’d be able to get myself out without too much trouble. I love San Francisco. So I loved this puzzle.
And I love that the artist signs all of his work with a little black cat. I think I’m going to have to make these puzzles a tradition. A new city every year.
Around half past nine on Christmas night we finally finished it. Bug put the last piece in. It was something to celebrate. After spending that much time on it and enjoying it so much I can see why people frame these things. I was tempted. But I’m a snob about how my house looks.
After a moment of silence, I broke it down this morning and put it away in the box. Who knows maybe I’ll take it out and do it next time I have guests over who I don’t really know how to deal with.
But if it’s you who I take this puzzle out for, please don’t take it the wrong way. Just get down to business have fun!
